Smith stands down Woke mob
D3 candidate Irene Smith has come under fire from a group led by nonprofit activists who claim—rather bizarrely—that a campaign mailer of hers has racist undertones. Smith says "they are treating these mailers as though they are a Hidden Puzzle game, and it's just unserious and cynical." Her defense is excerpted below.
The petition about my mailer has a long list of inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and deceptive arguments about a very vital issue: racism in local politics.
Let’s take their claims step by step.
The first charge is that this mailer is similar to:
GW. Bush accusing J. MCain of fathering a black child,
or using a photo of black men not associated with the political campaign,
or darkening the faces of candidates of color.
This is false equivalency. None of these terrible tactics were used in anyway on the flyer. But the authors feel they can certainly make this claim, if that’s what you want to see.
The second charge is that by placing a photo of white women next to a photo of men of color it ‘literally and metaphorically pits these groups against each other’. The photos were not altered. Everyone is smiling. Mr. Torres’ photo was made public by the participants.
This is a farcical analysis and the piece does no such thing. There is no graphic or editorial signal of any sort--no words, no jagged lines, no arrows, no anything to suggest adversarial intent. They are just next to each other. Merely because a person of color is next to a white person is not an indication of racism. Unless that is what you want to see.
In the third charge, the authors take words put them into a word salad and rearranged them in an order to their liking. The authors contend that the word "dangerous" is a dog whistle--but they fail to mention that we use "dangerous" as an adjective to "partisanship." We are talking about "dangerous partisanship," meaning that Mr. Torres has consistently aligned himself with politics and policies that will be dangerous for D3. It is beyond imagination to suggest that using the words dangerous partisanship means that Mr. Torres himself is dangerous. I can assure you he is not.
This third charge takes my words and rearranges them to suit the racist meaning the authors of the letter prefer. It so distorts my voice as to not be recognizable. I focus on policies, issues, and solutions and I did not use the word dangerous to imply a personal attribute to Mr. Torres.
Here are the main things to remember:
The authors offer no argument that the piece has any explicit racist or racial import. There are no tainted, negative images. Nothing is manipulated. There are no inaccurate claims. No discussion or insinuation of personal life. No wild language, no insults, no derogatory terms.
So it's all in the interpretation and what the reader might want to see. And this is where their analysis utterly falls apart. We've all read postmodern literary analysis and understand that a text can be read a million different ways. Any creative person can come up with basically any narrative, and with a few tricks, work backwards to build a story off any piece of work or art.
We are talking about a political mailer, and the only legitimate way to read it is to talk only about what it actually says and what images it actually uses. Anything else is just wild, cynical creative make-believe, and has no place in serious political or academic debate.
The mailer is a straight-ahead comparison of policy differences and endorsement networks between Mr. Torres and me. The main headline and the driving thesis is a quote from Spotlight magazine. And attempts to read it otherwise are just fantasy.
The authors can find implications, suggestions, irony, hidden easter eggs all they want--but they're not real. They're making them up to fulfill a political purpose to support Mr. Torres winning the race.
It's intellectually unimpressive and ethically offensive. This petition will sadly detract from the true issues of the campaign.
Read the whole thing here.
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