Racist posts are becoming an epidemic

What the hell is wrong with some white people?

More specifically, in Connecticut recently, a spate of white GOP party operatives and elected officials have infected social media with racist, woman-hating memes. Some of the posters have apologized. Some have ducked into bomb shelters because they think the storm will blow over. All have contributed to lowering the conversational bar during this already-toxic campaign season.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but in the last few days:

⏩ Richard Tutunjian, a GOP state central member, posted, among other nonsense, a meme that suggests Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is sexually promiscuous. When you can’t win an argument with a woman, an effective way of shutting down conversation is to say she’s promiscuous. It doesn’t matter if the accusation is true. It’s gossip. It’s juicy. Let’s share! In response, state Sen. Kevin Witkos, a Republican,

asked for Tutunjian’s resignation.

⏩ Dan Luisi and Larry Maggi, elected Republican officials in Haddam, posted on social media racist, woman-hating memes aimed at, among others, Harris again, along with Monica Lewinsky and Colin Kapernick, making their memes a two-fer — both racist and womanhating.

⏩ Some unknown junior racists posted and shared a meme of state Rep. Jillian Gilchrest (D-West Hartford) wearing a kente kufi hat with a map of Africa and among other words, the title “Hakuna Matata.” Another two-fer!

Accompanying those posts are comments such as “thank you for saying what everyone is thinking.” These commenters are the equivalent of bystanders urging a bully to hit ‘em again, harder. In fact, I do not believe this is what most of us are thinking. I believe most of us have our minds on higher things.

Sitting at the center of this bile-soaked web is Donald J. Trump, TweeterIn-Chief. Researchers will study Trump’s impact on our society for years, but Bill Yousman, Sacred Heart University associate professor of media arts, says the current occupant of the Oval Office, no stranger to toxic tweets, goes beyond emboldening people to be awful on social media.

Trump “has actually proven it’s a winning strategy,” said Yousman. “You can actually make political hay out of this. There are enough people out there who respond to this sort of thing that for everyone who dismisses it and is disgusted by it, there seems to be almost as many who love it.

“(Rush) Limbaugh and other far-right talk radio hosts have proven that people respond to it,” he said. “The lower they go, the higher their ratings go. The more outrageous they are, the more people lap it up. They embrace the spectacle. They embrace this idea that somehow being vile is a sign of moral courage.”

The anti-Semite Father Charles Coughlin made a career out of racist tropes on the new medium of radio until his Catholic church told him to stop. In 2007, Don Imus, who also targeted revered journalists Gwen Ifill and poet Maya Angelou, called a group of female college athletes “nappyheaded hos.” Limbaugh, who has a Medal of Freedom hanging around his wrinkled neck, has made a career out of spewing misogynistic acid on multiple platforms, and though he is said to be quite ill, hell isn’t ready for him yet, bless his heart.

At the first Haddam virtual board of selectmen (can someone update that title, please?) since the recent social media tempest, Haddam first selectman Robert McGarry, a Republican, fielded comments about the hateful posts. He’d already issued a statement calling the posts “antithetical” to his and the town’s core beliefs about equality. The comments mostly called for less vitriol and training for people chained to racist rhetoric. The “it was wrong but” crowd was publicly silent.

Haddam, which is actually a lovely riverside village, last came under larger scrutiny in 2018 when then-Selectwoman Melissa Schlag protested by kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance during a board meeting. In angry reaction, some townsfolk took a page from Trump’s playbook, and at a subsequent meeting, 105 people weighed in, not all of them daintily. The town made national news.

This recent mess is problematic because local planning and zoning commissions — where Luisi is a member and Maggi is an alternate — have a lot of power in approving who gets to build where. Incorrectly applied, zoning can be a way to codify NIMBY, or Keeping Our Towns White. If P&Z commission members think such social media posts are acceptable, what might that tell us about their decision-making when it comes to zoning and diversity?

Are female politicians immune from criticism? Absolutely not. If a politician or party operative does or says something hurtful or abuses the public trust, a healthy democracy requires that discussions ensue. But if all you have by way of dissent is a politician’s gender and/or race (and/ or sexual orientation), settle in. We know that the more boxes a woman can check (Black? Gay? Atheist?) that moves her farther from the whiteman-ideal, the more trolls crawl out from beneath the bridge, knives sharpened, mouths drooling. Don’t think we haven’t noticed, and don’t think we’ll let it pass. We’re done with all that.

So please consider this next paragraph a helpful tip from someone who lets it fly fairly indiscriminately on social media:

In the future, if a hateful meme is not some thing you’d say out loud to your friends, don’t post it. If it is something you would say to your friends, get new friends.