‘Hey, boy’: The bigots are back and bold again | Opinion

Bigots in South Carolina, and beyond, are gonna have to up their game. Nearly a quarter of the way through the 21st century, they are deploying insults that haven’t been effective in decades, putdowns that might sting a bit but have been robbed of the power they once held.

During my time doing this work, I’ve seen a few shifts when bigots and racists felt freer to let their ugly fly. The first big shift came almost immediately after Barack Obama became president-elect in 2008, breaking what had seemed an unbreakable truism, that that office was the sole domain of white men. While some national media figures and academics were proclaiming it meant we had entered a post-racial America, my inbox, mailbox, and voicemail were being flooded with racist messages at a clip I had never experienced. It was as though a black man becoming president had convinced bigots and racists if they remained silent, they would surely lose “their” country.

It was several years before that died down, only for it to be ramped up by the emergence of Donald Trump in the summer of 2015. His coming down that golden escalator boldly calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals only to see his prospects improve during the Republican primary seemed to signal Trump had essentially plowed the ground for them. They decided that what had been considered racist was just politically incorrect, and that uttering such words was an act of courage, not bigoted.

That’s where we’ve been since Trump became president.

The latest example for me came in response to a piece I wrote about Rep. Nancy Mace. Many people have lauded the Charleston Republican for supposedly being reasonable and independent even as she keeps saying and supporting outrageous things, including voting against infrastructure funding because of ideological reasons then celebrating when that funding began helping people in Charleston as though she had a hand in making it a reality.

In a tweet after the announcement of a compromise deal to raise the debt ceiling, Mace tweeted that “Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants.”

Get it? He’s old, and old people can’t find their pants. Hilarious.

I called it what it was, ageism, evidence that Mace cared more about playing ugly political games than displaying basic decency. One of her supporters gave me a call.

“This message is for Issac Bailey,” the message began. “Hey, boy!”

I feel sorry for the man. We are this deep into the 21st century and he couldn’t come up with a better way to express his bigotry other than by calling a black man “boy.” It’s true that his father could have called my father “boy” to his face and get away with it because of Jim Crow and other social norms. Maybe that’s why he was under the mistaken impression I would be cowed by a strange white man afraid to make himself known while hurling the word at me through a phone line.

He used a four-letter-word to tell me I was wrong before yelling “boy” again.

“But then I guess you’ve been wrong a whole bunch,” he went on. “But then you were told that you were right because they didn’t want to hurt your feelings, right. That’s the whole point of affirmative action. Everybody’s a winner; don’t hurt your feelings.”

That’s the other shift I’ve seen since the Supreme Court struck down race-based factors in college admissions, bigots tweeting at highly-accomplished black professionals asserting that we either got our jobs because we’re black, or that our presence in high-profile positions means discrimination is dead, a kind of renewal of the bankrupt post-racial claims. They use those contradictory views interchangeably, and largely based on which helps advance whatever superficial racial retort they are trying to make.

The reader from Charleston ended his message this way:

“You have a good day now, boy.”

I’m secure in my own skin, so much that such insults don’t penetrate the way they used to.

It’s clear he isn’t secure in his.

Issac Bailey is a McClatchy opinion writer based in Myrtle Beach. He teaches at Davidson College in North Carolina.