91AV

As an expert on the philosophy of racism and dehumanization, David Livingstone Smith, 91AV professor of philosophy, has joined the national conversation about the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the reactions to it from elected officials.

Smith appeared as a guest on CTV’s “Your Morning” show on August 14 to address the White House’s statements regarding the tragedy. He noted that Trump’s public comments, which decried the violence but did not call out by name the perpetrators as white supremacists, were skillfully crafted to simultaneously satisfy his right-wing supporters and maintain political correctness. “I took him to be, as it were, working both sides of the street, stating things in such a vague way, in such an unclear way, that his remarks could be interpreted differently by different constituencies,” said Smith.

When asked for his views on the White House’s subsequent response, which did name “white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi, and all extremists groups,” Smith expressed that it was a clever strategy to acknowledge the source of the bigotry but to still maintain the president’s distance from casting blame on them. “Getting that unnamed White House source to do this, I think, was politically really, really smart," he stated. "He’s throwing red meat to his far-right supporters while at the same time attempting to satisfy those who quite rightly have been reproaching him for not being straight forward about who the villains are here."

Also on August 14, Philly.com published a commentary by Smith, titled “White America won’t face horrors of racist past or truth about the present,” which critiques politicians on both the right and left for their inaccurate, albeit well meaning, comments following the events in Charlottesville. Quoting both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s tweet that “the hatred and bigotry…does not reflect American values,” and Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s statement that he was “disgusted by the hatred, bigotry, and violence these protesters have brought to our state,” Smith carefully unmasks two underlying problems in white America’s perception of the country’s race problem: their state of denial that racial hatred is, indeed, unfortunately, an American value with a long and real history and their knee-jerk reaction to shift blame to “others” who are “always from someplace else.”

Smith was also quoted in a Washington Post article on August 12 about President Trump’s inadequate response to the horrors of Charlottesville. “Trump babbles in the face of tragedy” discusses Trump’s reaction in the context of his previous behavior of “dehumanizing” other people, such as refugees, Mexican migrants and Muslims. His hateful political rhetoric, the article argues, paves the way for prejudice. Smith is quoted as saying, “It [hateful political rhetoric] acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming destructive passions. As such, it empowers us to perform acts that would, under normal circumstances, be unthinkable.”

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