I notice again this morning, as I have previously, the number of times where issues rooted in liberalism versus conservatism in this country somehow get twisted into racial arguments. An example of this would appear to be the overly loud response to John Derbyshire’s most recent column at NRO:
10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense [1]:
(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
(10b)Stay out [2] of heavily black neighborhoods.
(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten [3] to death by gunshot).
(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks [4].
(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells [5], leave as quickly as possible.
(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality [6] run by black politicians.
(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character [7] much more carefully than you would a white.
(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan [8] to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.
…..
(13) In that pool of forty million, there are nonetheless many intelligent and well-socialized blacks. (I’ll use IWSB as an ad hoc abbreviation.) You should consciously seek opportunities to make friends with IWSBs. In addition to the ordinary pleasures of friendship, you will gain an amulet against potentially career-destroying accusations of prejudice.
(14) Be aware, however, that there is an issue of supply and demand here. Demand comes from organizations and businesses keen to display racial propriety by employing IWSBs, especially in positions at the interface with the general public—corporate sales reps, TV news presenters, press officers for government agencies, etc.—with corresponding depletion in less visible positions. There is also strong private demand from middle- and upper-class whites for personal bonds with IWSBs, for reasons given in the previous paragraph and also (next paragraph) as status markers.
(15) Unfortunately the demand is greater than the supply, so IWSBs are something of a luxury good, like antique furniture or corporate jets: boasted of by upper-class whites and wealthy organizations, coveted by the less prosperous
From a statistical standpoint, Derb has a point. It’s one that’s been noted by black authors, as well. Take the quote posted by David, from Shelby Steele, yesterday:
The civil rights community and the liberal media live by the poetic truth that America is still a reflexively racist society, and that this remains the great barrier to black equality. But this “truth” has a lot of lie in it. America has greatly evolved since the 1960s. There are no longer any respectable advocates of racial segregation. And blacks today are nine times more likely to be killed by other blacks than by whites.
If Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism (hard to conceive since the shooter is apparently Hispanic), his murder would be an anomaly, not a commonplace. It would be a bizarre exception to the way so many young black males are murdered today. If there must be a generalization in all this—a call “to turn the moment into a movement”—it would have to be a movement against blacks who kill other blacks. The absurdity of Messrs. Jackson and Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites.
Or, ponder Bill Cosby, whose book “Come On People” [9] I commend to your reading. (I found it quite good, thereby the recommendation.)
As Cos points out, as does doctor Thomas Sohl, and countless others. The issues here are not racial, but are cultural in nature. This is hinted that , in a quote that I recently posted elsewhere from Shelby Steele:
There is a price to be paid even for fellow-traveling with a racial identity as politicized and demanding as today’s black identity. This identity wants to take over a greater proportion of the self than other racial identities do. It wants to have its collective truth— its defining ideas of grievance and protest—become personal truth. . . . These are the identity pressures that Barack Obama lives within. He is vulnerable to them because he has hungered for a transparent black identity much of his life. He needs to ‘be black.’ And this hunger—no matter how understandable it may be—means that he is not in a position to reject the political liberalism inherent in his racial identity. For Obama liberalism is blackness.
That does seem to be the prevailing philosophy. And thereby, any objection at all to liberalism as a whole is inherently racist. How else to explain, for example, to the charge of the Clinton administration that any move to limit the welfare state, was inherently racist? Of course, such charges fell on deaf ears once it came out that the vast majority of people on public assistance were white. Such logical discrepancies and Liberal arguments these days are not at all uncommon, however.
Let’s address this directly; if America was inherently racist as is the common charge these days, how is it that we have a black President? How is it we have a black Attorney General? Yet when these issue policies that are objected to, that objection is noted as racist? There is a logical disconnect there which you could drive my truck through.
Speaking personally, the issue is liberalism. If my objection to Obama is rooted in Race…. objections I had to Jimmy Carter back in the day are suggestive I was misinformed as to Carter’s racial background. It is, I’m afraid, a typical reaction of the left to charge racism when there is no other defense. We also have been charged with racism here at Bitsblog, when we make the rather obvious point that not all cultures are equal. The linchpin, here, is as I say, the belief that one cannot be black unless one is an avowed leftist. Until that bit of racism can be overcome, there will be no equality.
As a parting shot, I wonder a bit at the tone of discussions over race, these last few weeks. They have the undeniable quality of being ginned up. I suggest that this is directly in line with the statement from the Obama White House that they didn’t need to worry about white working class people in the upcoming election. The incessant screaming of the leftist press over race, as well as the other usual suspects, leads me to believe that this is being chained up incidental to the election. After all, who else would benefit but the far left, Obama at its head?
Side note to Rich Lowry I wonder if you haven’t played directly into the White House campaign, with your reaction to Derb? Some actual courage on the subject is in order. I love you guys, but I think you’ve failed rather miserably in this. I’m quite disappointed.