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A Simple Thought Experiment on Race
I’m a pretty simple guy. I hear Eric Holder tell me, yet again, that he believes racial animus plays a role in the opposition to him and the president; loaded phrases like “we need to take our country back” are, he claims, for many (or most), racial code words that really mean something like “we’ve got to throw these black men out of power” so we can put white guys in office (but not white gals — we’re also sexist).
So I decided to use myself in a thought experiment.
Who am I working for to win the 4th District seat in the House in Utah? That would be Mia Love.
Who’s book changed the way I think about liberals and conservatives? It’s a book called A Conflict of Visions, by an economist named Thomas Sowell.
One of my favorite books on race in America is White Guilt by an academic named Shelby Steele.
Of recent Secretaries of State, who was the most honorable and competent? White woman Hillary Clinton, white male John Kerry, or black woman Condoleezza Rice? Rice by 30 lengths.
Whose columns on economics make consistent good sense? Another economist named Walter Williams.
Which Supreme Court Justice hews very closely to my own interpretation of the Constitution? This is kind of a three-way tie: Justices Scalia, Alito, and Thomas (latter pictured).
One of my favorite up-and-coming senators? Tim Scott from South Carolina, that most racist of states.
Why do I abhor the policies of Obama, Holder, John Conyers, and Valerie Jarrett? For exactly the same reason I abhor the policies of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and a vast horde of white leftists. They believe in the administrative state, vast bureaucracy, identity politics, huge deficits, a tiny American presence in the world, abandoning Israel, insulting religious people, political correctness, and on and on and on.
So what is it? Policy (and the principles upon which policies are based) or race? You decide.
Published in General
Nice try, but all my white liberal friends tell me the people you’ve mentioned aren’t “authentically” black. And really, wouldn’t they know?
Good post.
A funny thing happened when GWBush became President: African Americans flourished in both employment and standard of living. Free markets have a pretty consistent way of improving all lives, not just those at the top.
Meanwhile, under Obama black unemployment is drastically higher. His bankrupt economic policies have turned a full time economy into part time McJobs. And now, since Obama sent out the “dreamer” message to Latin America resulting in an open border policy, African Americans stand to lose even more.
TR – Well said. You have perfectly put my frustration with the race issue in America today. I am a huge fan of Sowell, Thomas, Williams & Rice. (The other people you list I am not familiar with.) I would offer that Thomas Sowell is the most clear-headed thinker in America today.
You have to wonder if Eric Holder believes what he says. He might genuinely believe it but he might be cynically playing the victim because if often works.
Do you know why people hated GWB and Dick Cheney? Because they were (and still are) white. Well, maybe not…I can’t see in their hearts…But probably.
I keep forgetting the “authentic” thing. These are the same folks (“white liberals”) who called George Zimmerman a “white Hispanic.”
I’d just like to counter-balance this wonderful insight with the color-blind animus I feel toward Obama voters. I’m disgusted with them all, white or black. In their racialist sanctimony, they’ve destroyed this exceptional nation for generations to come. I’m ferociously pissed on my kids’ behalf.
Bitter much? Yes. It didn’t have to be this way.
Don’t forget Charles Payne, one of the better economic reporters today.
Or Bill Cosby, whose conservative family-friendly comedy show I often watched as a kid.
We could go on forever. But it’s a futile exercise because the racism charge is just liberals’ unethical way of keeping conservatives on defense. We don’t need to defend ourselves against their petty and ridiculous accusations. When they attempt to demonize us, tell them to shut up and then continue discussing what really matters.
I have to disagree with that one. There is no one, absolutely no one, who the left hates more than a black conservative (unless it is a black conservative woman). The left hates Clarence Thomas far more than the other conservatives on the Court. If GWB and Cheney had been black, the Bush Derangement Syndrome crowd would have hated him that much more.
If a conservative responds at all to charges of racism, it should be to remind liberals how blatantly racist so many votes in support of President Obama were in the first election. Millions of voters knew nothing about him except for vague promises, yet voted for him and felt proud for having elected a man on the basis of his skin color. The “content of his character” did not matter at all to many who voted for him.
One might also mention Attorney General Eric Holder’s racist preferential treatment of cases involving blacks, such as the open-and-shut voter intimidation case he dropped in favor of the Black Panthers.
I am Post-Accusation.
You know how Mark Levin says we live in a post-Constitutional world? Or some people say we live in a post-Christian world? I am post-Accusation.
I have grown so sick of the liberal accusations disguised as race that they mean nothing to me anymore. They have so over-used and misused the accusation that it no longer carries any weight.
I am opposed to racism, but the accusation-game isn’t the same thing.
At this late date I think that even most liberals can see through Eric Holder’s racial smokescreen to the incompetent and corrupt and dishonest racist that he is. Has there ever been a worse attorney general? Okay, Janet Reno. But still, this guy is really bad.
Accusations of racism (or sexism) are simply the laziest form of argument; in casting views as extremist or per se invalid, the other side doesn’t actually have to address what is being argued. For all the talk of judging persons on the content of their character, not the color of their skin, the left is perfectly fine disregarding the content of arguments based on the color of the skin of the opposing party.
None of these people really care if you are racist or not. They simply want to use the cry of racism to shut you up. That is all there is too it.
As far as authentic, they want to simpelfy all groups into a general terms as possible to make them easier to understand and manipulate. They get angry when you don’t fit, so they ignore or discount those bits.
I’ll just add my vote of anti-racialist solidarity.
There sure is an awful lot of racial animus in it. His.
Much like the Klansman, his entire argument rests on the “You know how those people are” type of magical thinking. If you desperately want it to be true, anything is a “codeword.”
It would be fun to start filing EO complaints.
A link in a different conversation led me to this rather apt cartoon.
IMO – Holder believes what he says. He views the world through racially tinged glasses. There’s nothing cynical there. It’s genuine, and, sadly, for him and most like him there is no cure. Harry Reid, on the other hand, is pure cynic.
Well, they really, really hate Scalia.
Eric Holder says that for one of two reason, either he is a bully and uses the accusation to cut off debate and criticism of the President’s policies or he has a preconceived opinion of white people as a group, in which case he would be a racist. I am inclined to believe both are true. They know why we criticize them. That is why they hide what they are, forgive vulnerable Dems in their votes in Congress, and otherwise limit exposure of vulnerable Dems to their policies. 93% of blacks voted for Obama and most voted for him because of skin color. If 93% of whites voted based on skin color, McCain and/or Romney would be President and Obama would be a nobody.
I am afraid my blank friend that you fail to realize how deep your racism actually goes. Your racism is a new and even more pernicious form of this mental defect that has afflicted the European race for centuries. The new racism is so deep and ingrained that it may sometimes even manifest as a strong love and admiration of certain black people. The targets of this affection though are often self hatting Uncle Toms. Thus while superficially it may appear that you admire and support a black man/woman what you actually support is a deep hatted and scorn for the black community. Of course there is no way for you to understand this as your white brain irrationally overrides your true emotions with a false consciousness. Sadly your very attempt at disproving this only helps to confirm the severity of your affliction. I would pray for your soul except I am sure that God (who as we know is a black lesbian woman) and Jesus (a communist Palestinian) wouldn’t want to touch your soul with a ten foot pole.
But they hate Thomas more, because he’s black.
Thus, a Harry Reid can say that Thomas’ opinions read like they were written by a 4th grader. Various Dems can call Thomas an Uncle Tom and a hypocrite for opposing affirmative action. They ridicule his reticence in oral argument as if he’s stupid or evil. Only Thomas, of all nominees to the Court had to suffer through the worst character assassination in judicial history.
Scalia, being white, gets more respect from the self-described party of civil rights.
Hey tabula rasa, you forgot to mention Jason L. Riley, author of Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.
My sources tell me he’ll be a guest on an upcoming podcast in the near future.
Your post represents a microaggression that should be investigated by the Justice Department.
When it comes to Obama, I can’t stand his white half either. Pretty much a wash on the race issue.
I don’t think we should immediately dismiss concerns by African Americans that certain attitudes are tinctured by racial issues. We’re only a generation or removed from large-scale segregation in the south.
Agreed, but it’s important for those concerns not to be quite so self-serving as they are coming from Holder, Obama, or their mouthpieces on MSNBC.
YES! This book just came out and it’s AWESOME. Riley’s on the board of the Wall St Journal and he’s brilliant.
I’m through the first couple of chapters and I have been very pleasantly surprised by how thoroughly researched and organized it is.
When blacks are looking for racism, it is easy to find, whether it is there or not. I am reminded of a humorist Tom Lehrer song many years ago called “Smut,” that included the following lines (if memory serves):
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd,
I could tell you things about Peter Pan.
And the Wizard of Oz, there’s a dirty old man!
As soon as I’m finished, I’ll let you know. Let’s write a review about it; after all, I owe tabula rasa a few book posts or two or fifty! :)