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David French Is for Reparations?
Reading this dispatch from the Dispatch, it seems like David French is four square in the camp of structural racism.
In his article he attacks those on the right that believe in equal justice under the law thusly:
…that racism exists only when there is individual malign intent, that remedies for racism should be limited to imposing consequences on individual racists, and that there is no intergenerational obligation to remedy historic injustice (“I’m not responsible for my ancestors’ sins”).
Under this mode of thinking, the concept of “equality under the law”—as mandated by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act—is both necessary and largely sufficient to address the causes and consequences of centuries of slavery followed by generations of Jim Crow.
Well, I have to say, yes. That is what we have to work with. Anything else is making someone today pony up for some sin they did not commit. I have an ancestor who served in the Confederate Army. So what? French cites a biblical passage, which, I will ignore, because we have more than believers in the Old Testament here about, and move on. French decides to find structural racism in housing.
Residential segregation, through redlining and other means—especially when combined with profound employment discrimination and educational disparities—resulted in the creation of large communities of dramatically disadvantaged Americans. Because of centuries of systematic, de jure (by law) oppression, they possessed fewer resources and less education than those who didn’t suffer equivalent discrimination.
While the passing of the Civil Rights Act meant that black Americans had the right to live elsewhere, they often lacked the resources to purchase homes or rent apartments in wealthier neighborhoods with better schools. Indeed, to this day, the median net worth of a black family ($17,150) is roughly one-tenth the median net worth of a white family ($171,000). That means less money for down payments, less money for security deposits, and overall fewer resources that enable social mobility.
One of the solutions to this problem is permitting more multi-family housing in wealthier communities. But that’s exactly when NIMBYism rears its head. Even if every member of a local zoning and planning commission isn’t racist, there are multiple non-racist reasons for them to resist greater population density. There’s traffic congestion. There’s school overcrowding. There’s the potential consequence to property values. There are environmental objections. There are a host of related infrastructure concerns.
Well. I guess all those poor black people who moved north to escape Jim Crow and the poverty of the south did not happen? French ignores that what was called “White Flight” was in fact, “Middle Class Flight.” What is weird here is that he gives all the totally normal, race-neutral reasons that people don’t want where they live changed. Well, that is great. He just goes on to call for people to change their rules anyway. Y’all who know me, know I am pro-community rights, because I believe the people have the right to fashion communities they want to live in. This is done through government. David French, conservative, disagrees:
With regards to zoning, I’m more likely to suggest that property owners should be granted more economic freedom and that limits on multi-family housing are perpetuated by limiting people’s freedom to buy and develop land. The balance between planning and property rights should tilt more towards liberty. NIMBYism exists in part because government authorities sometimes control my backyard more than I do.
David French does not understand how “Not in My Backyard” works. It exists because the people who are there use government to set controls into place. It is clear that Mr. French is unhappy that local people, trying to build the best community they can, with nary a bit of racism in their own hearts, are unwilling to take a hit of some sort, and have the sorts of multifamily housing proven to decrease standard of living. It is clear that he wants them to take one for the team by what he calls a “tilt more towards liberty” but what he really means is a “tilt more towards the sort of construction I think should happen because bad things happened to minorities in the past.” I am pleased he does not want central control of redistribution of wealth, but forcing a community to change its zoning to increase housing density is not an act of liberty for the people already living there, it is a violation of their rights as sure as if you taxed them to transfer money to someone else.
Speaking of transfers, French complains:
Indeed, to this day, the median net worth of a black family ($17,150) is roughly one-tenth the median net worth of a white family ($171,000). That means less money for down payments, less money for security deposits, and overall fewer resources that enable social mobility.
Well, since the start of the Great Society, we have spent billions and billions in tax dollars, taken from people doing well, and given it, mostly no serious strings attached, to the poor. The so-called War on Poverty has not budged the line at all. So, I don’t see how more transfers of wealth, in any format, is going to make a difference.
What is really funny to me, is that before the end of Jim Crow, black families were more intact. It was not slavery that ended black families. It was not decades of oppression that ended black families. No, it was the coming of massive government intervention, and a society that embraced sex outside of marriage to an astonishing degree. Indeed, all families used to be more intact. I wonder if Mr. French put the same energy and faith into advocating for the end of no-fault divorce as he does for this sort of nonsense what that would be like. Not popular with anyone, I imagine. I mean, we are in an age, where David French’s buddy at the Dispatch watched and spoke highly of Game of Thrones which was soft medium-core porn (and Danny, by the way folks, was underage in the book) and cheered it on in the GLOP podcast. Not sure I have read French take his buddy to task for that.
What is really funny here, is that French opens his whole article complaining that another religious organization does not want a pastor to use Critical Race Theory as a foundation. He then attacks being against CRT as being unconservative because it is not seeing the world as it is, namely, that slavery and Jim Crow did some bad things.
Even worse, David French does not prove that in 2021 there is structural racism against blacks. The title of his article is not even backed up. What he talks about are nonracist reasons that some people find themselves boxed out of some situations. The real reason there are “large communities of dramatically disadvantaged Americans” is because dysfunctional people create dysfunctional communities. No one who is functional wants to live in those communities regardless of their race. And any time too many dysfunctional people move into a functional community, it fails. The functional people move out, and the area is colonized by more dysfunctional people. Burning down your local Walmart is not the act of “disadvantaged Americans” because if it were, large parts of the Appalachian mountains would have been burned to the ground. Mr. French does not even address that level of poverty.
David French is not an ally in the fight to save America. He has sided with the forces who want CRT and he is calling for reparations. Not calling them with that name, nor is he calling for centralized control. But he is clearly calling for people to disadvantage themselves because there has been racism in the past, and own up to the idea that being nonracist, but wanting the best for you and yours is actually systematically racist.
Heaven help us from “conservatives” like David French.
Published in General
Although I think you are reading too much into some of his comments, and unfairly accusing him of being on board with CRT, I think you are right in identifying the main weakness of French’s argument, which is the lack of a limiting principle, and lack of a clear goal line.
How on earth does any particular institution gauge its responsibility and how could it ever know when it has done enough? What about all the other historical injustices. This could go on forever. As French admits, this is hard and complicated.
But doing nothing, as you suggest, doesn’t seem right either. Not to me, anyway. What if a suburban mostly white church decided, out of a feeling of responsibility to try to do something about these disparities, to initiate and foster some social contact with an urban black church? Just to get to know people and generate friendships and connections (which eventually will have an economic impact if they are lasting,) That’s not nothing, but not oppressive either. Surely this is already going on in a places.
Does the Dispatch have a Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion?
That’s the way mediating institutions should work, not government. But, the Left is far along the process of destroying our mediating institutions, and that’s the goal!
This is what I think Trump haters don’t get. There’s an astonishing level of naivity about who the enemy is (Hint: not white American patriots) and what they’re up to. We’re at the end of our civilizational cycle and French is trying to lend credibility to the “systemic racism” narrative of our destroyers. I really do wish he’d sit down and shut up. Or just switch sides already.
The idea that it is the responsibility of whites to help blacks robs blacks of their agency. In your example, why do you make it the responsibility of the white church? Where is the agency of the black church?
The reason I say French buys into CRT, is because he is talking the language of “racial justice”. He uses the term. What does that mean? If it means anything other than equal justice under the law, and equal protection of rights, then it is buying into the tribalism of CRT.
I also did not take French to task for lamenting that he has ancestors who fought for the South. What an odd thing to lament. I have a great great grandfather who fought in the war. His last name is my middle name. I don’t lament any of that.
Very interesting.
I think it’s their mutual responsibility to get to know their brothers in Christ, across those lines that have been historically drawn between them, and doing so will increase the odds that people who need help, white or black, will get it. No agency will be stolen.
I don’t think it’s terribly important who initiates it. The important thing is to be open to it and make it happen one way or the other.
This is basically what Deirdre McCloskey says you need for a good system, and she has the research to back it up. She did a bunch of long interviews about 5 to 7 years ago. I don’t mention that enough. Very compelling. Some people aren’t going to like it that she’s gender dysphoric but her argument is excellent.
David French now claims he didn’t say the thing he said last week.
So. Much. Gaslighting.
EDIT: Now that I’ve read further in this thread, I see his new column was addressed.
And yes, he’s gaslighting.
Who funds the Dispatch?
He’s taking the Tom Nichols path toward obscurity. For awhile people on the right spent time rebutting Nichols’ stupid arguments, but as he brazenly continued with his stupid arguments without demonstrating an ounce of shame, people just stopped bothering to rebut him. And now Nichols is merely a punch line.
David French is thisclose to being merely a punch line. By some accounts, has already passed that point.
I have no problem with churches working together. I have a problem with the formulation that blacks need the help of white people to succeed. That is underlying French’s points.
Don’t need to “expect” it. He’s already fulfilled those expectations. But he’ll still claim that his woke faith is the One True Faith.
Absolutely. French, like many “woke” Christians, has a huge case of White Savior Complex.
Yeah.
Just another form of being racist.
Who was it who said “Please stop helping us”
The Help of my lifetime has been an utter disaster, but French cannot even address that. No, he blames the more distance past for modern problems.
As soon as I see someone using the construction “white church” or “white evangelicals,” I know that the connotation there is an accusation of racism.
The trouble is that well-meaning Christians who just want to be nice to everyone are utterly sucked into this demonic philosophy.
French himself was an enthusiastic fan. Talked about it all the time on Twitter. He claimed Christians were destroying their witness by supporting President Trump while he gushed about a soft-core porny TV show. The irony was lost on him.
Just so. I am old enough to remember when Democrats were against this sort of thing.
To further elaborate, Oscar Wilde is said to have quipped that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Tom Nichols trolled conservatives to the point that they just stopped paying attention to him. Negative-attention-seeking behavior only works for so long. And now Tom Nichols is no longer even talked about.
David French is on his way there.
Let’s hope so.
I wonder what makes him think there are solutions.
Jason Riley. I think he’s been on the flagship podcast a couple of times.
I’m pretty sure he would say all of that is a result of rent control.
Like Margaret Thatcher, we shouldn’t be so worried about the gap(s) as we are the standard of living for those at the bottom. Poor Americans live better than almost anyone, anywhere, throughout history. As Bryan says, government should be concerned about equal application of the law, regardless of race, gender, class, and that’s about it. We’re seeing the opposite of that under the Democrat Left.
The wealth gap and achievement gap are largely a values/culture problem among blacks (academic achievement is “acting white” has been around a long while), which is only being made worse by stupid ideas like Math and logic are white colonialism. Civil rights violations are already against the law. Enforce the law.
The mediating institutions (especially churches) should be free from government interference to take care of the values/culture problem.
That too. But, he addressed the enviro regs in San Francisco in the Uncommon Knowledge segment on discrimation and disparaties.
Are you saying French is fried?
Or maybe he’s toast.
Nicely done.
Bryan, this is a great post and great comments, especially your #88 (which takes apart French’s subsequent attempt to explain himself and retreat from his original essay).
I have a few legal thoughts. I find French to be very careless about these things, for a lawyer.
French argues for institutional responsibility. Well, it is true that corporations and governments are, as a matter of the civil law, held responsible for the torts and other legal wrongs that they commit, through their agents.
But legal claims are also barred, generally speaking, by a statute of limitations. These are usually quite short, often just 2-3 years, rarely as long as 10. There’s another legal doctrine called “laches” that has the same effect, though it’s more of an equitable doctrine founded in excessive delay in bringing a claim. Jim Crow ended around 60 years ago, and slavery ended over 150 years ago. That’s way, way too long.
It is also very unusual for one person to have a legal claim to recovery based on a wrong done to another. If your daddy robbed my daddy, I don’t have a claim against your daddy, and I certainly don’t have a claim against you. The rare exception to this rule applies in personal injury cases, for a loss of “consortium,” which is generally limited to immediate family members (spouses, parents, and children).
French’s article is even careless, as a legal matter, in its asides. At one point, he writes: “I’m not going to address the church’s procedural disputes. (Though I will note that it is contrary to basic principles of religious liberty to ask an arm of the state—a judge—to intervene in matters of church governance.) “
Well, I haven’t researched the question in depth, but I think that he’s probably wrong about this. Most churches are organized as corporations. If the corporation is violating its own articles and bylaws — say with one group seizing power contrary to the applicable organizational documents — then a court could adjudicate the controversy.
I did research this briefly, and found a 1979 SCOTUS decision called Jones v. Wolf, consistent with my impression (and not with French’s). The court’s role is circumspect, as it must apply “neutral principles of law,” must not decide issues of religious doctrine, and if the church is a hierarchical one, it must abide by the decision of the properly designated religious body responsible for resolving the issue.
So, in a local congregational church, the Court could decide a battle over corporate control by applying neutral secular principles. In a local Catholic church, the decision of the relevant ecclesiastical authority — such as a bishop — would prevail.
Except…
Sinn Fein will get around to it soon.
Anti English sentiment is newly acceptable now with the progs since Brexit. A few years ago it would be seen as parochial and nationalist.
To paraphrase Ed Koch, “The people of England have voted against the Progressive agenda, and now they must be punished.”