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A Reply to Ricochet Readers on the GOP & White Identity Politics
I’m grateful that so many Ricochet readers have engaged the substance of my interview with Zack Beauchamp of Vox.com, and the subsequent Ricochet interview with @roblong, @peterrobinson and @jameslileks, in which I raised concerns about the centrality of white identity politics and white nationalism within the GOP. I appreciate that most Ricochet readers disagree with my assessment, and that some were even profoundly offended by it. But some of the responses by Ricochet members suffer from one or both of the following flaws: (1) they disagree with things I never said; and/or (2) they reinforce my point by the manner of their disagreement.
First, let me be clear about what I didn’t say.
I didn’t say that the conservative movement was racist, nor that the GOP was. I didn’t dismiss the concern that poor white communities are coming apart. I didn’t say that the way for conservatives to address the problem of our racial homogeneity was to move left on policy. I didn’t say that the way for conservatives to bring minorities into our coalition was to ignore common sense or embrace political correctness. I didn’t say that the left doesn’t practice identity politics, or that the left’s accusations of racism aren’t usually false.
I did say that the Goldwater election was a total disaster for conservatism, because it branded the GOP as the party opposed to civil rights. I did say that the Republican electorate is more animated by nationalism than it is by conservatism, and I did say that conservatism did not deserve to govern the entire country if it reduced itself to a white interest group. I did say that the conservative movement must commit itself to advancing the interests of all Americans, by directly and equally engaging Americans of all races and creeds, and finding common ground.
That’s not what conservatives and Republicans do today. Conservatives and Republicans spend little to no time seriously investing in bringing their ideas to non-white communities.
The ‘minorities want free stuff’ trope
A big part of the problem with the GOP and with conservatism is that so many of its constituents have little to no social contact with minorities, and therefore ascribe unfairly malignant motivations to them.
In the podcast with Rob, Peter, and James, I mentioned several examples of this problem. One is the casual insult that the racially homogenous parts of America are the “real America,” while the diverse, urban parts of America are not. Do you really expect urban and suburban voters of any race to support your policies if your view of them is that they aren’t “real Americans?”
Another is the claim of many conservatives that minorities only vote for Democrats because they want “free stuff.” I pointed out that arguing that non-white voters vote based on fiscal bribes, while white voters vote on principle, is in effect an argument that white voters are morally superior to non-white voters: something that, at the very least, is unlikely to endear non-white voters to your cause, even if they actually agree with your policies. I would go further, and call the belief that white voters are more principled than non-white voters at best an ignorant, and at worst a racially prejudiced, view.
Take the comment of @kylez, who was annoyed by “the idea that it is somehow wrong to say minorities vote Democrat because they want government aid, which is paid for by mostly white working Americans.”
Actually, the vast plurality of entitlement and welfare spending is directed toward whites. The recipients of Medicare and Social Security—the capstones of the Great Society and New Deal respectively—are over 80 percent white.
You could argue, as white identity politicians often do, that Medicare and Social Security aren’t really welfare, because enrollees fully paid for those benefits via payroll taxes. You’d be wrong, especially when it comes to Medicare. Retirees today receive $3 in Medicare benefits for every $1 they’ve paid into the program.
The tax code is littered with loopholes large and small whose beneficiaries are overwhelmingly white: most notably the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance and the mortgage interest deduction. And don’t get me started on the corporate tax code.
You might say, “I pay taxes! I fully deserve the entitlements and tax breaks coming my way. Tell me about straight-up welfare for the poor.” I don’t agree, but ok.
In 2013, 40 percent of food stamp participants were white, 26 percent were black, 10 percent were Hispanic, and 2 percent were Asians. In 2011, Medicaid enrollees were 40 percent white, 22 percent black, 25 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian.
Certainly a higher proportion of Hispanics and blacks are on welfare, because on average they’re poorer than whites (while Asians on average earn more than whites). But perhaps that’s a reason to work harder to lift blacks and Hispanics out of poverty, and not just the white working class!
Are there Americans who want free stuff? Absolutely. But the silver-haired Tea Partier shouting “hands off my Medicare,” and the golf-addicted real estate broker shouting “hands off my mortgage interest deduction,” are just as often guilty of that as the single black mother on Medicaid.
It’s a strange coincidence that conservatives so rarely see it that way.
Here’s another way to think about it. About 55 percent of black Americans are on welfare (i.e., means-tested anti-poverty spending). But over 92 percent of black Americans vote Democratic. Are the extra 37 percent of Democratic-voting, non-welfare-receiving blacks also addicted to “free stuff”?
Let me put it frankly. If you believe that 92 percent of blacks vote Democratic because they’re all addicted to free stuff, you might be someone who lacks the capacity to listen to, or relate to, African-Americans. You might even be what the left thinks you are.
The ‘Obama is a Kenyan Muslim’ trope
Notable in the comments to the Ricochet podcast: almost nobody commented on the remarkable fact that a substantial proportion of Republican voters doubt that Obama was born in the United States, and a substantial proportion believe he is a Muslim. I completely understand why readers wouldn’t want to respond to this point, because it is deeply incriminating of our movement.
Here’s a summer 2016 poll from NBC News, which asked voters if they agreed with the statement that “Barack Obama was born in the United States.” Among those who were registered Republicans, 41 percent disagreed with the statement that Obama was born in the U.S., while only 27 percent agreed. 32 percent were unsure. In other words, 73 percent of Republicans are either unsure or certain that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.
Among Republicans who exhibited a high amount of political knowledge, the results were pretty much the same: 40 percent believed Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., and 30 percent were unsure.
If Obama had been born in Hawaii to an Irish father instead of a Kenyan one, would so many Republicans be questioning his citizenship? I think we all know the answer, even if we don’t want to admit it in public.
Is the GOP’s homogeneity a problem that conservatives want to solve?
Obviously, we conservatives are not going to attract minorities to our cause if we have have no interest in attracting them. And there are a number of Ricochet readers who plainly view minority outreach as futile and/or undesirable.
Representative of the “futility” camp was commenter @rebark, who agrees with me that many members of minority groups agree with us on policy, but that “no amount of supplication on our part, no amount of desperate virtue signalling to prove that we are not racist will win these votes back, because there will always be one offhanded remark that can be construed as indicative of some evil ulterior motive.”
Representative of the “undesirable” camp was commenter @Douglas, whose avatar is the logo of the Confederate Navy, and wrote that “I wish we had written them off [urban and minority voters], simply so those precious resources could have gone to wooing people who could be swayed.”
My conviction is that we have to sacrifice none of our core principles in order to attract minorities to our cause. We simply have to treat them with the same respect and affection with which we treat whites. We have to go into communities where we’re less comfortable, and build relationships with people who don’t look like us or worship like us.
To those who say this is impossible: it’s not. As commenter @ToryWarWriter tried to explain, with little apparent success, the Conservative Party of Canada has done it. Jason Kenney, one of Stephen Harper’s key deputies in the last Conservative government, spent an enormous amount of time traveling to immigrant communities in Canada and building relationships with them. He found that the simple acts of showing up and listening did wonders for Conservatives’ prestige in those communities.
That we haven’t taken Kenney’s playbook and run with it says a lot about where we are today, and why we deserve our status as a failing and losing movement.
In my view, the lack of appeal of our ideas among minorities is the most urgent moral and political problem facing our cause. I hope to persuade at least some of you to join me in doing something about it.
Published in General
You’re the tribalist. He does “us” a service by showing “us” what “they” think of “us“. An otherwise insuperable wall? Perhaps you agree with Roy. Fine. I am not so tribal to have somehow missed what the progressives think (or profess to think) about “us”.
And Vox is straight-up leftist propaganda. That’s why they’re there. Maybe you’re camping with the wrong tribe. You’ve spent well over 500 words to not climb down from your own tribal position. I know you won;t mind the label, tribalist.
I hadn’t read this before. Thanks for the reference, it’s excellent!
We’re all full up with forcible Socratization here. It’s been done here so poorly for so long that it now just rhymes with troll. Better you should just say your piece like a man. Not one of us here has paid to take lessons at the knees of our betters.
I’m glad you’ve dipped in, unlike many of the folks who just let fly with the visceral remarks and leave. So thank you for engaging.
How would you prefer anyone to respond to a comment like this? Like for like? Won’t do it. Hopefully I’ll have time later.
By the other tribe, no doubt.
starnescl: I increasingly see the non avant garde part of Black Lives Matter in the same light.
————
Kind of like the defenestrating iconoclasts of the crypto-Dadaist ISIS movement. It’s more criticism made flesh than terror — I’ve seen worse in better movies.
Da Da Da.
Hopefully not.
But at least we won’t be accused of cultural appropriation, and of being patronizing and inauthentic.
I read Perry’s speech and I found little with which to argue. The description of the lynching was utterly disgusting and a black mark on the notion of any sort of justice, but at the same time, his bringing it up is an example of the sort of groveling apologia that we shouldn’t be making for things that we didn’t do. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa… Yes, there have been plenty of completely deplorable incidents of racial hatred and violence directed at blacks in this country all the way up to the dragging death of James Byrd.
How about addressing the incidents which cut in the other direction, like the Wichita Horror, where black assailants picked out white people at random for rape, torture and murder?
How about addressing the massacres of police by black racists in Dallas and Baton Rouge and the various other incidents across the country? How about the “knockout game” incidents where black thugs randomly smack non-blacks in the head for fun?
Whites aren’t the only people capable of committing racially motivated crimes.
EDIT: It should be noted that based upon Heather MacDonald’s City Journal piece that the vast, vast majority of interracial violent crime is black-on-white in the modern era – 85-15% So, no amount of abject apology to blacks can ever atone for the sins of the past, but we’re supposed to tolerate a vast swath of crimes being committed by blacks against whites and not call it out. This is some form of a cosmic make-up call which I have no interest in indulging.
I think the latter diagnosis—”attributed some of his own thinking to me”—is the correct one. My views in the Vox piece were the ones surrounded by quotation marks, and the ones I’ve repeated here and elsewhere: that the Goldwater opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act has stained conservatism for decades, driven blacks out of the party, and driven white identity politics in. Today, the GOP is a vehicle for white identity politics much more than it is a vehicle for limited government. And that GOP is doomed unless it changes course, and re-commits to genuinely striving to bring limited government to all Americans, not just whites.
Everything in the Vox piece that isn’t in quotes should not be attributed to me. I was quite careful in what I said and how I said it.
On the point that somehow I need to only talk to conservative media and not others: that’s just balderdash. If we want to reach the people who don’t already vote conservative or vote Republican, the only way to do that is to engage with the media they read. Does that mean that they’re going to take advantage of it for partisan gains, that they’re going to distort my words? Of course. But we’re never going to get blacks and minorities to listen to us if we’re not willing to admit where we’ve erred.
To give a counterexample: would you think it treasonous, or principled, for a left-wing intellectual to give an interview to National Review admitting that his predecessors were too soft on communism during the Cold War?
I will continue to say to anyone who asks, left or right, that I find the conservative movement’s history on civil rights to be mixed, and the GOP’s obsession with white identity politics to be self-destructive. Because that’s the truth. And by the way, it’s a truth that you all are reacting to, not because I’ve written about it in Forbes for months (“keeping it within the tribe“), but because I said the same things in Vox that I’d been saying in Forbes, which was the catalyst for bringing my views to your attention.
We’re only going to rise above our white identity politics problem if we recognize and confront it—not just among ourselves, but with the public at large, and especially with understandably skeptical minorities.
Yabbut, “Save The Whales” does mean “Screw The Humans Who Depend On Whaling For Their Livelihood”, and “Support The Troops” does mean “Screw The Humans Who Don’t Want Their Taxes Going To The Military”.
This is precisely why conservatives tend to scoff at “Save The Whales” and liberals tend to scoff at “Support The Troops”.
The difference is that the opposite for “Save The Whales” is not “Save All Animals”, it’s actually “Screw the Whales”. Similarly, the opposite of “Support The Troops” is not “Support Everybody”, it’s actually “Screw The Troops”.
By contrast, the opposite of “Black Lives Matter” is not “Screw The Blacks”, it’s actually “All Lives Matter”.
They are completely different categories of meaning.
I think this is where you are misreading the history. The party shift began long before 1964, and the tidal shift of the 1960s came not with CRA but with the War On Poverty and the massive expansion of the welfare state. The War On Poverty was (as Lyndon Johnson even acknowledged quite candidly) to buy off the black vote and make it beholden to the Democrats. It was this that cemented the racial wedge between the parties. It was also this that set the new tone for the Democrats, one that continues today: explicit racial identity politics. The continuing push for racial balkanization and separation has come, until quite recently, solely from the Left, not the right, and it is that which has recently driven (as you put) “white identity politics” into the Republicans. By making theirs a party first catering to racial grievances, then later openly hostile to whites, they have actually triggered the sort of reaction and behavior of which you worry.
To begin this with Goldwater is to start out all wrong and draw the incorrect lesson.
I certainly didn’t say “blackball the dominant liberal establishment mass media.” Understand that when you talk to them you’re talking to people who’d rather spit on conservatives than look at them and guard your words closely.
The next time that happens will likely be the first. Can you think of an example where a lefty (aside from former lefty David Horowitz) has admitted, “you know, the Soviet Union sure did murder a lot of their own citizens and that’s deplorable…”?
There are no enemies on the left.
The question remains: how do we do that without entering into a bidding war with Democrats for the affection of minorities? We’re offering a particular kind of dog food. What if they just don’t like the dog food?
It doesn’t help that the very thing that you’re accusing the right and the conservative party of is the thing that exists in spades on the left and deserves equal denunciation: the flagrant use of racial demagoguery – remember Joe Biden’s “put you back in chains” bit? Ray Nagin’s “Chocolate City”? The Obama Administration’s “Justice” Department refusing to prosecute the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation?
That’s all sickening, particularly from the party of slavery. The sack on those guys…
And, minorities are only going to rise above their minority identity politics problem if they recognize and confront it—not just among themselves, but with the public at large, and especially with the understandably skeptical majority?
Just had to “Like” this again.
I don’t suggest School Choice just so candidates can gain minority votes of the parents who benefit from it. (contd)
(contd)
I suggest it so that students stuck in God awful schools have the chance for a better education, to prevent 12 years of left-wing indoctrination. And also to empower parents. Give them responsibility for choosing their children’s school and I think it will influence other areas of parenting.
And a better education hopefully produces better citizens more open to a conservative message.
As previously mentioned, a college professor I heard interviewed does a survey of all incoming Freshman. The vast majority believe that slavery was unique to the US.
National Review. The Vox of the Right.
I’ve come to the conclusion this “white identity politics” concern is really a distraction from the important issues of the campaign (which is not to say outreach to minorities isn’t necessary and good — which Trump is executing better than even Thomas Sowell expected). I suspect social media has provided a platform for alt-right types, making them seem greater than their actual numbers and much more potent than they actually are.
Until there are White Lives Matter protesters crashing campaign rallies and burning down gas stations, I’m not going to lose sleep over them. I bet David Duke voted for Ronald Reagan. Accusations of racism from the Left will never stop unless they become less effective — and certainly not if we go into the enemy camp and make concessions.
One of the problems is you assume that blacks will respond to nothing except being bribed. You’ve written them off already. Your outreach amounts to, “We’ll be here waiting when you guys decide to grow up!” Do you expect that to work? I expect you don’t, because you don’t think they are capable of growing up. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy at that point.
The answer to the Democrats bribing blacks is not to outbid them. It’s to say, “Look, we see that you guys are suffering, and it breaks our hearts. You’ve relied on the Democrats for so long and while they obviously are trying to help you, their “solutions” are obviously not working.”
“We really want to help you. We want to lower the crime in the inner cities. We want you to find employment, purpose, and meaning. It won’t happen overnight, but let us show you we want to help you because black lives matter, too.“
See my comment #264.
And I wasn’t suggesting it as pandering to minorities. School choice is a policy that’s the right thing to do, benefits minorities disproportionately, and still doesn’t earn their votes.
Maybe part of the problem is the description “white identity”.
What is meant by that?
It gives the impression you’re writing about the KKK, but do you count the people who grumble about affirmative action programs? How about a poor white male student complains that most of the scholarships he finds require that you’re a minority, female, disabled, or have a criminal record. Is he part of white identity politics?
If so, is he wrong? Are his concerns invalid? Should conservatives and republicans ignore his concerns because you don’t think it’ll help win elections?
Oh, please. Even pandering should have its limits.
You’ve nailed it here, truly.
Unfortunately I’m not sure many of our party’s politicians are that aware or skilled enough to do it.
Didn’t Trump just give this speech in WI?
Donald Trump gave a historic speech in Charlotte on Thursday where he reached out to black voters, promising to fight for them with better education, public safety, and economic opportunities. The Republican nominee pointed out that even after decades of voting monolithically for Democrats, black Americans still attend failing schools, live in unsafe neighborhoods and have few economic opportunities.
Your characterization of the present-day GOP is overstated to the point of being wrong. Also the direction of causality implied in your argument is wrong.
On the dimension “catering to minorities” (whether by catering one means outreach or pandering), the racist alt-right would score the Democrats as the party more favorable to doing so than the GOP.
In this respect the alt-right is unfortunately closer to the GOP than the Democrats, but that is an artifact of the two-party system. That closeness is no way because, in either its founding or its present-day platforms or blueprint, the GOP has invited racists into the fold.
Again because of bipartism, the GOP is the only viable national vehicle for limited government and free trade and markets. (At least until Trump) These ideas have been avowed pillars of the contemporary GOP–in a way that white-identity politics never has been and never will hopefully.
Trump’s nomination has led to some GOP flirting with the alt-right (unless he has a massive November victory, Trump is still not the GOP). For now, the GOP remains the dilapidated home of limited government, free markets, social conservatism–one unwelcome to racists of any color. For now.
Impressive.