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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
Nope. I’ve changed my mind. I’m not even all that crazy about most of my friends who share my politics. Now I have to make friends with a bunch of people who think I’m evil?
Gosh, funny how that never goes the other way, isn’t it?
Any given policy advanced by a conservative or any given politician not a democrat is immediately assumed to be racist, unless that policy is a rephrased acceptance of a leftist demand, or that politician demonstrates a servile deference to the left.
Enough.
I note again that we’ve had violent felons murder numerous law enforcement officers, intending to kill only whites but lacking enough competence to meet even that vile goal, all at the behest of a radical racist group. Again, these people are so extreme that they can’t tolerate the banal and obvious statement that all lives matter.
I recall the Trayvon Martin case, in which a Hispanic Obama supporter was attacked by a thug, firing only one shot to defend himself. The GOP said nothing- and the Republican governor of Florida even appointed a prosecutor who withheld evidence, with the plain attempt to railroad George Zimmerman into prison.
While I appreciate that Mr. Roy has engaged in the comments and I certainly appreciate that he responded to me- I humbly submit that the policies he advocates in will fail, because in practice the gop offers nothing to law-abiding minorities, because it will not even step up to defend them when they defend themselves against violent felons.
That would be racist, somehow.
Pitiful.
Rick Perry seems like a great guy and a good governor (although, as I understand, Texas restricts the power of its governor pretty severely). But, I think this is a bunch of nonsense:
Blacks are voting 93% Democrat because of Barry Goldwater? Bollocks. Public education, in which, sadly, blacks under-perform, has Americans (not just blacks) so ignorant they can’t even name the current vice president, let alone a losing presidential candidate in 1964. I’d bet most Americans couldn’t tell you the first thing about the CRA.
Blacks believe conservative Republicans are against them because they’re largely ignorant of history, the Constitution, economics, western heritage, etc… just exactly as Democrats want them and fight viciously to maintain them — down on the plantation. Even if they knew Jesse Washington’s story (which I highly doubt), they’d never learn that he was (likely) lynched by Democrats.
The Left’s greatest political success is scapegoating the Right.
And winning actual fights, instead of attempting to store up goodwill by granting victories to the left.
No, but it’s a bit plain on flatbread.
Well, maybe you should stop associating any criticism with being called the R word. Just because conservatives as a whole could do better communicating with other races doesn’t make any of them (especially you, personally) a racist.
High IQ is often associated with awkward social skills. I have a feeling that is your reason!
To those who don’t follow @docjay we are having a somewhat related conversation over here : https://ricochet.com/just-another-racist-raising-a-racist-boy/
I point it out as it gives me the opportunity to beat my drum again: school choice. School choice. School choice.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful for every kid to choose their high school like mine did, based upon how the football team is doing?
Why not group kids, and let them choose based upon interest, instead of grouping them now by race and their parents’ net worth. Give them all an opportunity to build those relationships
Conservatism is a race now?
Heh, didn’t you hear?
Yeah, and we don’t need “conservative intellectuals” on Vox to reinforce that canard, hey?
Try the spicy Gemüsenbrei instead. Also good on celery for those watching their carbs.
Well, yeah, but the outfit I mentioned, IJ, doesn’t pander. If I wanted to advocate pandering rather than Gemütlichkeit, I could have chosen the word pandering rather than Gemütlichkeit. “I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed,” as Austen put it.
We are frustrated because we ourselves and outfits like IJ have been advocating for school choice, against eminent domain abuse, and for fewer licensing and regulatory hurdles – stuff that would genuinely help the urban poor – for a while now, but we haven’t won many over yet. Maybe it’ll take more time, and fewer mixed messages (it is understandably confusing when some folks classified in the groups “conservative” or “Republican” fight against eminent domain abuse and regulatory hurdles designed to protect established businesses while others support them).
Now, the founders of IJ did want to utilize the “innovation” of going out of their way to advertise IJ’s ideology in a way I suppose many of us here would consider somewhat “PC”. IJ is not there to make the point that regulatory hurdles that cripple the prospects of single black moms also cripple the prospects of poor white men – they’ll let others make that point. Now, maybe you do believe IJ is “pandering” by doing this. I do not. I think it’s just common sense, if we really want to win. It shows a concern for the urban poor, many of whom are nonwhite, as ends in themselves, rather than as means to improve the lot of others.
I hope I didn’t give the impression that I thought it did. I’m a big fan of anyone who fights for school choice. From what I can see, the IJ does this across the board and doesn’t choose its cases based on racial grounds. This is as it should be.
Thanks, Basil, for clarifying. I am thoroughly pleased to agree with you on this.
IJ doesn’t decide on race, but it does choose to advocate for “sympathetic cases” – that is, IJ tries to pick cases striking those who aren’t already conservative or libertarian as sympathetic. This can have a racial component – I do think IJ makes a self-conscious attempt to highlight the problems minorities in particular face from restrictions on freedom – but you’re right that what IJ stands for is for everybody, as it should be.
I am curious whether you have seen Dinesh D’Souza’s new film …
The “outreach” of Andrew Jackson’s democrat party to minorities is the Big Con.