Posted on 04/04/2013 11:37:11 AM PDT by presidio9
You know our political discourse has lost its moorings when it’s the Republicans who play that famous race card in defending one of their own.
The person in need of defense is Dr. Ben Carson, a renowned Johns Hopkins surgeon. Carson happens to be black, Yale-educated — and conservative. After his impassioned criticism of President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast, many in the GOP thought they’d found their 2016 standard-bearer.
But however brilliant, Carson has raised eyebrows since coming into the spotlight. Last week, he told Sean Hannity, “Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association), be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.”
This is not a surprising opinion from a 61-year-old religious Republican. Nor is it surprising that liberals revile his views.
However, the right is putting a shameful spin on it. In their telling, whites criticizing Carson are racist for not allowing a black man to express his views.
Carson apparently holds that opinion himself, telling radio host Mark Levin earlier this week that white liberals “are the most racist people there are.”
Now, the argument about liberals’ hypocrisy is valid when it comes to a black person’s views on race. Too many on the left think black conservative ideas are incontestably wrong, treating those who air them as naive at best (Herman Cain) and sinister at worst (Condoleezza Rice). I am inclined to call this dismissal ignorance rather than racism, but we need not split hairs.
However, gay marriage is not a race issue — it’s just an issue. And for white liberals to hold off on criticizing Carson’s views on it would be, in itself, a form of racist acquiescence. It would imply that a black person is not astute enough to be held accountable for his or her positions and should thus get a pass.
So what we have here is Republicans effectively chiding liberals for not being racist.
That’s especially ironic because, while Democrats tend to think they have the lock on racial enlightenment, it is actually often Republicans who have the larger understanding of what it is to assess people according to the content of their character.
Take affirmative action, for example. To proclaim that it’s okay to evaluate black and Latino college applicants partly on grades but also on their contribution to “diversity” — while white and Asian students are required to just put up or shut up — is racist.
That kind of policy makes sense only as a temporary fix, which is what affirmative action should always have been. However, to then slide into the idea that race-based admissions must continue until racism doesn’t exist (i.e., forever) is to essentially assert that blacks and Latinos are the world’s first humans to require perfect conditions to succeed.
That’s racist, and the right understands that. I highly suspect that the right also understands, deep down, that criticizing Carson for his views on gay marriage is no more racist than it is sexist to criticize Michele Bachmann for her stances.
When an outspoken black conservative comes along, there isn’t a thing wrong with Republicans seeing him or her as an opportunity to reach out to black voters.
But here’s something to keep in mind: There is a fine line between pragmatism and exploitation. Right now, there are young black people who question the Democratic orthodoxy on race, but aren’t sure they’re allowed to say so. They are watching the right turn Carson into a fool by using him to make a hopelessly flabby case about racism.
Eternally warned that the right values black conservatives only as tokens, they will see this cynical treatment of Carson as confirmation. And then, when Republicans complain (as always) that blacks don’t vote for them, they themselves will be that much more to blame.
You, sir, have it precisely correct!
I think...
I have McWhorter’s lectures on the History of Language, and I’ve read some of his books. He is a terrific scholar with an enjoyable sense of humor.
During slavery in addition to the slave catchers they also had a smaller group of slave breakers. Their job was to deal with uppity blacks who didn’t get the message and refused to work, had the wrong attitude or repeatedly tried to escape. Not only was this to punish the slave and make them fallin line but to deliver a message to all the other slaves.
http://www.negroartist.com/writings/Frederick%20Douglass%20resists%20a%20slave%20breaker%20(1845).htm
In today’s world the MSM fills that role to keep any minority including women in their place on the liberal plantation. That’s why they keep going after Sarah Palin. No matter what they do to her she keeps getting up and fighting back against the liberal plantation owners. Ben Carson hasn’t gotten the message and got back up after they beat him the first time. They have to teach him a lesson.
The author of the article seems to leave out the fact that white & black liberals are calling Dr. Carson a “token” and an “uncle tom.” That is racist! The author of the article needs to go back to the drawing board and deal in facts this time around.
"Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association), be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition."Thanks presidio9.
His lectures on language have been available from the Teaching Company for years, but his party-line racist shilling for Zero means, not one dime of mine for it or anything from the company.
NO. No there isn't.
He likes to split infinitives, that’s for sure. Is his use of the cliche “splitting hairs” an embedded linguistic signal of sorts?
No, what's actually happening here is you misunderstanding my point. I am in no way DEFENDING McWhorter's opinions. What I am doing is marveling at how close to the truth he actually is with his accurate assessment of affirmative action and liberal hypocrisy when it comes to accusations of racism. Unfortuanately, he remains unable to reach the ultimate truth because he clearly gets ALL of his information from liberal new sources. Perhaps this is innocent habit. Perhaps he has been indoctrinated to believe that conservative news sources always lie, even as it has become clear to him that liberal news sources also lie at least some of the time.
In this case, what he believes is less relevant than how he arrives at his conclusions. Whether you like him or not, the man IS an intelligent black man, similiar to many I am in contact with every day at Columbia. He doesn't necessarily think all Conservatives are evil. He is positive that conservatives aren't always wrong. But he as been brought up to believe that conservatives are wrong most of the time, and that colors his thinking. In the future, it is going to become more and more difficult to win popular elections in this country with huge disadvantages in the minority vote. Understanding how they arrived at supporting candidates who do not have their own best interests at heart is more important than understanding why those positions themselves are wrong.
I have to disagree with you there. What makes you think McWhorter is a racist?
Since he supported and continues to support Zero, which is diagnostic of racist views, and that the entire op-ed above expresses racist views, he’s a racist.
Just so we're clear: The following quotation from the above op-ed is, in your mind, racist, correct?
"Take affirmative action, for example. To proclaim that it’s okay to evaluate black and Latino college applicants partly on grades but also on their contribution to “diversity” — while white and Asian students are required to just put up or shut up — is racist."
So? He likes to pay lip service to the idea of eliminating affirmative action, because he wants the world to think he succeeded strictly on his own merit, and that’s consistent with that. He has himself been beneficiary to the kind of attention from conservatives that Dr C is now enjoying; Bill Cosby has also been due to his occasional remarks about Ebonics etc.
Sorry, but you sound as hopelessly list as he.
He doesn’t have an accurate assessment of affirmative action if he can’t see that it has done more harm than good to Blacks to prefer racial victimhood to success stories like Clarence Thomas or Dr. Ben Carson. His “temporary” institution will last longer than abject human slavery did in this country as it continues to rob Blacks of their opportunity to succeed.
He does clearly get ALL of his news/worldview from slanted, Liberal sources, so how innocent or intelligent can he be? I could tell something was horribly wrong with broadcast television news when I was 12 years old. I bet Dr. Carson can tell when someone is blowing sunshine up his rear. This writer doesn’t have a clue, but you are claiming he is intelligent.
What are Conservative news sources? The Wall Street Journal? Which news sources AREN’T Liberal? Few news sources outright lie, (Dan Rather), but ALL force you to fish facts out of opinion and simply don’t report what they don’t want to talk about. If he’s only now beginning to see this, and he’s at Columbia, then that’s not terribly impressive. Doesn’t someone like Thomas Sowell seem more intelligent?
I can hardly even begin to get into the horribly loaded slant of statements like yours about “all Conservatives are evil”, or “conservatives are wrong most of the time”. Any “-ism” risks becoming a mindless ideology. The view that you and the author both present sounds pretty far gone. It is securely on the Plantation, and can hear only its Master’s voice. I would evaluate Martin Luther King, were he alive today, as a Conservative, not a Liberal.
Blacks in America will have to help themselves, as Dr. Carson has done. He seems to reject the slanted worldview that tells him he is a victim and locks him into a lifestyle where he cannot succeed. I think that both you and the author have bought into the lie that is Affirmative Action, and this is its price; that you cannot see this. That is my understanding of why Blacks continue to follow this path to destruction.
Blah...blah...blah...same ole liberal, socialist, commie, fascist, shi’ite!
In other words, your plan for winning back a respectable percentage of the black vote is to call those who are not already conservative racists. Good luck with that.
Gosh, I guess I’d better rethink my entire election campaign, huh?
McWhorter’s a racist, and he’s not conservative in any way, shape, or form. Racists always have supported the Democratic Party, and always will, there is no way to win them “back”. McWhorter’s complaints about so-called Affirmative Action are belied by Obama, who is, obviously, the first (and by no means the last) Affirmative Action POTUS.
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