I really wonder what Monsieur Gobry’s attitude is towards the blacks in Paris, though; he is a bit too removed from the USA to even open his mouth on the matters here.
Posted on 03/10/2015 8:03:16 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Conservatives don't like to talk about race. And there are some very good reasons why.
The first is that the left constantly and spuriously plays the race card against the right. Conservatives spent decades saying that welfare hurt the very people it was supposed to help by disincentivizing work. They were accused of being racists for saying that — until conservatives passed welfare reform, which is now widely acknowledged as one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in recent decades. Conservatives spent decades saying that public housing hurt the very people it was supposed to help (and as someone who partially grew up in public housing, I can vouch for that) and that the best way to provide housing for all was to deregulate the sector. Conservatives were accused of being racists for saying that — even though the position is now widely accepted by the left.
This is the phenomenon called Krauthammer's Law — conservatives think people who disagree with them are wrong; liberals think people who disagree with them are evil; and as a conservative often on the receiving end, I can vouch for the fact that it is extremely frustrating.
The second reason that conservatives don't like to talk about race is that accusations of racism in public life can be extremely powerful, are basically impossible to disprove, and tend to be refereed by the national media, which is largely made up of progressives who tend to regard conservatives as guilty of ill will until proven otherwise. This combination makes those attacks extremely toxic, and accounts for much of the peculiar defensiveness of conservatives on race issues.
The third reason is that conservatives are suspicious of the overarching liberal narrative on race. Taxes, deficits, whether to go to war with country X or not — these are narrowly defined issues with widely accepted parameters. By contrast, some narratives about race make it the all-encompassing issue that has driven, drives, and will drive all public policy, and which can only be ameliorated through radical changes in the socio-political order. It doesn't have to be this way, but this tendency creates an impression in the minds of many conservatives that to buy even one piece of the narrative is to buy all the narrative.
There are also some bad reasons why conservatives don't like to talk about race.
Just because the left fits the story of racism within an all-encompassing narrative doesn't mean that the right has to choose between granting the point and selling its soul. For instance, it's enormously frustrating when the left calls attention to problem X, and proposes misguided public policy Y in response; and the right, instead of criticizing the misguided public policy and offering a better alternative, simply vociferously denies that X is a problem. We see this with the minimum wage and, paradigmatically, global warming. The right should be able to grant — as it does on its best days — that, yes, structural racism is a real thing — but the best way to combat it is through conservative public policy.
The second bad reason is what you might call insensitivity. Consider Barro's Law: "Conservatives so often get unfairly pounded on race because, so often, conservatives get fairly pounded on race."
Take one of our most dispiriting frequently reoccurring events: a black kid is shot by a white police officer. Often, the circumstances are murky. It's a Rorschach Test.
Now, imagine two different people. The first, who is white, has only had positive interactions with the police, and police officers have always behaved courteously and professionally toward them. The second person, who is black, has had negative experiences with the police — experiences that the person has reason to believe were driven only by the color of their skin. The white person may naturally give the benefit of the doubt to the police officer, and the black person may not.
Now, we know that law-abiding black people's experiences with profiling are real. But is the white person's reaction "racist"? That toxic word is not the one I would use. A more sober assessment of the situation is simply that the first person has had a range of life experiences that make it harder for them to imagine that someone has had a different range of life experiences. Now, some on the left understand this, and this is why we get frequent calls for "a national conversation on race." To understand why that makes conservatives shudder and shriek, see my three good reasons above.
All of which is a very roundabout way of talking about the very sad case of the city of Ferguson, and how conservatives should deal with it.
From the start, liberal activists poisoned the well by trying to make a young man who had committed robbery the day he was shot the poster child for police racism and excessive violence. But it still remains the case that, as a recent Department of Justice report makes clear, Ferguson's police department routinely and unjustifiably behaved in an absolutely thuggish manner, and in a way that was largely race-inflected.
This is precisely why conservatives should care about this issue. Here we have not some grand narrative of oppression, but instead a very specific problem: bad policing. This is a problem conservatives care about, and should care about, because conservatives care about the rule of law (which should apply to everyone equally), because conservatives care about the Constitution, and because conservatives care about law and order. The last point is crucial — as any policing expert will tell you, the single worst thing that can happen for crime is for the police to lose the trust of the community they're supposed to police. The great revolution of community policing, largely promoted by the right, which cleaned up cities including New York, is not just about "broken windows" — it is also about police officers who are present on the beat and are trained to earn the trust of the community so that they will have the leads they need to solve crimes. Ferguson's problem was "worse than a crime, it was a blunder." The problem with racist cops isn't just that they're racist, it's that they suck as cops.
By and large, America has made tremendous progress on issues of race — legal discrimination, cultural discrimination, economic opportunity. But there are areas with much work to be done, and those areas where it is most urgent are also those that are right in the right's wheelhouse: issues of criminal justice reform, with the conservative war on prisons, issues of school choice, and finally issues of policing and law and order.
Time to go to work.
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry is an entrepreneur and writer based in Paris. His writing has appeared at Forbes, The Atlantic, Commentary Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Federalist, Quartz and other places.
The reason I don’t like to talk about race is I absolutely cannot stand hypocrisy. And when you talk to anyone on the left about race, that’s all you get.
Very interesting observations on the subject of conservatives and race. Is worth discussing.
Cannot allow the complete and total refutation of every premise of this stupid Ferguson argument to derail the infinite-victim narrative. That would be a travesty. On the other hand, the burning down of all those businesses in Ferguson is a justified, but otherwise forgotten wisp of a vague memory. Because in a just society, we would have no racism but it would be OK if I burned down your house if I felt like there was. Is that about right?
No scab can be left unpicked. The scab-pickers are both more intelligent and morally superior to those who somehow are so ignorant that they have the ability to leave the scab alone. You know how it is. If you don’t, you’re one of them.
If he is ‘based in Paris’ why is he commenting on issues in the USA?
He should simply STFU unless he lives here!
Pretty much the same. Anyway, these days, having an “honest conversation” on race can and will get a white person fired from their job and more.
Although thankfully I am in a position to speak my mind and not care, and I do. It’s just not politically correct.
Stopped reading when he implied global warming is a problem. One can say I have been slightly obsessed about this subject for 15 years, and read all information regarding this topic vociferously and daily, I also have the math, science, and engineering background to understand it. Global warming will someday be known as the biggest hoax perpetrated on planet earth, and entire majors at universities will be devoted to how it is possible to get such a large population of the earth to uniformly believe something without expending the slightest bit of critical thought.
Ditto
Racism would die in this country if the Democrats would just let it.
"Global Warming" is utter bullsh*t. It is just the communist left trying to impose world control through scare tactics. If you understand how gases absorb and re-radiate heat, you realize quickly that their "greenhouse" gas arguments are utter crap.
Water vapor is the most powerful and most dominant "greenhouse" gas, and if their theory were correct, life would be impossible on Planet Earth.
Their theory is incorrect, in fact it is a bald faced lie.
I think this guy is an idiot. Conservatives don’t NEED to talk about race. Liberals do enough.
Who care?
I have decided to embrace being a racist. Hell, maybe old Al Gore Sr. was right after all.
And what planet are you living on? I've had a few good interactions with police, but i've had plenty of bad ones, including being forced to lie on the ground with my hands behind my back because they thought I *might* have been one of the people who held up a Jewelry store. I've been threatened, brow beat and harassed, and even ticketed when I didn't deserve it.
I've had them hold their hand on their gun in a threatening manner, and talk at me in an arrogant and nasty tone.
I could detail several non-positive experiences I and my friends have had with police officers, so I don't know where the author gets this idea.
I don't believe a word of it coming from the Eric Holder "Justice" department. They went in looking for a racist scape goat, and when they couldn't find one, they created one.
As a “Renaissance Guy” who dabbles in a bit of everything, I agree with you. Mostly I read history, but get a bit of geology and astronomy from time to time. “Climate science” as we know it today is nothing but Lysenkosim. It isn’t science. It’s state approved propaganda, with all of the dogmatic enforcement mechansims Trofim Lysenko enjoyed under Josif Stalin.
John Derbyshire got fired from National Review for having what he thought was an "honest conversation" about race. This topic is like dissent in the Soviet Union. You do not dare point out unpleasant truths.
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