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.
Guess he doesn’t have the energy or the courage to keep covering up the Islamic no-go areas in Paris that we all know are there but the French government wants to keep covering for. So he busies himself pointing fingers at the États-Unis to please the Europhiliac crowd and US useful-idiot libs.
I think it has already been alleged to be the "biggest hoax perpetrated on planet earth." I think I saw an article a few weeks ago where a bunch of scientists were alleging just that.
“Racism would die in this country if the Democrats would just let it.”
—
I once said my 2 favorite sports were baseball and hockey and an idiot lib said “Sure,white sports”.
Astonishing.
.
I remember. I still read his writings over at Taki’s Mag.
He should get out of Paris.
Minimum wage is a problem, it is pricing people who want to work but lack degrees or experience out of the market. A lack of a job is a leading cause of poverty.
For five dollars an hour I will hire someone to wash my windows. At sixteen I will do it myself. The wage of the window washer is now zero.
Global Warming (or is it Global Climate Change or Global Climate Chaos or what ever stupid name they have hung on it this week) is a flat out hoax.
A very small amount of reading of history shows that the planet warms, the planet cools when the sun wishes and we can do very little if anything about it.
It is not that I am unwilling to talk about these things but honestly it is like trying to explain to a toddler that no, little people are not trapped in the TV and we don't need to break the glass to let them out.
Eventually you just tell the kid to quit harping on the matter and put him in the naughty corner if he does not comply.
Sadly you can not do this to liberals because they are past their majority.
I for one have no interest in talking about all of the various shades of skin color. That is where the current definition of race has devolved.
Conservatives, at least this one, do not give a shiite about race as long as a person acts civilized, speaks English normally, and behaves like most any other American. Regional quirks not-withstanding of course.
It may be just me, but when I hear negro music, ebonics, or similar inner city garbage, I go to Defcon 2. Liberals do not like it?
Try acting like Americans, and stop condemning those that do as "acting white".
It is an interesting take. The left is simultaneously condescending toward and fearful of blacks. Notice how few of the white liberal elite’s daughters date black men. Some of the arguments are a stretch, but I agree with many of his statements.
Even in Madison, WI Blacks are accusing that city of racism in the wake of the police shooting of Tony Robinson. I guess that myth of White liberals being racially tolerant was a myth. Honestly, it doesn’t matter what your political ideology is you cannot have a rational discussion about race with Black people. Their mindset is one where everyone is a racist.
http://news.yahoo.com/madison-police-shooting-forces-liberal-city-look-race-224727263.html
Been aware of and have listened to the same crap since 1962. I'm over it. That simple.
The guy starts trying to sound reasonable but then gets highly unreasonable about Ferguson. The Justice Department report is totally bogus because it takes some statistics and does not go any deeper than the superficial statistics. Proportionately more blacks than whites get arrested therefore there is Racism. End of report. No delving into why black people get arrested more than whites in that location which happens to have a slightly lower percentage of black arrests than in the national population. The implication is that arrests must be made in exact proportion to proportion of population. I am sure that would be spread to ALL different population groups, however you might divide them. The percentages MUST be identical or it is RACISM.
I’m a conservative who doesn’t like to talk about race because I judge people as individuals and not as members of groups.
Conservatives laugh at the silly things Liberals believe.
Liberals think that Conservatives should be put in Reeducation Camps because they laugh at the silly things Liberals believe.
We don’t talk about race because inevitably we end up arguing with racists.
What’s ironic is that there is more bigotry WITHIN racial/ethnic/religious groups than across such lines. Growing up in Rockland Cty, NY I’ve seen animosity between “native born” Blacks and those from the Caribbean, as well as between Puerto Ricans and Mexicans and Central Americans. Also among the Hasidic sects, nowhere near as extreme as between moslem sects, but there’s been times when the police had to be called in to keep the peace.
It's impossible to have an honest conversation with someone who is irrational and dishonest.
I have no problems talking about race because I know I am on the right side of history when it comes to race.
I am not out there keeping blacks from talking to other blacks the way democrats do, because those other blacks are conservatives
I do not encourage blacks to self hate and kill each other by allowing them to call each other the an word, just as I would hate to see my own children fight each other
I do not encourage black women to be divided from their womb and their child, telling them the hunger game economic fear mongering that she is poor and must hate the child and abort.
I do not tell blacks they have to embrace gays, especially gay blacks, hating their own gender, and telling them it is the same as being born black - disgusting.
etc etc.
I think it’s high time to stop fearing honest discussion.
I was coaching at an inner city high school, mostly black, not a single white face in the bunch, and one black kid was race-baiting me, constantly egging me on to try to get a reaction from me, trying to push my buttons. He was incredibly obnoxious, but I figured I was an adult and he was a kid, so I basically ignored him. Finally, he walked up to me and said, “you don’t like me, do you?”
I said, “No, I don’t.”
He was in shock. He certainly wasn’t expecting that answer. I think his attitude was that it wasn’t politically correct for a white person to say such a thing.
It didn’t happen overnight, but he did change his attitude over the next few weeks. I think he respected my honesty. We had a good and friendly relationship after that.
I’m not saying this will work with everyone, but I do think that most people respect honesty. I think most people do NOT respect people who are afraid of them. And being afraid to speak honestly is a form of fear.
Absolutely. Some people are just too bigoted and into mutual exclusiveness. Just take the atheist who cannot accept that someone going to church can be a scientist or a doctor like. ben Carson.
It is the same bigoted mutual exclusiveness mentality that says only blacks can care for blacks, women for women, and me for meself. It is all extensions of the narcissist fraud and self segregation.
That being said, these people are eternally divided and self hating too. Indeed, the irony is that these women without a man will try to compete like men or leech off of them in some ways. So they will automatically blame the vagina and have abortions and behave that way, completely demoralized.
It is logical that an exploitating State aparatus, like a prison, will seek to divide according to races, genders and so called classes and circumstances, down to dividing blacks against themselves into a pool of incompetence just because of a color of skin! They will reject being challenged and having to care for blacks, no matter how they call each other brother.
It is a program of empowering them by having them commit the suicide of racial isolation and succumb to division politics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.