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.
Conservatives talk about race and racism all the time. I suspect it's not possible to go down recent comments without at least one thread about race.
We can't talk with libs about race or racism. That's because if you disagree, you're a racist.
To publicly disagree with the narrative about race and racism is to hang a giant "Kick me!" sign on your back.
well, by saying that you simply showed you liked the other black kids, and the problem was just him. It must have shocked him indeed that not all blacks are the same in your eyes. If you had been a hypocrite like a liberal, he would have seen it and he would have kept playing and dragged the whole lot of them into the self hate and demoralization.
What is amazing is the new mutual exclusiveness, this hate of the other. Just because I am not black, I suddenly cannot become a good doctor for blacks! So, like Nazi Germany, we become segregated through PC.
Cosby said it best when he said he did not want to be taken care by a doctor in black culture, but by a straight scientist. Can you imagine how demoralizing it is for a wealthy black man to be denied proper health care because some trash got through with affirmative action! It is horrible,
a lot of truth in those observations
The guy was an idiot, White sports would be sailing and skiing.
I suffer from CRFS (Chronic Racial Fatigue Syndrom). Please folks, give generously to the National CRFS Research Foundation.
I’ll take cash, money orders, most credit cards and Paypal. Please folks, give generously and give often.
We must find the cure before it’s too late.
We conservatives have been talked AT about race and called racist since the charlatan Obama was ran for president. After 7 years of being called a racist and no matter what a conservative says it will be called racist. What’s the point? Trying to debate a leftist race baiting punk like OBama is like trying to teach a bicycle riding fish to find Gloria Steinem attractive.
Here is why this white conservative hesitates to discuss
race. The term “race” infers group. My conservative
mindset focuses on the individual and not the group. I
neither accept nor reject others based on race. That goes
for all people, including those who are white like me.
I gravitate toward those who think and/or act like me
and I don’t give two dead flies about color. If we like
and hate similar things then we have a starting point.
When I was young teen I was naive enough to think that
desegregation would cause people with different skin
to live, work, and play together. That was in the mid
60s. Was I naive! Stokely Carmichael preached that
black power meant that white people were devils and
black people should stick together. H Rap Brown and
Malcolm X were the same. Their shtick bothered me
when I was a kid.
To liberals everybody is part of a group. That is how
they divide and conquer. What race a person is way
down the list for me.
Here is why this white conservative hesitates to discuss
race. The term “race” infers group. My conservative
mindset focuses on the individual and not the group. I
neither accept nor reject others based on race. That goes
for all people, including those who are white like me.
I gravitate toward those who think and/or act like me
and I don’t give two dead flies about color. If we like
and hate similar things then we have a starting point.
When I was young teen I was naive enough to think that
desegregation would cause people with different skin
to live, work, and play together. That was in the mid
60s. Was I naive! Stokely Carmichael preached that
black power meant that white people were devils and
black people should stick together. H Rap Brown and
Malcolm X were the same. Their shtick bothered me
when I was a kid.
To liberals everybody is part of a group. That is how
they divide and conquer. What race a person is way
down the list for me.
We don’t want to talk about it because it’s stupid, banal and race is about some distant past of anachronistic and asinine ideas about the character of a man, based on his skin color alone.
As if his actions don’t matter.
As if his results don’t matter.
As if his compassion doesn’t matter.
No, the content of the man matters...
This reminds me of a conversation I had with my father, a diehard liberal & Democrat, about poverty so prevalent among certain minorities. He gave the usual excuse about racism.
When I said not everything can be blamed on racism, he replied, “You’re starting to sound like a Republican.”
The Word of God tells us we're all evil. Krauthammer is especially evil because he is a duplicitous liar, posing as a conservative journalist when he's not.
I get the feeling lately that race has become an obsession among the liberals & Democrats. It’s constantly in the news. It’s as if the minorities, feeling that they are losing their importance, are crying out for validation. The only way is through victimization — and by hitting everyone else on the head with it over & over again.
Nobody on the left wants an honest conversation about race because too many white libs have made a fortune from it. “Educators” in particular have made a fortune pretending to educate blacks; if anyone had real expectations of blacks those teachers would be fired (if not jailed). Imagine failing consistently in your job year after year, still getting pay increases that far outstrip the private sector, and your defense is that the students are black. End of the conversation right there; it is assumed you did your best...
Malcolm X changed his tune later in life when he realized there were white Muslims; he also thought blacks should take responsibility for themselves instead of depending on the charity of whites. Too bad he didn’t live long after that epiphany...
I tend to
agree with
your points
despite the
narrower
opinion I
might offer.
Some more information about the author.
Pascal-Emmanuel GobryPascal-Emmanuel Gobry is a writer, entrepreneur and Editor-at-Large for The Kernel.. He is the founder of Noosphere Inc. and a former analyst for Business Insider. He is also a contributor at Forbes and a business and economics columnist at Atlantico. Pascal-Emmanuel most recently worked at Business Insider, where he co-created BI Intelligence, the company’s market research service. While there, he helped build the first versions of the product, recruit and lead an international team, and he was the lead analyst. An HEC Paris graduate, Pascal-Emmanuel lives in Paris with his beloved wife and daughter.
Some of his arguments do seem exaggerated to me, but the main gist of them seems to be about right.
Yes there are. It makes a lot of their behavior seem much more understandable.
I occasionally follow links over there, (Usually from "American Digest") and I am often impressed by how astute some of the writing is at that website. I did get the impression that it was a bit insensitive when it came to issues of race, but I can't say i've read anything there which I thought was over the line.
They seem to just state the ugly truth in a very non-Politically-Correct sort of way. Far too few people are brave enough to do that nowadays.
It’s never a discussion, it’s always a scolding.
No thanks.
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