National Review, that bastion of strong conservative intellectualism, has a race problem:

It therefore strengthens the anti-white racism it is meant to satirize which, as it happens, is a growing problem in the U.S. — not in the suburbs or backwoods but in the corporate executive suites, the media elites, the courts, the bureaucracy, and of course the entire industry of sensitivity training which used to go under the more honest title of “Political Reeducation” in the gulag.

And so the game goes.  White intellectuals on the right prefer to engage in a twisted merry-go-round, rather than engage truthfully and openly about racism.  They cannot dignify it, they cannot profess to understand its machinations, nor can they willingly give it any substantive thought– but they can mock, mollify, and twist it to resemble some odd metamorphosed caricature.  Blacks engage in racism too, yet it is the media’s willingness to overlook that truth which renders racism into a rhetorical weapon, not a debilitating concrete one.  Tit for tat.  The sin does not wash itself away, it simply desensitizes the sinner from his pathology.

National Review and the John Derbyshire mess illustrates one thing clearly: many white intellectuals on the right still prefer rhetorical racism as their weapon of choice.  Coates argues, quite successfully in my opinion, that racism is treated as a game — a mere annoyance with no firm structure.  There are no arguments sufficient enough in their magnitude that would signify its importance.  In fact, the argument does not matter.  Only the game matters:

The conservative movement doesn’t understand anti-racism as a value, only as a rhetorical pose. This is how you end up tarring the oldest integrationist group in the country (the NAACP) as racist. The slur has no real moral content to them. It’s all a game of who can embarrass who. If you don’t think racism is an actual force in the country, then you can only understand it’s invocation as a tactic.

National Review continues to pander to the anti-white racism crowd.  Sure John Derbyshire was relived of his duties; but his pedantic and highly bigoted screed about blacks lives on through voices such as Victor Hanson and Robert Weissberg.    There are no true racists anymore.  They’re all afforded the protection from a shroud of intellectual Schadenfreude

Racism is contemptible, and it is not an easy subject to discuss.  It’s also not some gimmicky talking point or moral equalizer used to right a wrong.  It exists as the wrong.  I grow weary of some pundits engaging in humane arguments to defend those who use it as academic dogma.

Related posts:

1. An Argument Not Based In Substance Or Reality I’m of the mind that the crisis in the middle...
2. The Reality Of Racists Newt Gingrich’s efforts to cast himself as the white knight,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is helpful.

This is a cartoon recently published by the Rome News-Tribune in Rome, Georgia.  It contextually hits on a plethora of offensive and stereotypical imagery, but its inherent message in light of the Sandra Fluke fiasco is even more insidious:  this campaign season will be the most heinous, well-funded exhibition of negativity ever.  And in the deluge of negative ads, the real message of who can govern and who cannot will be lost.

I sense the Romney camp via its well-heeled Super PACS will pull out all the stops–given he has no economic message–to paint this president as some foreign emissary of destruction and degradation.  Anyone remember the Obama witch doctor?  Get ready for more of the same.

Related posts:

1. Obama, The Alien Menace This speaks for itself: Even needing to ask the question...
2. Obama Sullies The Memories Of The Lost In Joplin God Bless Fox News for reporting on what is really...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Is Civil War history just for white people?  In reading the brilliant essay written on the subject by Ta-Nehisi Coates–one in which I urge all of you to read–the thought seemed illogical.  After all, it is the crux of the American experience.  The battle for individualism and freedom speaks to the heart of man, and that is a struggle black people are intimately familiar with.  It seemed illogical until you delve more deeply.  The war was and is a testament to the true tenet of democracy–the struggle for life and humanity.

Many people of my generation believe in the basic fact of the war:  the north won and the south lost.  Northern gladiators beat back the wretched insurgency of southern greed and inhumanity.  But revisionism is showing itself as the true arbiter of debate.  Consider this quote from Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy in his famous Cornerstone speech in Savannah, Georgia:

“Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

American history does not exist in a vacuum, and no amount of qualifying can ever cleanse the plate of many deeds of the past.  They are deeds perpetrated by those clearly looking to create a broad design, to allow one group of people some form of inclusively for the actions of their forebears.

Stephens’ speech foreshadowed a new thought within the minds of many confederates and their descendants.  The idea that somehow the aggrieved had become the vilified in a war perpetrated by those loathe to see southern states lose their most precious commodity.  The War of Northern aggression, as its been dubbed, sees the north as uncivilized encroachers to Southern hegemony.  The new, twisted take on an old war.  To many Americans, black and white, it is an offensive white washing, and it does not reflect the quantitative and calculated destruction of black life.  An example from Coates’ essay:

For African Americans, war commenced not in 1861, but in 1661, when the Virginia Colony began passing America’s first black codes, the charter documents of a slave society that rendered blacks a permanent servile class and whites a mass aristocracy. They were also a declaration of war.

Over the next two centuries, the vast majority of the country’s blacks were robbed of their labor and subjected to constant and capricious violence. They were raped and whipped at the pleasure of their owners. Their families lived under the threat of existential violence—in just the four decades before the Civil War, more than 2 million African American slaves were bought and sold. Slavery did not mean merely coerced labor, sexual assault, and torture, but the constant threat of having a portion, or the whole, of your family consigned to oblivion. In all regards, slavery was war on the black family.

It’s no wonder many blacks might reject the history of the Civil War.  It’s understandable that many modern southern whites engage in fantastical reinterpretations of their War of Northern aggression.  To truly comprehend the horror and degradation of the war is to accept the horrors of man’s inhumanity toward man.  It is to accept that our forefathers–those deified in modern society–willingly broke their own vows and pronouncements, and willingly accepted the subjugation of man.  There aren’t many who have the stomach for such straight talk.

Black History–indeed American history–should be about straight talk.  History should be colored.  it should be accepted, as painful, intrusive, and stark has it may be.

Related posts:

1. The GOP’s Lazy Black People Meme Goldberg’s take on Republican strategy: Black people have lost the desire...
2. Living While Black In New York City I try not to riff off of another blogger’s work,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The difference:

[I]t’s for reasons completely disconnected from statistics where the differences blare like a siren. Tim Tebow‘s commercials and personal branding speak about how everyone has always doubted him, but in reality, he’s has every privilege and advantage. He was home schooled but was still allowed to play Florida high school sports. He was allowed to play in a college spread offense built around his rather unique skill-set. He was drafted in the 1st round even though many scouts saw him as a mid to high round project. He is treated like an All-American superstar even without the game to back it up. His clean cut, Evangelical whiteness has caused Republican politicians sportswriters and a whole sector of sportswriters to simply swoon…Tim Tebow had the benefit of the doubt. Jeremy Lin was just doubted.

There is no comparison–in terms of the stories and their respective games.  Their journeys have been vastly different, and it is this reason why Lin’s story is much more compelling.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Priceless:

“This week, President Obama will release a budget that won’t take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis. The president has failed to offer a single serious idea to save Social Security and is the only president in modern history to cut Medicare benefits for seniors.”

Not only is Romney proving to be a weak candidate, his propensity for flip-flopping is so effortlessly casual, he does it in mid-stream and mid-thought.  Simply amazing.

Related posts:

1. Mitt Romney’s Shameful Moment It’s one thing to disagree on a particularly divisive issue–it’s...
2. The GOP Debate Begins To Flesh Out The Winners From The Losers Two observations about the first GOP Presidential Debate: Mitt Romney...
3. The Conservative Brand On Display Conservatives continue to push narratives outside the mainstream–and in the...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

What would make you re-examine your views?  In our hyper-partisan climate where view points on virtually everything seem to be heavily embedded in our subconscious, what manner of evidence would persuade you to look upon a subject or ideology with a fresh pair of eyes?  Maureen Walsh discovered her switch in this video.

Many of us retain principles based not upon reasoned facts, but passionate emotional fervor.  It’s derivative of our religious beliefs or background, and how we extrapolate that to form decisions.

I find myself distressed at this thought however.  Absent a sort of attitudinal flexibility, we find ourselves waging a perpetual war of ideology with neither side giving one inch–or even failing to acknowledge those inches.

There are too many issues which illustrate this problem vividly.  All of them–income inequality, same-sex marriage, political division etc., showcase a dearth of intellectual honesty in how we apply factual statements to our beliefs.  Herein lies the problem with open, honest debate.  To ignore the ideas presented by the other side, to completely disavow them false, is to leave yourself hollow and uninformed.  Intellectual rigidity is not just wrong, it’s harmful to a free society.

Related posts:

1. The GOP Debate Begins To Flesh Out The Winners From The Losers Two observations about the first GOP Presidential Debate: Mitt Romney...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Rick Santorum has grabbed the President Obama’s war on religion narrative and has choked the life from it.  Santorum may prove to be more adept at scoring points from this talking point than Mitt Romney.  It’s his strength as the principled religious conservative in the race.  But this play will only work with conservative evangelicals, not the broad swath of support he would need in a general election.  One of the reasons Santorum is unelectable.

Related posts:

1. The GOP Debate Begins To Flesh Out The Winners From The Losers Two observations about the first GOP Presidential Debate: Mitt Romney...
2. The GOP’s Lazy Black People Meme Goldberg’s take on Republican strategy: Black people have lost the desire...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

photo credit: Newsone

Sad and beyond contemptible:

“The ceremony was not my suggestion, nor was it my intent, to participate in any ritual that is offensive in any manner to the Jewish community, or any group. Furthermore, I sincerely denounce any action that depicts me as a King, for I am merely just a servant of the Lord,” Long wrote in a letter dated Saturday.

The letter was addressed to Bill Nigut, southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League — a Jewish group that fights anti-Semitism.

“While I believe that Rabbi Ralph Messer has good intentions during his message at New Birth, I understand that the ceremony he performed on Sunday, January 29th, caused harm to the Jewish community, for which I am deeply sorry,” Long wrote.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Goldberg’s take on Republican strategy:

Black people have lost the desire to perform a day’s work. Black people rely on food stamps provided to them by white taxpayers. Black people, including Barack and Michelle Obama, believe that the U.S. owes them something because they are black. Black children should work as janitors in their high schools as a way to keep them from becoming pimps. And the pathologies afflicting black Americans are caused partly by the Democratic Party, which has created in them a dependency on government not dissimilar to the forced dependency of slaves on their owners.

An exhaustively odorous narrative to be sure– but it plays well in many parts of the electorate.  Aside from its obvious  vitriol, there is an air of patronization and shamelessness that borders on the obscene.

And they wonder why black folks vote Democrat en mass.

Related posts:

1. Living While Black In New York City I try not to riff off of another blogger’s work,...
2. Herman Cain And The Federal Reserve You’re going to see more of this as Cain becomes...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Soul Train was must see television before that phrase was ever coined, and Don Cornelius was not simply its host — he was its maestro–conducting virtuosos of dance, music, and style in an age of black chic.  His deep baritone illicited  more than questions seeking answers–they spoke plainly and loudly to black youth in America.  They spoke about how cool black consciousness was, how black music framed American culture, and how black folks were all beautiful.

Don Cornelius’ death was a jolt to those who learned to dance through Soul Train. It was blow to those who finally felt a sense of swagger and pride in their appearances… their styles… their culture.  He revolutionized black hipness and reached across swaths of Americana, introducing millions to artists not allowed to appear on other music shows.  His death strikes deeply into the consciousness of those who are and were culturally aware, but it does not dull his swagger– and it will never diminish his influence.  RIP Mr. Cornelius.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.