Prominent libertarian columnist Radley Balko gives Barack Obama’s nutty minister a pass. Balko says, “I don’t begrudge black folks the occasional indulgence in righteous anger–even obviously crazy, raving righteous anger. Particularly within the sanctuary of a church. The indignation from the right over Rev. Wright is ridiculous, and frankly seems manufactured.” Actually what’s manufactured and remanufactured ad nauseum is black anger over events in the distant past and imaginary white racism in the present. I doubt Wright saw much segregation in Chicago. He was born in 1941. Restrictive covenants ended in 1948. No one alive today experienced slavery. He went to integrated schools, served in an integrated military, and witnessed the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights act as a young man. If whites aren’t always nice to him, maybe it has something to do with his saying things like “God Damn America!” from the pulpit.
I have to agree with Ann Coulter, who speaks plainly to all of those who ask for one-sided “national conversations about race”:
We treat blacks like children, constantly talking about their temper tantrums right in front of them with airy phrases about black anger. I will not pat blacks on the head and say, “Isn’t that cute?” As a post-racial American, I do not believe “the legacy of slavery” gives black people the right to be permanently ill-mannered.
Unlike Coulter, Radley’s problem is that he’s a liberal. Recall that he excorciated Ron Paul for a newsletter written 15 years ago by someone else. He was offended by the author’s mocking descriptions of black hoodlums in the LA Riots, but feels nothing when Reverend Wright shows glee at 9/11 or fans the flames of black race hatred by waxing eloquent about evil whites. The new generation of libertarians, it should now be clear, are basically stingy liberals that share their liberal cousins’ guilty views on race and culture, but don’t feel anything should be done by the government to alleviate the plight of poor people . . . unless they’re drug dealers.
I realize in thinking about Obama, Wright, Jena Six, and my own unease with so-called “white nationalism,” that my views on racism are as follows: the racism of the past was wrong, extreme, and unjust, but it is basically dead, and white America deserves some credit for killing it. The remaining charges of racism are the product of propagandists and race hustlers, people like Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright. Unlike some white conservatives, I do not accept the view that the two races can’t get along, or that inherited differences explain all of the problems of black America. We are countrymen with a common history. Black America was once much more decent and functional. Black families were more intact. Black leaders were more patriotic. Blacks talked, worshiped, acted, wrote, and thought much like other Americans. In areas where equally qualified blacks and whites worked together, such as the military, racial problems were minimal. It is worth noting that the civil rights movement recognized a change in the society already underway by the 1950s, equally as much as the movement did anything to create the conditions of equality.
The race hustlers, however, provide an explanation for a troubling historical fact. Blacks as a group have not done as well after the end of official racism as anyone would have hoped. In important ways, blacks have lost ground. While it would have been naive to expect race parity in every field, it’s naturally frustrating to witness the decline of black civilizational standards since the end of segregation. Persistent black social pathologies–crime, illegitimacy, poverty–cannot be denied. Their consequences are felt by black and white alike.
Contrary to Obama, it’s not racism for someone like his grandmother to notice this, as she did by feeling fear in the face of a threatening black man. It’s a normal reaction, and it’s endemic of our “white guilt” culture that her fear is treated as abnormal, equivalent to the public rantings of someone like Jeremiah Wright. Once upon a time, the liberal fear was that “stereotyping” would give people an unwarranted and negative view of a given cohort in society. The value of interaction was one of the reasons proffered to support integration. Today, we are asked in the name of anti-racism to deny facts that we see every day with our own eyes. Why else does the media conceal the race of criminal offenders? It has nothing to do with false and misleading stereotypes. Rather, they want to make sure we don’t develop a truthful impression of an unfortunate group tendency based on the facts. Policies founded on “noble lies” are doomed to failure and contempt. As in Iraq, our approach to race should be “reality based.”
Today’s black problems cannot be explained by racism, nor can they be explained by the mysterious “legacy of racism.” Rather, a good deal of the explanation can be found in the activity of the race hustlers themselves: they have flattered their constituency and fobbed off all of their failings and faults on the alleged racism of white people. Preachers went from sounding like MLK to DMX. This is not the answer. This is not the solution. Any moral view that denies individual responsibility tends to make men of any race less responsible.
Black Americans need a moral revival to succeed, and part of that moral renewal must come from burying the hatchet on racism and recognizing the real sources of black social failure are internal, cultural, and moral. Instead of denying the facts, blacks should fall back on an older mantra: “be a credit to your race.” Black leaders in the past knew that the wayward acts of the few could be demoralizing, making the group as a whole look bad to whites and to one another. It would take real courage for Obama to call for something like this. In truth, he has hinted at this critique in the past, but in his “great speech,” where he could have talked about this face of the problem, he genuflected before the pieties of socialism and invidious white racism, echoing views much like those he listened to Reverend Wright preach about for 20 years.
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297893,00.html
that’s right, liberal in a more traditional sense. guilty? sure, somewhat.
and yes, watch out for the beltway cosmopolitan libertarians.
“white America deserves some credit for killing it.”
It won’t happen in a million years. No good deed goes unpunished. Other than that, as usual, you are on target.
Wow, a Libertarian invoking the “sanctuary of a church” as moral cover for racism.
Somehow I doubt he would show much respect for the “sanctuary” if, for instance, we were talking about a white Southern preacher indulging in “crazy, raving righteous anger” about abortion.
Just one more example of a Leftist treating blacks as if they were a separate species subject to entirely different rules and expectations.
I like this site; I came across it from a blog entry by Steve Sailer at VDARE. I like your use of the David painting as a backdrop. It seems the appropriate painting for a Paleoconservative.
Contrary to what one woman here posted about yesterday, Race is NOT at all the most important thing facing the United States. The Family is. Simply because the Family is the first Teaching-Learning institution we encounter in life. It’s where we are socialized. Perhaps the Family is breaking down because we don’t know what we are socializing our Children for. To live in Society? But WHAT society? Everything is changing too fast. And if Family can’t do the job how in the world is Race going to help?
Then, after the concerns of Family, we have Education. After that, the Economy. And how about our Value Systems, our Culture? But even practically speaking, our ability to manage a Civilization, and ourselves in it, is woefully inadequate to the demands and complexities that Civilization presents to us on a daily basis. If we lose that we won’t even have a context within which we can discuss Race, let alone solve its problems. THESE it seems are genuine concerns and Race, though not to be underestimated, should not be the top priority. We can posture and pontificate all we want, but our obsession with Race is proof that our judgement, and our conduct, is not very sober, or adult.
[...] it’s kind of funny to me that the newest generation of libertarians, like cop-hater Radley Balko, spend so much sincere energy on whether things are offensive, racist, [...]
[...] 20 Feb 2009 Eric Holder’s Monologue on Race Posted by Mr. Roach under Race, obama Occasionally we’re exhorted by the left to have a “national conversation on race.” But more often this “conversation,” when described, resembles the kind of conversation you might have with your wife when you forget her birthday. It’s always a one-sided affair, a catharsis, an extension of the kind of self-flagellation we’ve undertaken among America’s traditional elites since the watershed social revolutions of the 1960s. I’ve written about this before, at length, here and here. [...]