Tag: racism

Categories
ideological culture

The Race Card, Again

Are persons necessarily racist if (a) white and (b) opposed to expansion of the welfare state — that is, merely for opposing such expansion?

In the New York Times, journalism professor Thomas Edsall, echoing a now-​familiar charge, implies as though it were self-​evident that many who oppose Obamacare-​ized medicine do so because of the race(s) of the recipients:

“Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010.… [Obamacare] forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country.”

Poor(er) people can come in all shapes, sizes and colors. But for the sake of Edsall’s freighted non-​argument, let’s stipulate that the poorest Obama-​subsidy recipients are slightly or much more likely to be minorities than not. Why must this fact motivate an individual’s opposition to seeing more and more of his hard-​earned income coercively transferred to anybody?

Change the context to a street mugging. If a mugger is non-​white, does the victim’s dislike of being mugged necessarily hinge on the race of the mugger?

Of course, any victim of crime may be a racist. But you wouldn’t simply assume it.

Gratuitous charges of racism are one sign of desperation by friends of Obamacare — a program the color-​blind horrors of which will only grow more evident over time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Categories
general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

Give PSA’s a Chance?

After the George Zimmerman verdict, a slice of the country protested, insisting on the guilt of the exonerated Zimmerman. The president went on air and pled “for understanding.” And Fox’s Bill O’Reilly took the occasion to chide the country’s black leadership for not doing the right kind of Public Service Announcements.

Much of what O’Reilly said was on target. The high rates of unwed parenthood in the African-​American community — 73 percent — and the consequent predominance of single-​parent households lies at the heart of many problems.

Yet, neither O’Reilly’s idea of PSAs “telling young black girls to avoid becoming pregnant,” nor President Obama’s efforts to give young black men “the sense that their country cares about them,” would likely change behavior.

Black unemployment and rates of illegitimate births were lower half a century ago than white rates. What happened?

Black Americans were hardest hit by the rise of the welfare state.

First, raising minimum wages placed low-​skilled workers at a disadvantage, with each wage floor hike doing more damage.

Second, the general switch in state aid from assistance to intact families to aid to mothers with dependent children took away a major disincentive for irresponsible sexual practices. Throw in the sexual revolution, and you have a powder keg.

Third, the War on Drugs established the market conditions for illegal activity, and encouraged the formation of gangs. Drugs made users unfit for most work, while providing a lucrative draw for those wanting to advance economically.

None of this is a mystery. But sadly, I fear America’s black leadership would rather do Bill O’Reilly’s PSA’s than really address these problems.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Owning Up to Racism

Last week, actress Stacey Dash tweeted her support for Republican candidate Mitt Romney. And unleashed a firestorm, including AP coverage — “Do Black People Support Obama Because He’s Black?”

On Twitter, she was called “jigaboo,” “traitor,” “house nigger” and worse.…

The theme of the insults: A black woman would have to be stupid, subservient or both to choose a white Republican over the first black president.

It might behoove Twits (those who use Twitter?) to take a breath every now and then and not immediately type out the first thing that comes to their heads. Especially if they’re racists, like those who tapped out these vile attacks on Ms. Dash.

What should the president’s skin color or her skin color have to do with whether she chooses to support Obama or Romney or whomever?

Funny, while attacking her for being stupid and subservient, this “progressive” beat-​down crowd is upset precisely because Dash is smart enough — independent enough — to think for herself, refusing to be subservient to them.

It’s scary that this sort of racism is so blatant, even after the long and difficult progress made on civil rights; scary, too, that today a black person can be “high-​tech lynched” online for thinking and acting and speaking in ways not somehow assigned to his or her race.

Slavery is long over. The laws that made blacks second-​class citizens have been repealed. So, why do some progressives think they own blacks?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture links

Townhall: Racist Anti-Racism

This weekend’s Townhall column is about race. It is long, in part because talking about race is still so tricky that brief discussions can be easily taken out of context.

And there’s so much to say.

I expand on some comments I made on Friday. But I try to spell out the logic at greater length. So it doesn’t get missed. Racism is an affront to justice. Justice tries to mete out what people deserve, individually. It is especially concerned about establishing basic rules of how to behave. It doesn’t answer every problem of society. It answers crime with punishment and restitution, answers torts with redress. But it does so based on individual responsibility.

Racism is wrong because it judges individuals not on their merits, but by their race. It’s stupid as well as ugly and unjust.

Progressives, however, have been trying to overthrow the old idea of justice as personal freedom and individual responsibility since Progressivism first became an Era.

So it’s no wonder they spread a response to racism that is itself racist. They don’t understand what justice is. So they make an unjust response to an injustice.

Anyway, go over to the column and give it a read. Come back here and tell me what you think.

You will probably be brimming with ideas, complaints, responses. Fine. Me too. One idea I couldn’t include in the column was the sources for some of today’s inner-​city African-​American problems. It sure seems like they’ve been selected, by racists, for some horrible burdens. But I wouldn’t be hasty on this.

It’s certainly true that official policy has played a huge role in destroying a lot of lives in the inner cities (especially but not limited to African-​Americans) — the progressive trifecta of minimum wage raises, welfare aid to families without in-​home fathers, and the war on drugs, has devastated the culture of many inner city blacks. Some folks call one of more of these policies “racist,” but the intent, usually, has seemed to be color-​blind. That these policies have hit African-​American communities especially hard may be more of an accident of history than a policy of repression. But I could be wrong.

Writers from my perspective were once called liberal. Self-​defined “Progressives” took over that word in the FDR era. But that hasn’t stopped us from continuing to uphold a commonsense view of justice. Important contributions to the study and advocacy of this concept of justice as they relate to racial issues include

  • The Economics of the Colour Bar, by W.H. Hutt
  • The Other Side of Racism, by Anne Wortham
  • Race and Culture, by Thomas Sowell
  • Black Rednecks and White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell
  • The State Against Blacks, by Walter Williams

These are all books worth looking up. For further reading about the links between laissez-​faire individualism and true anti-​racism, you couldn’t do better than start your reading here:

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

The A‑Word

The n‑word got dropped on MSNBC’s The Cycle this week. The show’s co-​host [No First Name] Touré called Mitt Romney’s use of the word “angry” to describe some of the rhetoric coming out of the White House as “the ‘niggerization’ of Obama”:

“You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.”

Naturally this led to a battle between Touré and conservative co-​host S.E. Cupp. She took particular issue with the fact that Touré admitted that VP Joe Biden‘s “chains” comments were divisive, but is now calling Romney a “racist” for saying the Obama campaign is “angry.”

“Do you see how dishonest that is?” she asked.

Good question. But here’s a better one: Doesn’t talk of race and code-​words obscure the real issue here, anger?

Romney shouldn’t be calling for the Obama administration to be less angry. He should be angry himself, and castigating the president and his crew for being angry at the wrong things.

We should be angry at the continuation of wars, foreign (the Middle East) and domestic (on psychoactive drug use), to the detriment of fiscal stability as well as our civil liberties.

We should be angry that the nation’s pension system has been systematically stripped of its surpluses for 77 years — by politicians in Washington.

We should be angry that federal (along with state) policy has interfered with medicine to such an extent that the most idiotic ideas around — nationalization/​socialization — almost seemed plausible to a sizable minority of Americans.

We should be angry that the Democrats pushed through yet another expensive entitlement, “Obamacare,” while the rest of the federal government sunk further into insolvency.

And yes, we should be angry that our leaders can’t stick to decent issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Taste Racism

Bigotry and intolerance come in many forms. And they come around again and again. A bizarre New York Times “news story” demonstrates this:

Baghdad has weathered invasion, occupation, sectarian warfare and suicide bombers. But now it faces a new scourge: tastelessness.

Ah, the last twist of the knife! After all the bloodshed and tyranny, Iraqis celebrate newness with color:

In downtown Baghdad, a police headquarters has been painted two shades of purple: lilac and grape. The central bank, a staid building in many countries, is coated in bright red candy cane stripes.

The reporters list many examples. 

Matt Welch, at Reason magazine’s Hit & Run, has choice words for this particular article: “obnoxious” and “contemptible” and “latent ‘taste racism.’”

Put me in Matt’s camp. Aesthetic intolerance like this is ugly.

Contrary to the New York Times, the so-​called color-​crazed Iraqi people have latched onto a good thing: Property rights. You see, says a quoted expert, their mentality is “that you have to be the owner of your building, and you do what you want with it. But there are no government regulations like in Paris or Rome. It’s anarchy of taste.”

Oh, how shocking.

But is our tyranny of taste in towns and cities in the western world better? We have busybody City Councils and nasty neighbors telling you that you’ve painted your house the wrong shade of brown.

Freedom should be celebrated in many colors, including colors that annoy writers for the New York Times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.