No, seriously, racism is finally dead.

The National Review Online decided to convene a symposium in order to analyze Barack Obama's victory from their...unique...perspective. The results are, of course, rife with horrendous writing, such as:


For old-line civil-rights leaders like Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), and others, Obama’s triumph will make far harder for them and others to chant about blacks being held down by “Whitey.” The instant rejoinder soon will be, “The whitest thing around here is Barack Obama’s house.”

Which manages to combine poor copy editing with the worst instant rejoinder ever conceived of. This particular example is, however, at least reasonable. Obama's victory is certainly evidence of changing attitudes towards race in the United States. It will make it harder for people to make simplistic claims about African Americans being oppressed.

What if you want bad logic, horrendous overreaches, weird inconsistencies, and the like? Does the National Review have anything to offer in those arenas. Why yes. Yes it does.

the election of the first black president will finally settle the question of whether America is a racist country.

Linda Chavez' claim is startlingly strong, especially when you consider the number of openly made accusations that Obama was Arab and/or Muslim*. But let's see what she means by "Racist country." Maybe she's just saying it shows that explicit institutionalized racism is dead, which is more or less accurate.

Many of us have been arguing for years that — despite a history of slavery, Jim Crow, and, at one time, widespread prejudice — American society is today the most colorblind in the world.

Or she could be making completely unsubstantiated claims based on nothing but what she wishes were true. Conservatives LOVE making statements like "America is the most colorblind society in the world." That statement is utterly without meaning unless you define what makes a society colorblind, and how colorblindness can be measured. How do we know that, for example, Canada is not more colorblind? If it's just about the chief executive being a racial minority then what about Peru, which had Alberto Fujimori as its president for quite some time?

A President Obama could also take on issues that others have avoided: the breakdown in the black family, the latent racism inherent in holding blacks to lower standards than whites, the enervating aspect of perpetual victimhood.

"Hopefully Barack Obama will recognize that racism is no longer a problem and instead focus all his energy on fixing the various things that blacks, and their allies, are doing to keep blacks down despite a totally non-racist society."

Thanks Linda. I'm sure he'll take that under advisement.

Anything else? Oh yeah. From Kay Cole James:

Election days are all pretty much the same for me...[Nov 4th 2008] began with [me] approaching a polling place to volunteer and being ignored by the Republican worker, and being greeted warmly by the Democrat... I am a black conservative.

Okay, that was a bit of editorial manipulation, but it's worth noting that the anecdote about being ignored by the Republican poll worker is never explained. Even if you are generous and assume that the Republican poll worker ignored Coles because most African Americans were hostile to him/her, it is still bad strategy. When you are trying to win someone over you need to be nice to them even when they are rude and dismissive to you. If African Americans see Republicans being curteous and polite to them at the polls they will be more inclined to be open to their message over time. If they are ignored they will feel unwanted, as would anyone. The Republicans talk a big game about being a big tent party; they know they need minority votes to remain competitive as the demographics of the country change and they know that it looks really bad fora bunch of white folks, recently descended from proponents of segregation and white superiority, to be lecturing the black community about what it needs to do, but all too often they are awkward and off-putting around actual black people.

Is there anything like that in the NRO symposium?

You betcha, folks.

Courtesy of Abigail Thernstrom:

The Obama family is also a role model. It’s not a “black” family, but an American family, with two loving parents, and two beautiful children.


So a "black" family is...

There's really no good way out of this. If you want to be supremely generous you could assume that she means that the perception is that black families are dysfunctional and this is a good example of one that's not, or that she means that the Obamas are an inspiration to all Americans, not just black people, but let's be honest. That's not what she means. She means that black families are ugly and dysfunctional and the Obamas have transcended their blackness.

Racism is dead, right?

Republicans routinely say things like this, statements that aren't intended to be racist but come out that way because so many conservatives are blind to their own racism and casual disdain of African Americans. Not all conservatives are racist, but racists in the Republican party can be compared to chocolate chips in a carton of ice cream. Take a big enough scoop and you're bound to get a bunch. And Republicans always want us to give their pundits every benefit of the doubt, to twist meanings and intentions until racist statements can be interpreted as benign. Twist hard enough and any statement can be made innocuous. No negroes in our swimming pools, why? Because our swimming pools are full of urine. We want to protect the negro.

Here's the thing. The conservative movement of today is descended intellectually and politically from the conservative movement of yesterday, which was, for the most part, explicitly racist. The Republican party got control of the South after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil rights act. Republicans have a contentious relationship with Black America, fewer black politicians than the Democrats, and a very critical message that seems to ignore the influence of racial injustice on the current world order (For example the fact that many black families lack any sort of generational wealth due, in part, to Jim Crow laws and racism.)

Given the situation it is extremely unwise for middle aged white women to be using phrases like "The black family" without extreme caution. Joe Biden, who has a good record on racial issues, was pilloried for calling Barack Obama clean and articulate. While I am against censorship, there's no reason ideas can't be expressed in precise and inoffensive ways.

Unless the ideas, themselves, are offensive.

If the National Review is not subtlely racist then it is doing an excellent impression of a publication that is.


*Muslim is not technically a race, but rather a religion, obviously. One can be a white Muslim or an Arab Christian. But the sorts of people who use "Muslim" as an accusation are also the sorts of people who are likely to accuse Sikhs and Lebanese Christians of being Muslim because of their skin color. The term is used as a stand-in for "Other" in an impulse that may not be racism but is closely related. When these people want to talk about Islam as a religious threat they usually say "Islamofascist," which is a term of questionable provenance, but one that at least explicitly refers to an adherent of an ideology rather than a member of an outsider group.