Racism: New vs. Old

David Brooks informs us,

But the other reason that the civil-rights era comparisons [to Ferguson] were inapt is because the nature of racism has changed. There has been a migration away from prejudice based on genetics to prejudice based on class.

How might that new class-based racism manifest itself in the real world?

This class prejudice is applied to both the white and black poor, whose demographic traits are converging.

That doesn't seem quite right. Consider, for example, Charles Murray's writings: poor white folk are on the wrong end of a cultural divide; poor black folk are on the wrong end of the bell curve.

But classism combines with latent and historic racism to create a particularly malicious brew.

And what is it that percolates from this brew?

People are now assigned a whole range of supposedly underclass traits based on a single glimpse at skin color.

So... unlike old-fashioned racism, where people might be judged by the color of their skin, we now live in a new era in which people are judged by class, which is merely inferred by the color of their skin?

Having described in some detail the manner in which the elite of "18th- and 19th-century Britain" looked down on the poor, it's pretty clear that there's nothing new in the class divide that Brooks describes. The elite of that era might have been more apt to ascribe their success to class and station, while Brooks is enthralled with the notion that we're in a different sort of "meritocracy", but other than that Brooks is still describing people who perceive themselves as being in an elevated social class looking down on those they regard as their inferiors. Classism is anything but new.

Even if I disregard that history and assume that Brooks has identified an actual change in the thought process behind racism, why would it matter? Is the distinction supposedly that the "new" racist will set aside his assumptions based on skin color if the person he assumes to be of an inferior class somehow demonstrates that he's part of the "respectable' meritocracy"? While certainly there are some people, past and present, who see skin color and reach the unyielding conclusion that the person they are looking at is inferior in every way, it seems to me that even in far more overtly racist times, racism has worked in pretty much the way Brooks describes -- an assumption is drawn based on skin color, but with some room for somebody to prove that they're exceptional -- that they're not like the majority of their race, people who can be discounted based on that glimpse of pigmentation. The change Brooks describes is one of degree, not one of kind.

Richard Cohen May Not Be a Racist....

But he faces a bigger problem, in that he's not very smart.

What O.J. Simpson did was wrong. It was not, by verdict of his peers, a crime.

Of course he wrote "Zimmerman", but the logic behind the assertion is the same, as it would be if he said "Casey Anthony" or "Michael Jackson". Cohen is not alone in confusing a verdict of "not guilty" both with a declaration of innocence and with an expression about what conduct constitutes a crime. He's been around more than long enough to know better.

I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.

My father wears a hoodie. As he recovers from his knee replacement surgery, I hope he doesn't bump into Zimmerman lest "the uniform" make poor Georgie afraid that he's going to get clobbered with a cane. The part that Cohen omits from his statement, "wearing a uniform we all recognize", is that the uniform isn't "wearing a hoodie" - it's "wearing a hoodie while black". And while I'll do my best to take Cohen at his word, for most people who are making similar statements about Trayvon Martin I'm not sure how important the hoodie is to the uniform.

A few years ago one organization or another ran a public service ad in which a black youth and his friends go to a store, and the storekeeper is intimidated by their appearance. The commercial concludes with one of the youths approaching the storekeeper, who is anticipating that it might be a robbery, slaps his money on the counter, thanks the storekeeper and leaves. It was meant to remind the Cohens, Zimmermans, and even those made less nervous about young black men in "uniform" that they should not assume the worst based upon wardrobe and skin color. And that's fair enough. The fashion choices of youths can be confusing to us older folk. If you want to dress in a manner reminiscent of a street thug, people are going to make assumptions about you and your boisterous friends. And sometimes it's fun to have people make assumptions.

But Martin? We know exactly what his "uniform" looked like the day he died - if you want to see it, you can click through to the image from this page. Frankly, as I look at that picture I have a very hard time continuing to take Cohen at his word. (Watch out, dad - your hoodie is scarier than Trayvon's.) To me it looks like the sort of thing you might pull on if the weather was a bit chilly, a bit drizzly and you wanted to be warm. But between the hoodie and the white skinny jeans, Cohen sees a scary "uniform". Cohen attempts to restore my faith in him:

Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? This does not mean that raw racism has disappeared, and some judgments are not the product of invidious stereotyping. It does mean, though, that the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime.

Wait... I thought this was about a uniform... about hoodies. So... perhaps what Cohen means is that he gets scared when he sees young black men, and thus believes everybody else should either follow his lead and invest heavily in Depends undergarments, or follow Zimmerman's lead and buy a gun.

In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news.

In New York City there are about 8.2 million people. By Cohen's measure, that's a bit over two million African Americans, so let's say 1 million African American males of various ages. There were 414 homicides in New York City in 2012. As of December 28, 2012 there had been 1,353 shootings that year. Cohen says that 78% of the suspects were African American, so that means roughly 1,055 shootings. So, assuming that nobody was a suspect in more than one shooting, roughly a 0.1% chance that an African American male in New York city was a suspect in a shooting. Or... whatever "young black males" means... maybe that bumps it up to 0.3%? That's Cohen's statistical case for his apparent fear that he's going to get shot by every young black man he passes in the street?

Oh, but it gets better,

Those statistics represent the justification for New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which amounts to racial profiling writ large. After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk.

Cohen seems to believe that all shootings in New York City are random. That is, young black men are carrying guns around and, for no good reason, might 'pop a cap' into a random New York Times columnist. A better columnist might have looked at the statistical result of stop and frisk.... a roughly zero percent impact on the number of shootings in the city. Needless to say, shooting incidents are not evenly distributed throughout the city - "they are closely associated with larger geographic crime patterns". In 2011, 43% of criminal shooting incidents occurred in Brooklyn, and just shy of 29% in Bronx. My guess is that if Cohen manages to avoid getting involved in drug deals, or walking through high crime neighborhoods alone at night while flashing the type of watch that has historically been among his obsessions (even then, with there being a high probability that he would still have his watch at the end of his jaunt, and virtually no chance that he would be shot), he's pretty safe.

Still, common sense and common decency, not to mention the law, insist on other variables such as suspicious behavior. Even still, race is a factor, without a doubt. It would be senseless for the police to be stopping Danish tourists in Times Square just to make the statistics look good.

I'm curious about something. How would Cohen propose that the police could tell, simply by looking at somebody, that the person is from Denmark? What about these folks? Wait - I get it - they're not wearing hoodies, right?

Cohen presents the... factually challenged claim,

Crime where it intersects with race is given the silent treatment. Everything else is discussed — and if it isn’t, there’s a Dr. Phil or an Oprah saying that it should be. Crime, though, is different. It is, like sex in the Victorian era (or the 1950s), an unmentionable but unmistakable part of life. We all know about it and take appropriate precaution but keep our mouths shut.

There are only 130,000,000 hits on Google for "role of race in crime", and a mere 2.4 million hits on Google News - clearly this is something nobody talks about.

Cohen rambles,

If I were a young black male and were stopped just on account of my appearance, I would feel violated. If the police are abusing their authority and using race as the only reason, that has got to stop. But if they ignore race, then they are fools and ought to go into another line of work.

So kids shouldn't be suspected of being criminals merely because they're black - but in the name of "common sense and common decency" we should "insist on other variables such as suspicious behavior". Thus, Cohen is able to conclude,

There’s no doubt in my mind that Zimmerman profiled Martin and, braced by a gun, set off in quest of heroism. The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason.

Understandably suspected of what? If it defies "common sense and common decency" to have suspected Trayvon Martin of criminal activity merely because he was young and black, what is it that Cohen believes constitutes the "other variables such as suspicious behavior" that Zimmerman saw to immediately make him think of Martin as a "f---ing punk" and an "asshole" of the type who "always gets away"?

Oh, that's right. The hoodie.

You Won't End Racism With Shallow Bromides

How would you describe the following statements:

• The way to stop deficit spending is to stop deficit spending.

• The way to stop the civil war in Syria is to stop the civil war in Syria.

• The way to stop overfishing in the ocean is to stop overfishing in the ocean.

• The way to stop climate change is to stop climate change.

• The way to stop our nation's dependency on foreign oil is to stop our nation's dependency on foreign oil.

Are any of those observations helpful? Useful? Insightful? Or are they banal? Circular? worthless? Mindless repetition unworthy of the label, "tautology"? How about this one:

• The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

I was reminded of that statement, made by Justice Roberts in opposition to the continuation of affirmative action, when Will Cain recited the line on Real Time as if it were a magic bullet solution to our nation's history of racial strife. (They way to stop talking heads from saying foolish things on television is to....)

Jim Lindgren provided a brief, albeit incorrect history of that assertion here, in a statement that I believe crystallizes the thinking of people like Roberts and Cain,

As general background on the history of the nondiscrimination ideal, the best place to start is Andrew Kull's prize-winning The Color-Blind Constitution (Harvard Press). Kull details the rejection of the color-blind version of the 14th Amendment in favor of what was viewed at the time as the weaker and less radical version that was adopted. And he details the rejection of color-blindness, just a few years after a consensus was finally reached in 1964 that American law was to be color-blind. His last main chapter describes the shift away from color-blindness toward what Justice Brennan called "benign racial sorting." In the course of that chapter he describes the idea that the special contribution of American law to reducing discrimination might be to embrace nondiscrimination.

There was nothing in the "less color-blind" version of the 14th Amendment that became the law of our land that compelled our nation to adopt legalized segregation, a doctrine of "separate but equal" that was anything but equal, anti-miscegenation laws, Jim Crow laws and the exclusion of minorities from certain jobs and educational opportunities based upon the color of their skin. There is nothing "color blind" in a body of law that explicitly divides the population based upon skin color and excludes one set of people from superior services available to the other. There is nothing "color blind" in declaring that formalized inequality to be permissible equality. You would have to be blind to history to not recognize "separate but equal" as a sham.

Lindgren is correct that the notion of the "color blind constitution" was rejected as we entered the civil rights era. What he fails to accurately describe is that the notion that the constitution should be "color blind" came in the wake of the civil rights movement, and that the argument was championed by people who had opposed the end of segregation. Why would advocates of segregation and Jim Crow call for a "color blind" constitution? Because they wanted to tie the government's hands in its implementation of remedies. It is that history that lives on in the remarks of Justice Roberts - not explicitly, but in the form of an echo. Roberts can reflexively issue a platitude, and the heirs to the Southern Strategy reflexively cheer, never mind the history.

Lindgren notes,

The idea that the best way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating was a common idea by at least the Reagan Administration.

And quotes Bill Bennett, then Secretary of Education,

What steps do you think should be taken to eradicate racial prejudice and discrimination? What steps should be taken, I guess, are the ones I laid out in my letter to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. That is, we should stop discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion, and origin. Stop, stop, stop. That's where everybody wants to go. The best way to get there is to get there--that is, to stop. You do not eradicate an unfortunate legacy by perpetrating another unfortunate legacy.

You known, "Shucks, what an awful history, but it would be terrible to impose remedial measures." Case closed, we now return you to your original programming, "Welfare queens and young bucks who buy T-bone steaks with food stamps."

Admittedly, affirmative action has always worked better in theory than in practice. The name is born of the theory - the concept of the government taking affirmative action to end racism. But what action can the government take to even the playing field. To overcome generational disadvantage. The conceit of Justice Roberts is that the nation can be viewed as a single actor - and thus, that if the government becomes truly color blind, everybody will be truly color blind. Discrimination will end and we'll all wear Benneton and sing songs about Coca Cola.

But the world is not that simple, and the government was trying to act to prevent and correct a history of private discrimination through public measures. That's inevitably going to be unfair to some people, and is inevitably going to provide a benefit to some who don't need it while denying the same benefit to others who do. There are plenty of valid criticisms that can be made of affirmative action programs, both in terms of the big picture and in terms of the details. The issue being, and the Supreme Court historically recognizing, that sometimes a deeply flawed corrective measure is better than doing nothing. And certainly that you don't eliminate racism by pretending it no longer exists.

I've commented on this before, but one of the recurring themes over at the Volokh Conspiracy, the group blog where Lindgren posts, is that affirmative action is harful to minorities. That they would be more likely to excel at school, t graduate, to earn high incomes if they went to lesser schools better matched to their assumed academic talents. But they never present that same argument about legacy admissions, nor do they apply the same reasoning to kids who are at the margins of admissions standards and get bumped down to their second choice school based as a result of affirmative action. Why would a Harvard legacy be harmed if his school said, "You don't meet our academic standards?" Why would an applicant to any school be harmed if they received the "benefit" of being denied admission to a more difficult school for which they were barely qualfied, and instead ended up in a less academically rigorous setting where they would be closer to average? The reasoning should be the same, but obviously the politics are different.

Ending affirmative action won't end racial discrimination any more than its creation started discrimination. The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to come up with effective mechanisms that will stop people from discriminating on the basis of race, and then to implement those solutions. If you believe racism no longer exists, then great - the last step is to eliminate race-based corrective measures. But if you know better and care about ending racism, while it's fine to say "Affirmative action is deeply flawed and we can do better," you need to at least try to define the programs you would implement in its stead or attempt to explain why you see the cure as being as bad as or worse than the disease. If you don't care, however, Roberts' quote makes for a great sound bite, doesn't it.

Mitt Romney's Poor Character On Display

Are you skeptical of my take on Mitt Romney? If so, lucky me, Romney is intent on illustrating my point about his character:

"I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where but the both of us were born," Romney said after introducing his wife, fellow Michigan native Ann. "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised."

Romney knows that the reason people wanted to see Obama's birth certificate - and kept demanding to "see" it even after various copies hd been released - has nothing to do with Obama's character. His "joke" not only gives implicit support to the "birthers", it also support for thinly veiled racism. Nobody asked to see John McCain's birth certificate, either, and he wasn't born in the United States.

At best Romney is engaging in the type of race baiting pushed by people like Kathleen Parker, that something about Obama (now what could it be...) keeps him from being a "full-blooded American" and understanding America the way we wh...ole-blooded Americans do. At worst, like his continuing lies about welfare, it's outright race-baiting.

Either way, it's not a joke you would expect from a man of virtue.

Update: More evidence of the character of Romney and his campaign:

[Top Romney adviser Kevin] Madden said Romney did not need to apologize because he was simply drawing attention to the fact that Michigan, where he was campaigning, was the state where he himself was born and raised....

Madden said Romney wasn't intentionally making a reference to the questions about Obama's birth certificate.

Did somebody expect Romney to apologize? No, this approach of slathering on another layer of mendacity is much more in-character.

Update 2: Romney has now spoken in his own defense:

“I’ve said throughout the campaign and before, there’s no question about where he was born,” Romney said in the interview. “He was born in the U.S. This was fun about us, and coming home. And humor, you know — we’ve got to have a little humor in a campaign.”

The thing is, if it was a joke about "coming home" and not about Obama, it's not funny. It's not a joke. It would just be a weird comment that would leave his audience scratching their collective heads. It's only a joke if it's a nod to the birthers, and its difficult to think of anybody but a birther who would find that type of race-baiting to be funny.

A parallel would be if the President were to joke about Romney's "magic underwear Which, of course, won't happen because, for all of his faults, the President has more character than that.

Racism? I Don't See No Stinkin' Racism!

How could you possibly imagine that there's any racism here?

Bolling began the segment itself by saying, in part, "So what's with all the hoods in the hizzy? A month after the White House hosted the rapper Common, who glorifies violence on cops, the president opened his doors to one of Africa's most evil dictators. Here's Ali Bongo, the Gabonese president, who's been accused of human rights violations and plundering billions of his country's dollars."

Let's do a quick Google search for "Hoods in the hizzy". Okay... here we go:

Oops - Daddy Bongo, granted - you know those banana republics, in which power passes from father to son - but with the wrong hizzy host? With a dash of Jack Abramoff, to boot? Nothing to see there, folks....

Now Why Would Civil Rights Groups Have Reservations About Charter Schools....

If you read the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, you will read that the only possible explanation for civil rights groups' reservations in relation to charter schools is that they're in bed with the teacher's unions.

By casting their lot firmly with teachers unions, the leadership of the NAACP and the Urban League hope to preserve their power and safeguard their traditional sources of financial support.

That's presented by the authors of the editorial, Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West, both of Harvard, as a conclusory statement. A non sequitur. As if the only possible reason in the world why civil rights groups might express

"reservations" about the Obama administration's "extensive reliance on charter schools." They specifically voiced concern about "the overrepresentation of charter schools in low-income and predominantly minority communities."

Is that taking a different position might alienate teacher's unions.

The editorial also presents an argument that's all-too-typical, these days - that public policy should follow opinion polls:

Someone should remind these leaders who they represent. The truth is that support for charters among ordinary African-Americans and Hispanics is strong and has only increased dramatically in the past two years. Opposition along the lines expressed by the NAACP and the Urban League is articulated by a small minority.

* * *

Support for charters among African Americans rose to 49% in 2009, up from 42% in 2008. This year it leapt upward to no less than 64%. Among Hispanics support jumped to 47% in 2010, from 37% in 2008.

So by the authors' logic, whatever the facts and whatever their concerns, civil rights groups should have adamantly opposed charter schools a mere three years ago but now, with shifts in the result of opinion polls, they are obligated to support them. For that matter, what if next year's survey shows a significant drop in popular support for charter schools?

Even if you accept that public policy should follow the polls, and further assuming that the author's methodology was sound, the authors' logic falls flat:

Each year we provided respondents the same, neutral description of charter schools, followed by the question: "Do you support or oppose the formation of charter schools?" Those interviewed were also given the choice of saying they "neither support or oppose" charters.

That survey result is not, on its face, inconsistent with the position of civil rights groups. Quite obviously it is possible to favor the formation of charter schools while simultaneously having reservations about those schools, both generally and as a solution to the problems of inner city schools. To see an example of why, the authors could have turned to the news section of the very paper in which they're published.

The Equity Project Charter School garnered headlines and accolades when it opened last September with an unusual plan: recruit top teachers and pay them $125,000—substantially more than the average teacher salary anywhere in the country.

Its test scores did not match the hoopla: Only 37.4% of the students were proficient in math and 24% were proficient in English. On average, the other public schools in Equity Project's Washington Heights district performed better, the test scores released last week showed.

"It's not unexpected" for a first-year school, said Zeke Vanderhoek, founder and principal of the middle school. "I'm very confident in the vision of the school and the teachers we have, but we're not there yet."

Further,

Two weeks ago, the New York State Department of Education renewed the charter of Opportunity Charter School, the city and state's worst-performing charter school. Eight percent of the students were proficient in English and 7% were proficient in math. In the district in which Opportunity competes, proficiency scores in both subjects were above 50%.

I do expect the performance of the Equality Project to improve, and there are charters that are achieving results on par with, and sometimes better than, their public school counterparts. But the questionable performance of some schools based upon assumptions of what will improve school performance, and the terrible performance of other schools based upon what very well could be opportunism and profiteering by the private interests behind those operations, should inspire political, civil rights and opinion leaders to exercise caution.

Further, when the lessons of the charter school movement seem to boil down to "student performance improves with a longer school day", the question is raised: why is it necessary to have charter schools to lengthen the school day? For that matter, it may be that the same results can be achieved with the same length and number of school days, but with a shorter summer vacation.

The results of four-year pilot study, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that children who have only a one-month summer break do better in math, retain more of their lessons and need less time for review.

This study rides on the tail of a 20-year investigation in the U.S. by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that found children from low-income families fell nearly three grade levels behind their higher-income peers.

The culprit? Summer vacation. The learning advantages families can offer their children during non-school months – like lessons, camp and parents who can afford to stay home with their children – are often only available to an elite few from high-income homes.

I think that last sentence incorporates a great deal of assumption and overgeneralization, but the results of the studies are not surprising.

Beyond the question of quality and opportunism, and the question of what they actually bring to the table, there are additional reasons why civil rights leaders may be skeptical of charter schools. First, charter schools tend to be segregated. Second, they tend to adopt policies toward children and classroom instruction that would not be acceptable in middle or upper class public schools. Third, the major "franchise" charter schools, such as KIPP schools, are not on the whole self-sustaining, but instead rely upon outside grants to balance their books, raising questions both of their long-tern sustainability and of whether that money might be better directed at public schools. Fourth, when you put education in the hands of a private organization, even if it's a well-meaning nonprofit, you diminish the oversight of state and local government. It's a fair retort that a lot of inner city governments and school boards have failed to do their job, or became hopelessly corrupt, but abandoning reform in favor of charter schools leaves a lot of children behind. Fifth, charter schools often rely upon the public schools for a significant amount of educational support, as their facilities often lack the amenities of public schools - sports facilities, cafeterias, libraries, art rooms, etc.

So there are many valid reasons why a civil rights leader might have reservations about an emphasis on charter schools. But wait, there's more. Let's hear what some unabashed racists have to say about the editorial and charter schools:

Even though the teachers unions oppose “charter schools”, I wonder if a lot of black teachers secret love them so that they can teach the few students who have more than a room temperature IQ. While many may be scams, I personally don’t have a problem with smarter than average blacks being separated from the dim bulbs when it comes to school. Since black teachers can no longer keep baseball bats on their desks, this is the next best option.

A nice display of loving concern, right? So how about vouchers instead of charter schools?

The main reason Whites send their children to private or Catholic schools is so their children don’t get beat up, terrorized by Black students in the public schools. Give these same Black students “Vouchers” to go to White private schools and the same process happens there.

Nope, nothing that might concern a civil rights leader there....

False Controversy, False Equivalence from the MSM

The Christian Science Monitor offers up an example of drawing false parallels, and of pretending that there's a controversy where none can reasonably be said to exist:

On one side are largely-white "tea party" members depicting President Obama as an African witch doctor, sparking a condemnation from the NAACP last week. On the other is the charge that the Obama Justice Department is "openly hostile" to enforcing civil rights laws against black racists, including members of the New Black Panther Party.

Both charges of racialism, if not outright racism, are incendiary and more powerful because there could be some truth behind each.

First, the historic record is clear that the bulk of decision making on the New Black Panthers case preceded the Obama Administration. Second, there's no actual evidence that the Obama Administration's resolution of the case was racially motivated. Yes, it can be said that "there could be some truth" behind some of the allegations, but rampant speculation that seems to boil down to, "The President is African American and so is the Attorney General, so it must be racial bias" is rank, irresponsible speculation. Was the Bush Administration demonstrating racial bias when it chose not to pursue criminal charges? The difference between "then" and "now" would be what? If you look at the historic context and ignore the President's race, this appears to be a "par for the course" disposition:

[T]he decision not to further pursue the civil case reflected long-standing practice regarding Section 11(b), which prior to the Bush administration had last been used to stop a statewide voter-caging effort. The allegation that would have supported pursuing a broader case was the idea that there was a nationwide effort to place New Black Panthers at polling stations for the purpose of suppressing white votes -- the original complaint read that the NBPP "made statements and posted notice that over 300 members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would be deployed at polling locations during voting on November 4, 2008, throughout the United States." The career attorneys recommended dismissing the case on the basis that there wasn't enough evidence to support that claim.

Not only did no voters come forward to say they had been intimidated by the NBPP that day, there were no further incidents on Election Day 2008 that would have suggested a large-scale effort to intimidate white voters. According to a letter sent to Rep. Lamar Smith by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich, the NBPP "suspended" its Philadelphia political chapter over the incident and subsequently disavowed their actions, which seems like an odd thing to do for an organization that is supposedly disclosing its attempt to intimidate white voters in its publicly available materials.

Second, there is no reasonable case that some of the imagery used by Tea Party members is racist, despite the protestation that the racial elements are "accidental". (Where have we heard that before.) I cannot imagine any reasonable person looking at the "Obama the Witch Doctor" poster and not seeing elements of racism.

I recognize that some people find it fun to race bait, then whine, "I didn't do anything racist - my message was completely different. So you must be a racist for thinking I did something racist." But really, if that wasn't the game and the proponent of the image isn't claiming to be exceptionally stupid, what's the defense? To the credit of the Tea Party movement, save for a handful of people who really don't seem very bright, I have not seen anything to suggest that the larger membership defends the use of the image, let alone endorses it.

With both of these controversies, the author paints with a very broad brush - maybe an obscure, isolated case means that somebody in the Justice Department is making decisions based upon race, and that stands as an indictment of the entire Obama Administration; and because a handful of idiots at Tea Party rallies proudly wave around "Obama as a Communist Witch Doctor" posters it somehow means that the tea party movement as a whole endorses the image. A better column would identify the actual parallel - using the actions of an individual or select few to attempt character assassination against a much larger group. (The logical fallacy of "Guilt by Association".)

Also, is it just me or does the entire article read like something you would find in a high school newspaper, or a mediocre college paper? Back in its print days, it's difficult to imagine the Christian Science Monitor running an article this poor.

After All, It's Not An Insult

Reading David Bernstein's commentary, I can't rule out the possibility that he is genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. (There's no possibility that he would take offense at that, right?)

To be fair, perhaps he somehow missed the fact that, in our society, high intelligence is generally regarded as a positive attribute and low intelligence is generally regarded as a negative - perhaps he was brought up in an exceptional household that took no notice of intelligence, or viewed it as a negative. Perhaps he believes that comments about ethnicity and height, something that has a known genetic basis and that (at most) few would regard as directly correlated to genetic superiority, is truly analogous to comments about race and intelligence, despite the long history of overt racists arguing that the allegedly lesser intelligence and intellectual capacity various ethnic or racial groups demonstrates their "inferiority".

Assuming Genetic Racial Inferiority in the Absence of Evidence

Maybe I'm not giving Ann Althouse a fair shake, being as I don't regularly read her blog and when I follow a link it's usually to some of her more absurd proclamations (like "OMG, that feminist has boobies"), but it seems like every time I stumble across one of her posts... calling it "inane" would be to lavish it with undue praise. The latest case in point, her defense of the statement, "I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent".

Althouse's argument is, in effect, an argument in the alternative. First, "I don't see how that comment can be interpreted to mean that, as a group, African Americans are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than other racial groups, maybe it means the opposite," and second, "Even if the speaker did mean that African Americans are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent, maybe she meant it as a compliment." The first defense is inconsistent with the plain language of the email under discussion; the second defense is, well, pathetic.

Althouse argues that it's unfair to characterize a refusal to rule out the possibility that African Americans, "on average, [are] genetically predisposed to be less intelligent" as suggesting that "black people are genetically inferior to white people" because the speaker was not saying that was the case, instead simply refusing to rule out the possibility. Althouse glosses over the fact that the speaker was defending her prior position, was unable to present any evidence to support her genetic theories, and instead engaged in a cheap rhetorical trick - reversing the burden of proof - to in effect argue that she was entitled to her beliefs until somebody proved them wrong. ("I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects.")

Althouse argues that we don't have the full context of the conversation. That's true. The person who leaked the email, whose identity as far as I know remains unknown, provided only the one email and we have to infer what else might have been said. As I understand the back story, the person who leaked this email got into some sort of dispute with the speaker and, six months after-the-fact, decided to try to damage her career - pretty deplorable. But Althouse's pretense that we can't know what position the speaker was taking - that she could have been "criticized by someone else for ruling out the possibility" that "African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent", is a demonstration of either willful or inept misreading of the email.

I don’t think it is that controversial of an opinion to say I think it is at least possible that African Americans are less intelligent on a genetic level, and I didn’t mean to shy away from that opinion at dinner.... I would just like some scientific data to disprove the genetic position, and it is often hard given difficult to quantify cultural aspects.

Althouse follows up with an attack on the law school dean who spoke against the statement, first speculating on where the dean falls on the "nature vs. nurture" debate, then adding:

But consider Minow's other interpretive leap — that to be less intelligent is to be inferior. Why isn't that an even more outrageous statement than what the student [name omitted] said?

Well, let's go back to the statement at issue:

This suggests to me that some part of intelligence is genetic, just like identical twins raised apart tend to have very similar IQs and just like I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals whether I raise them or give them to an orphanage in Nigeria.

Althouse can read that passage and truly remain confused on the question of whether the speaker believed high intelligence to be a positive attribute and low intelligence a negative?

In what might be a form of anticipatory self-defense, Althouse argues the case that less intelligent people might not be "inferior". First she presents a quote from Brave New World, in which sleeping children are programmed to believe that they should be happy to be "Betas" because they don't have to work as hard as Alphas and are better than Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons... that is, the children are being programmed to accept their situation in life, in what amounts to a caste system.

“They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson.”

Althouse argues, "Betas don't think they're inferior! They are less intelligent though." Um... yeah, Ann - they accept their lot in life after their brainwashing sessions are complete. Althouse would probably have been better served by quoting J.K. Rowling's "sorting hat" story from the first Harry Potter book, because at least there it's a conscious wish to be something other than a "Ravenclaw".

Althouse next tries to save herself by quoting conservative satirist P.J. O'Rourke. Like him or hate him, I am not sure that it's possible to see O'Rourke perform without recognizing that he's an intelligent man - and that he knows it. When he writes something like, "I’m sure up at Harvard, over at the New York Times, and inside the White House they think we just envy their smarts," he's not saying it's good to be stupid - he's playing up to his audience with the caricature that "left wing elites" condescend to them and think they're stupid. Having won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to attended Johns Hopkins, even if with a non-scientific major, O'Rourke has little room outside of his satire to make fun of Harvard graduates as thinking themselves smart - the distinction from his fellow Johns Hopkins alums would be what?

But more to the point, the issue is not whether O'Rourke thinks of it as being good to be a C student... good, I would have to presume, for other people... With all due respect to O'Rourke's quip,

The Mayflower was full of C students. Their idea was that, given freedom, responsibility, rule of law and some elbow room, the average, the middling, and the mediocre could create the richest, most powerful country ever.

Even if we were to assume O'Rourke to have meant that as an expression of historical fact, by the time of our nation's independence the founding fathers had a very clear sense of a natural aristocracy, with any number of checks and balances imposed in the Constitution to make sure that the nation's "C students" didn't take over. Although she appears to take no offense, herself, I'll assume that Althouse has read enough of the Constitution to understand why, more than two centuries later, assertions that African Americans are inferior to whites might continue to rub many other people the wrong way. Really - Althouse thinks, "Maybe she meant it as a compliment" is a viable defense?

Further, it's again obvious from the comment on its face that the speaker views intelligence as a positive attribute. What other inference would Althouse have us draw from the assertion, "I think my babies will be geniuses and beautiful individuals" - bad is good, up is down, and she hopes that her children will be burdened by beauty and genius?

Then there's the inevitable question, why is Althouse attempting to defend the statement? Even if we assume the first defense to be in good faith, based upon a clumsy or inept reading of the contentious email, why the "It's not bad to be less intelligent" defense? Does she imagine that people offended by the original statement will read her defense and say, "Maybe the speaker thought her statement was a compliment" or "Whether or not there's a genetic component, we shouldn't see the comment as insulting because being less intelligent is a good thing"? Seriously?

Were Althouse to think about the issue of IQ and race, it might occur to her first that the value of the claim that race correlates with intelligence is of minimal benefit, because there is no valid dispute that a randomly selected African American may be more intelligent - even vastly more intelligent - than a randomly selected person of a different race, the Harvard student who authored the email or, dare I suggest, Professor Althouse herself. Second, there's no clear definition of what it means to be African American. Do we apply the "one drop" rule, in which case the assertion becomes that the genetic influence of that one drop is so profound that it impairs the intelligence of the recipient and his descendants for untold generations? If not, why doesn't intelligence more closely associated with skin color - does it need to be explained that African Americans are not uniform in color?

And wow, to assume that the genes for skin color and intelligence are somehow linked? Scientists, ranging from absolute hacks to the sincerely misguided, have spent generations pursuing dead-ends such as phrenology or other "scientific" measures of the human body in order to try to find "objective" evidence of the biological superiority or inferiority of one ethnic group or another. Need I post a Nazi illustration of the "Jewish Nose" for it to click where this brand of scientific racism can lead? Althouse finds it in some way defensible for somebody who has no evidence of her own to offer to resurrect those discarded notions while rejecting their attempt at objective measure, and simply arguing that the key correlate to genetically superior intellect is African skin pigmentation (but not the genes that lead to dark skin in other ethnic groups)?

There's an intrinsic element of racism in the assumption, based upon "personal experience", that a particular ethnic group is "less intelligent" than another - and, as she waits for her assumptions to be disproved by others, that's all the author of the email has to offer. It's a natural human tendency, but it's not even close to scientific, to see somebody from our own ethnic group struggle with a problem and attribute their struggle to something extrinsic - education level, their upbringing, etc. - while attributing the same struggle by an ethnic minority to something intrinsic - their genes. People have to train themselves, or be trained, to consider such factors as sample size and their own biases. The author of the email gives no indication of how intelligence should be measured or what measure she has applied, beyond her own assumptions, in her determination that it's possible for African Americans, on the whole, to be genetically programmed to be less intelligent.

Further, recent scientific research indicates that aspects of intelligence, even of the structure of the brain, that many have believed to be innate or fixed are in fact far more flexible than we've previously thought. Meanwhile we have identified genes that govern hair color, eye color, skin color... and there's no indication that any of them correlate to intelligence - let alone define "race".

It's interesting that although Althouse finds it horrible that people have assumed, based upon the plain language of the controversial email, that its author believes that African Americans are, on the whole, less intelligent, she plays a game with the statement of the dean who responded to the statement,

It's possible — possible! — that Minow thinks that everyone less intelligent than her is inferior, but for reasons having only to do with nurture. This must be an interesting subject for her, because she's the daughter of a highly successful man, Newton Minow (the FCC chairman who called TV a "vast wasteland"). Does she trace her high intelligence only to environmental factors?

It's also possible - possible! - that Dean Minow believes that there is a genetic component to intelligence, but not one that correlates with race. It's also possible that she recognizes the huge amount of interracial mixing in the African American community and, particularly in light of the aforementioned "one drop rule", finds the notion of a genetically based "African American" race to be absurd.

Althouse links with approval to "neoneocon" who writes,

As for me, I don’t happen to think that African Americans are genetically inferior in this arena. But I do think that banning speculation and/or research into the question is both intellectually dishonest and an affront to liberty.

We can start by noting that unlike Althouse, neoneocon had no trouble recognizing the remarks for what they were - an assertion of racial inferiority. But wait a second. Scientists are researching genes as they relate to physical appearance. Scientists are also researching genes that may be linked to intelligence, however defined. There's nothing scientific about assuming something to be the case in the absence of evidence. When you say something along the lines of, "I don't have any evidence to support my position, but until you show me proof to the contrary I'm absolutely not going to rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on the whole, genetically programmed to be less intelligent," the problem is not that you're suggesting that an answer could be reached through research.

Althouse is correct in this statement,

There is a difference between "suggesting" something is true and conceding that you don't have a basis for excluding the possibility that something is true.

For example, there is a difference between saying "Professor Althouse is an idiot" and saying "I don't have a basis for excluding the possibility that Professor Althouse is an idiot." Yet I suspect that if Professor Althouse were to hear that second statement from her peers, or to overhear it in a conversation between students, she would take offense. (I don't want to be presumptuous - I'll leave open the possibility that she would shrug and think to herself something along the lines of, "Maybe they only know me from my 'BoobGate' posts.")

About Those Attacks on Family

Despite Palin's mewling about "attacks on her family", Did she ever have to deal with anything like this?

Iconography

You know, there's truth to the notion that you can't really judge a parent's mistakes until you've been one. Some non-parents seem to perceive children as little wind-up toys who will do exactly what their parents want if only the parents... do something. But on the other hand, sometimes bad parenting is pretty obvious.

It wasn't so much the white supremacist phrases emblazoned upon her arms and legs that led social workers to remove a seven-year-old Winnipeg girl from her family, or the fact she had attended school two days in a row with a swastika inked upon her skin.

What alarmed social workers most about the little girl were her cold affirmations of racial violence, according to testimony in the first day of a heated custody hearing at Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench on Monday.

The parents are, of course, claiming "free speech" and that the children were taken solely because of their political views. But really:

In testimony Monday, the social worker said that, for 45 minutes, she grilled the girl about her home life and the ink covering her body. “She said the meaning of [the swastika] is that black people don't belong,” the social worker said. “She told me that we have to protect white kids from, quote-unquote, niggers.”

Not that I expect white supremacists to be the brightest of the bright, but these folks don't even know basic racist iconography. Like those poor kids in Jena who had no clue that the noose was a symbol of racial oppression. How would you know?

Maybe there's a market for "remedial racism" flash cards, so these folks can stop embarrassing themselves. "Which racial group is offended by this symbol? [Answer on back of card.]"¹ The way things are going, these guys are going to hold a rally and offend the wrong ethnic group. How embarrassing would that be.
__________
1. I suspect that you would need a reminder on the face of the card that the answer's on the back, because otherwise these folks might not figure it out and remain as confused as ever.

Palin Said What?

If a waitress named "Lucille" says so, it must be true? No, really, I'm skeptical, particularly of the "Sambo" part:

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

The "beat the bitch" line, if said, could have been a reference to the infamous McCain event where he fumbled his answer to the question, "How do we beat the bitch". But "Sambo"? Well, if in fact Plain is inclined to refer to Obama as "Sambo", I doubt that she would have done so on just the one poorly sourced occasion.

Perhaps Florence (Sorry - that was a waitress from "Mel's Place") Lucille did relate what she though she heard. And I'm prepared for the possibility that other incidents will come to light. But right now I'm operating from the position that this is an ill-conceived smear or the misunderstanding of something overheard in a conversation taking place across a room. It's a catching, emotional way to open an essay, but when the opening kick in the gut turns out to be that "convenient" yet that poorly sourced it calls the author's motives (and other assertions) into question.

I Am Not Impressed....

With Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times. Regarding Bill Clinton's statement, "I am not a racist," Malcolm says,

Former presidents get a whole lot of leeway in what they say in public. But former President Bill Clinton just violated one of the prime rules of political communications: Never say what you are not.

"I am not a crook," said Richard Nixon, which, of course, raised or confirmed the issue in the minds of millions during the long-running Watergate scandal that forced him from office. And provided a historic sound bite.

Uh oh... I said what I'm not. Does Malcolm think that means that I am, in fact, impressed?

Don't count on it.

Let's apply Malcolm-think to some of McCain's statements:

• McCain's an economist!

• McCain has guaranteed the success of 'the surge'!

• McCain's in the habit of making promises to his country that he does not intend to keep!

• McCain is unappreciative of blogs! (Okay, that may in fact be his actual thought.)

A similar list could be compiled of Obama's "I am nots" - some keep trying with this one - but I picked McCain out of the apparent partisan nature of Malcolm's potshot.

I Know It's Michelle Malkin, But....

After somebody at Fox News decided to run text in front of a news segment featuring Michelle Malkin, describing Michelle Obama as Barack Obama's "baby mama", Malkin came out in defense of the network....

But I do know that it was Michelle Obama herself who referred to Barack as her “baby’s daddy” and has used the phrase “baby daddy” to describe Barack while on the stump this year.

Her sources? A clear reference by Michelle to her husband as her "baby's daddy", and an unsubstantiated comment attacking her in the Topix John McCain forum. I guess she felt compelled to add the latter, given that even she knows how idiotic she would look if her sole argument was that referring to your spouse as your "baby's daddy" and referring to a black woman as a "baby mama" (or a black man as a "baby daddy") are comparable.

But even assuming a "baby daddy" reference exists, applying Malkin-think, is it now fair game to ask in relation to Cindy McCain if the nation is ready to have a First Lady who is a trollop? Would she argue that calling Cindy McCain a trollop or the C-word cannot be considered sexist, because McCain used those words first? Oh, I'm sure she would were McCain a Democrat, but as he's a Republican even Malkin could seek through that sort of specious, brainless Malkin-think, couldn't she?

Malkin's kind of like an intellectually flyweight version of Ann Coulter (a flyweight version of a welterweight). I'd suggest that she keep her mouth shut and simply be thought a fool, but every day she proves that you can make a small fortune playing court jester to the Republican establishment.

Kathleen Parker And The Half-Blood Prince

Incredible.

"A full-blooded American."

That's how 24-year-old Josh Fry of West Virginia described his preference for John McCain over Barack Obama. His feelings aren't racist, he explained. He would just be more comfortable with "someone who is a full-blooded American as president."

It's not about "race", Parker assures us. It's about "blood equity". And apparently Obama's problem is that only one of his parents was white had "blood equity"?

You know, if you're going to take a page from Harry Potter, why not be more direct about it and simply call Obama a "mudblood". Or would that make your meaning too clear?

Those Ungrateful Bla... Afric... Obamas

Recently, Peggy Noonan wrote,

The Democrats have it exactly wrong. Hillary is the easier candidate, Mr. Obama the tougher. Hillary brings negative; it's fair to hit her back with negative. Mr. Obama brings hope, and speaks of a better way. He's not Bambi, he's bulletproof.

The biggest problem for the Republicans will be that no matter what they say that is not issue oriented--"He's too young, he's never run anything, he's not fully baked"--the mainstream media will tag them as dealing in racial overtones, or undertones. You can bet on this. Go to the bank on it.

You would think, as somebody who recognizes the racial subtext in attacks on the Obamas, that Noonan might be careful. Or perhaps she has decided that, whatever the risks, she needs to remind her readers, "The Obamas are black - and they're ungrateful." Speaking of Michelle Obama, Noonan writes,

I wonder if she knows that some people look at her and think "Man, she got it all." Intelligent, strong, tall, beautiful, Princeton, Harvard, black at a time when America was trying to make up for its sins and be helpful, and from a working-class family with two functioning parents who made sure she got to school

Noonan's choice of words is not accidental. She first attempts to invoke "Black English", and next suggests that Michelle Obama is not sufficiently grateful for having benefited from affirmative action. She goes on to admit that she doesn't actually care about the facts of Michelle Obama's background - "That's the great divide in modern America, whether or not you had a functioning family, and she apparently came from the privileged part of that divide". It would take her how many seconds to find a biography of Michelle Obama, or to contact somebody within the Obama campaign who could fill her in? No, the point here is to remind everybody that the Obama's are African American, probably only got where they are through affirmative action, and are committing the capital sin of being ungrateful. And in case you missed it,

A lot of white working-class Americans didn't come up with those things. Some of them were raised by a TV and a microwave and love our country anyway, every day.

(Does Noonan truly believe that "pride" and "love" are synonyms?)

After this column, it seems apparent that Noonan's concern is not that the media will wrongly infer racial overtones from Republican attacks on the Obamas. It's that when people like her attempt to inject racial overtones into the debate, they risk having somebody call them out.

Segregation As "Sad" But Inevitable?

David Brooks penned a column, The End of Integration which opens with the lament, ("Nothing is sadder than the waning dream of integration"), but (suprise, surprise) he's shedding crocodile tears. And, as is his wont, he relies on a child-like presentation of social anthropology to justify his actual position:

But it could be the dream of integration itself is the problem. It could be that it was like the dream of early communism — a nice dream, but not fit for the way people really are.

For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors lived in small bands. Surviving meant being able to distinguish between us — the people who will protect you — and them — the people who will kill you. Even today, people have a powerful drive to distinguish between us and them.

As dozens of social-science experiments have made clear, if you separate people into different groups — no matter how arbitrary the basis of the distinction — they will quickly begin discriminating against others they deem unlike themselves. People say they want to live in diverse integrated communities, but what they really want to do is live in homogenous ones, filled with people like themselves.

So integration is analogous communism? (Did I miss his "Nothing is sadder than the fall of the Iron Curtain" column?)

When Brooks describes people who say they want to live in integrated communities but actually seek out segregation, I suspect he's speaking of himself. This supports any number of "shorter David Brooks" synopses of his column:

• I live in a neighborhood that's primarily white, went to white majority schools, and I've never had a black friend, and I turned out okay.
• Why are people carping about this racism stuff, when they should be addressing real problems like make-believe anti-Semitism?
• I have a black neighbor - every Tuesday - and I would be saddened if he moved away.

I will concede in fairness that David Brooks contends that his comments about anti-semitism were a "joke", although (as with the factual errors that he reinvents as jokes) his delivery of the punch line was a bit off the mark.

The obvious point Brooks somehow overlooks is that whatever divisions may naturally flow between "us" and "them", race does not have to be a principle point of division, or even a significant point of division.

Maybe the health of a society is not measured by how integrated each institution within it is, but by how freely people can move between institutions. In a sick society, people are bound by one totalistic identity. In a healthy society, a person can live in a black neighborhood, send her kids to Catholic school, go to work in a lawyer’s office and meet every Wednesday with a feminist book club. Multiply your homogenous communities and be fulfilled.

Of his examples...

• You can live in a "black neighborhood" or move out of a "black neighborhood" without regard to your race;
• You can attend a Catholic school without regard for your race;
• You can work for a lawyer, or even be a lawyer, without regard for your race (if we assume the lawyer doesn't discriminate when hiring you);
• You can be a feminist without regard for your race; and
• You can join or quit book clubs without regard for your race;

But you can't change your race. Hatred and division predicated on race is qualitatively different, because race is a status and not a choice.

There is no question that society can change its views on race and ethnicity. Many groups which were once subjected to active discrimination are now integrated into our society. Many people who are overtly racist nonetheless display extreme partisanship in favor of a local sports team which is largely black. The color of somebody's skin may present an easy basis for distinction between groups, but the fact that it is easy does not mean that it is desirable or even tolerable within a modern society.

Am I wrong in believing that Brooks would not shrug off another person's dismissal of the segregation of Jews with, "This isn’t the integrated world many of us hoped for. But maybe it’s the only one available"? I suspect he would most likely accuse the speaker of being actively anti-Semitic, or at least of holding anti-Semitic sympathies. I suspect he would be correct. And yet that's his response to racial segregation.

Thinking Like A Lawyer?

Law professors sometimes contend that they teach their students to "think like lawyers". If this guy is an example of what law professors mean by "thinking like a lawyer", let's hope that they fail in their mission. His argument, on analogies between South Africa and the situation in the occupied territories commences,

For reasons that should be obvious to any objective observer, I find the South Africa analogy to be both absurd and obscene. However, let's assume for the sake of argument that Israel's occupation of the lands it captured in 1967 is indeed morally analogous to South African apartheid.

Okay, so far so good. It's not at all unreasonable to point to the many differences between the two situations. Lawyers frequently advance positions they don't accept "for the sake of argument". So let's see where he runs with this. What happened after Apartheid ended?

Instead, the black population of South Africa voted in a new government composed of black supremacists, who expressed openly and vigorously their hatred and contempt of white people, and swore that they would never negotiate any accommodation with the South African government, short of turning all of South Africa into a black supremacist state, with whites being forced to return to their "homelands". The new black government used its new territorial sovereignty to establish terrorist bases, smuggle weapons, and establish new military and political ties to other organizations that had genocidal views toward South African whites. White South African towns faced a constant missile barrage from this territory.

Even knowing the hatred leveled at South Africa during apartheid years, I find it hard to believe that under these circumstances anyone with a modicum of respectability would have been calling for boycotts of the South African government.

So the analogy he would have us accept between South Africa and Israel's occupation of the West Bank is that the subjects of Apartheid and the occupation are similarly nasty, awful people, undeserving of freedom and self-determination. Nobody with a "modicum of respectability" would disagree, once they accept that "fact". If you support a boycott in favor of the freedom of these awful, nasty, undeserving people, you are "morally bankrupt" and support terrorism.

Nice.

You don't have to agree with a boycott to grasp the depravity of that position.

The Latest from Jim "Foxworthy" Lindgren

The curent subject is a little bit different than last time, but the punch line is the same.... If you disagree with Mr. Lindgren's politics... you might be a racist.

Giving the Benefit of the Doubt to George Allen

Most people already know the story. Even those who seem inclined to believe that Allen intentionally used a racial slur question why he would do so. I think it's a reasonable inference that parts of his story are true - he did pick up the term from his staff, and he didn't realize that it was a racial slur. The sticking point is, he does not want to admit that his staff includes racists who know "white supremacist" code word ethnic slurs, and he has no good response to the question of why he engaged in what amounts to racial taunting even if he did not know he was using an ethnic slur.