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.

Marc Thiessen, as Usual, Gets Things Completely Wrong

I suspect Marc Thiessen's intelligence is no worse than average, but he's certainly not afraid to look stupid:

Politicians and commentators on the left have been publicly flogging Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for daring to talk about poverty in America’s inner cities. The charges have been so vicious and scurrilous (accusing him of using racial “dog-whistles” and language “deliberately crafted to appeal to white racists”) that their only purpose can be to send a message to Ryan and any other Republican who would dare follow his lead: Keep your hands off our issue. Poverty belongs to us. Stay away or we will brand you a racist.

(Insert obligatory Jay Smooth video here.)

Ryan’s attackers worry that if Republicans follow his lead, it will expose the failure of the left’s approach to poverty. For decades, Republicans gave Democrats a near-monopoly in the fight against poverty. And like most monopolies shielded from competition, the Democrat-led war on poverty failed. We have spent trillions of dollars on anti-poverty programs, and today the number of Americans living at or near poverty is higher than it was in 1964.

Yeah.... Ryan's critics are terrified that his war on poverty, and by that I mean policy proposals that would make it even harder to be poor, is going to win him votes from... um... I guess it would be nobody?

Ryan’s attackers are also worried that if Republicans make helping the poor and vulnerable a priority, Democrats can no longer win elections by waging class warfare and painting the GOP as uncaring champions of the wealthy. They want the Republicans to follow the example of Mitt Romney, who declared in 2012, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. . . . We will hear from the Democrat Party [on] the plight of the poor. . . . But my campaign is focused on middle-income Americans.”

I cannot recall the last time a Democrat had to "wage class warfare" or "paint the GOP as uncaring about the poor". The GOP hangs that brand on itself. But for somebody as (willfully?) obtuse as Thiessen, perhaps that's a difficult distinction to draw.

Ryan understands that if Republicans abandon the poor to the Democrats, they will hurt the poor — because Democrats have all the wrong answers for the problems of poverty. But they will also hurt themselves. Because no one — in the middle class or any class — wants to support a party that does not care for the most vulnerable among us.

Stuff and nonsense on both fronts. First, however flawed anti-poverty efforts of the past have been, the reason Thiessen can hang most of the responsibility for those programs on the Democrats is that the Republican approach to poverty (including Ryan's approach) hinges on cutting benefits for the poor. For example, the Republican Party is in a tizzy, right now, because their food stamp cuts aren't going to be as deep as they had hoped. Maybe in Thiessen's alternate universe, nothing says "We love the poor" like food stamp cuts.

Second, the Republicans have made something of an art form of distinguishing the "deserving poor" (i.e., poor people who, on the whole, vote for Republicans) from the "undeserving poor" (i.e., poor people who, on the whole, tend to vote for Democrats). A smarter man than Thiessen would admit that Ryan's foul-up was in making too explicit that many of those his party deems "undeserving" fall within a particular demographic,

We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

If Thiessen wants the Republican Party to keep making statements like that, let's just say, if his thesis about voter concerns is correct he'll do nothing but harm to his party.

Pat Buchanan's Fantasy of... His Own Private Idaho?

Pat Buchanan, after describing how nations that had been part of the USSR reclaimed their national identities, and in some cases balkanized afterward, and carrying on for a bit about various secessionist movements in Europe, conflates the secession of a region to create a new, independent nation state with the redrawing of political boundaries within a nation state.

What are the forces pulling nations apart? Ethnicity, culture, history and language—but now also economics. And separatist and secessionist movements are cropping up here in the United States.

While many Red State Americans are moving away from Blue State America, seeking kindred souls among whom to live, those who love where they live but not those who rule them are seeking to secede.

Buchanan appears to be conceding that the primary driving forces behind these secessionist movements, foreign and domestic, are ethnicity and culture. In the context of ending a civil war between ethnic groups with the bloody partitioning of a country, it's not really surprising that ethnicity and culture play a role in that division - it's to be expected. But there are no similar crises within the United States. Buchanan may be correct that the citizens of the regions he describes later in his editorial are concerned about protecting their ethnicity and culture, but perhaps the real problem is that they're too resistant to getting on board with the proverbial "great American melting pot".

The five counties of Western Maryland—Garrett, Allegheny, Washington, Frederick, and Carroll, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.

I found Ilya Somin's "vote with your feet" concept to be a bit ridiculous, but I have to say Buchanan's idea is far more precious. Why move across a nearby state line when you can instead move the state line? Buchanan has given no apparent thought to the permanence of such an arrangement. Does he anticipate that states will trade counties like kids trade baseball cards? (Perhaps I should say Yu-Gi-Oh? Kids, it seems, have their own cultural secessionist movements every decade or so.) Perhaps he imagines a context in which any number of people who claim to be disgruntled with their state government can split off and form their own state? Could I be my own state, and perhaps serve as both senators?

Buchanan has something dead wrong in his earlier secessionist argument, suggesting that economics are now driving European secessionist movements. To the contrary, economics tend to hold back peaceful secession. When you live in a small, rural area you gain considerable advantage by being associated with a larger, more economically developed state. Such regions usually receive massive subsidies from their states, sometimes direct, and often in the form of government enterprises that exist only by virtue of state funding. Buchanan states,

Folks on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, bordered by Wisconsin and the Great Lakes, which is connected to lower Michigan by a bridge, have long dreamed of a separate state called Superior. The UP has little in common with Lansing and nothing with Detroit.

I'm not sure what Buchanan means by "The UP has little in common with Lansing", or if he even knows what he means. Or Detroit, for that matter, unless it's as basic as "skin color". Economically, many parts of the UP are quite comparable to Detroit. Baraga County in the Upper Peninsula has an 18.3% unemployment rate - comparable to Detroit's. Dependence upon public assistance is high. What keeps the UP's unemployment rate from being even higher? Six of the UPs fifteen counties are home to state penitentiaries, with the good-paying jobs that go along with them. The UP also benefits from the state's promotion of tourism, it's leading industry. A separate state of "Superior" would have to pay its own way, which may be part of why the most feverish part of the "long dream" of which Buchanan speaks broke in the 1970's. Also, given how easily Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow carried the UP, perhaps the political culture is not as removed from the rest of the state as Buchanan imagines. I wonder if Buchanan even knows about the Mackinac Bridge?

In any event, even if Buchanan's worst case scenario unfolds, and we have another G.W. Bush-type President or continued incompetent House leadership by the likes of John Boehner, such that "another Great Recession hits or our elites dragoon us into another imperial war", and we "hear more of such talk", so what? It's a pipe dream. Nothing is going to come of it. I guess it's a bit more peaceful than the violent, genuinely secessionist fantasies of some of Buchanan's more extreme peers, but let's face it: We're not going to allow small regions to form their own states, we're not going to give five sparsely populated counties of Maryland or nine similarly rural counties of Colorado statehood, along with a minimum of two U.S. Senators and three Members of Congress. And beyond the fantasy, counties that enjoy being heavily subsidized by their urban peers tend to wake up at some point to the reality of what their tax bills and public services would look like if they actually carried their own weight.

Ending the Need for Affirmative Action vs. Arguing That It's Unconstitutional

It's impossible to read something like this without wondering what the author is thinking.

Martin Luther King’s Dream Unconstitutional?

Fifty years ago today, Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke these immortal words: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” He would have been mystified, one imagines, by the question presented in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action: “Whether a state violates the Equal Protection Clause by amending its constitution to prohibit race- and sex-based discrimination or preferential treatment in public-university admissions decisions.”

But for the title of his post, I might agree - King may well have been mystified by why, fifty years after his speech, the Supreme Court would be asking that question. In the context of his time, King would certainly have seen such an effort by a state as being intended to slow integration and stymie minority enrollment in colleges. But you can't look past the title....

Is there something in the history of the civil rights movement, or in King's speeches, that would suggest that King believed that affirmative action was or should be unconstitutional? Does the author of the comment, law professor Nick Rosenkranz, believe that King would have been unaware of the history of "equality" enforced after Plessy vs. Ferguson, through the Jim Crow era? Does he believe that King couldn't recognize that the sudden alarm about affirmative action and the need for the constitution to be "color blind" came largely from the same politicians who had absolutely no problem with state-imposed, state-enforced segregation? Unless Rosenkranz sincerely believes that King's dream has been fully realized, why would Rosenkranz believe that King would support a state-based initiative that he would likely see as intended to keep its vestiges in place as well as to prevent future corrective action if race relations worsen?

Although it would be more than a bit counter-factual, if I were to assume that Rosenkranz believes that we now live in a society in which King's dream has been fully realized, I might be able to construe the question a bit more charitably. After all, it is possible that Rosenkranz sincerely believes that discrimination is a thing of the past in American society. His question might be interpreted as, "Once discrimination has been extirpated from society, is it unconstitutional for a state to prohibit remedies to discrimination that are permitted by the federal constitution". But under this interpretation Rosenkranz would be projecting onto King the naive belief that it should be up to state governments to determine whether or not discrimination still exists, while in fact King was acutely aware of how many state legislators and governors were embraced segregationist policies which they were happy to call "equality". He would also be projecting onto King the quaint notion that once discrimination is eliminated from a society it can never return in any form.

Rosenkranz's underlying argument has a circularity, similar to that of Chief Justice Roberts' simplistic statement, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race". It's reasonable to believe that King would agree with the goal of eliminating discrimination, but I am skeptical that he would hop on Roberts' bandwagon by declaring that the place to start is through eliminating corrective measures that the state can apply in response to discrimination.

I expect that if Rosenkranz were to have, in earnest, presented this argument to King, he would have received a patient lecture about how measures to correct discrimination will inevitably have an impact on people who did not directly participate in the discrimination, including some people who helped bring about its end, but that it's not possible to impose remedies for past discrimination without doing so. That the minor impact of a well-managed affirmative action program on those who are not beneficiaries of the program is outweighed by the significant need to correct the historic wrong and to integrate society. And that even if his dream were to become reality, you can never say "It will never happen again" and a government should not tie its hands - after all, once King's dream is fully realized even if an affirmative action program remains nominally in place it would be dormant. King might explain that even in the context of his realized dream, there would be cause for to be skeptical of the motives of a faction intent upon preventing the use of similar remedies in the future, and that cause for skepticism would be greater in relation to a faction that was working hard to end corrective measures prior to the realization of his dream.

Ultimately, I expect King would explain that there is a significant difference between asking, "How can we do this better," or "What alternative approaches might we take that could be even more effective, or strike a better balance between competing interests," and "How do we stop this in its tracks". Would Rosenkranz grasp the difference?

Many Democrats, Such As....

Good old Maureen Dowd,

Many Democrats are hungry to make history again, and they see the first woman president as the natural successor to the first black president.

Got any names? Even one?

Not that she made the argument, but Dowd's assertion reminds me of the race-baiting argument that Democrats only voted for President Obama "because he's black". Now the notion is that, coming off of that "high", Democrats are going to vote for a woman because... she's a woman? Maybe I'm missing something, but wasn't Hillary Clinton a woman the last time she ran? Is there an official Democratic checklist that is out there somewhere? Are Democrats working their way through the Bill of Rights... "African Americans were enfranchised first, then women, and, aw shoot, you have to be 35 to be President and the next item on the list is an 18-year-old"? Why didn't Democrats rally to support Carol Moseley Braun's run in 2004 - she would have been a twofer!

Detroit the City vs. 'Detroit' the Auto Industry

Robert Samuelson wrote one of the columns on Detroit that I find a bit frustrating, and leave me wondering if Samuelson has ever been to the city. Samuelson finds it to be a "great irony" that Detroit's bankruptcy "seems to suggest the obsolescence of central cities when just the opposite is true", pointing to the success and revival of "Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco and others".

All have stubborn concentrations of poverty, but many have benefited from gentrification and stronger job markets. High energy costs, a backlash against commuting, lower crime and cities’ vibrancy have renewed their appeal.

But here's the thing: Detroit developed as something of a suburban city, the place where you could live the city life while residing in your own home. Detroit is not situated in an area in which developers are constrained by geography, and must redevelop within its limits. Instead, Detroit is sprawling - 139 square miles - with a low population density, roughly 5,100 people per square mile, as compared to New York City's 27,000 or San Francisco's 17,400. Thanks to poorly considered urban planning decisions in the 1960's, the sort of neighborhoods that have helped lead to redevelopment in other cities, loft conversions and the like, were bulldozed to make way for freeways. Mass transit is poor and, even if it weren't, if you were to develop new residential neighborhoods within Detroit, the jobs for people who could afford to live in them would largely lie outside of the city limits.

Samuelson then asserts that the leading reason for Detroit's failure is that "It became a prisoner of its dependence on the auto industry." Here, Samuelson makes the common mistake of confusing the common shorthand term for the domestic auto industry ("Detroit") with the actual city called Detroit. The problem is that the auto plants that used to employ residents of Detroit were for the most part around the city, and the hollowing out of Detroit was well underway before Michigan started losing those plants to non-union states. Workers were easily able to relocate to towns outside of the city limits while keeping their factory jobs. And as much as Samuelson complains,

In the 1950s and ’60s, most Americans — not just people in Michigan — took the dominance of the Big Three for granted. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler commanded about 90 percent of the vehicle market. Who could challenge them? The result was a plausible and self-serving business model: high wages, generous fringe benefits, job security (with supplementary unemployment benefits to cover workers during temporary layoffs). The compact generally bought labor peace between the companies and the United Auto Workers. Given their market power, automakers could pass most costs on to consumers.

But what made short-term sense spelled long-term suicide — for companies, workers, Detroit and Michigan. High costs, shoddy quality and mediocre management made the companies vulnerable to foreign competition from imports and nonunionized plants, generally in the South. Employment eroded. Worse, the auto industry’s model shaped the state’s labor market and policies. By 1978, average hourly earnings in Michigan were 32 percent higher than the national average. Michigan had an anti-business reputation. This frustrated the state in its efforts to diversify its economic base.

Again, Samuelson confused "Detroit", the domestic automobile industry with "Detroit", the city. Samuelson, who seems to be generally opposed to collective bargaining, drops "nonunionized plants, generally in the South" into the mix without mentioning the policy choices that led to the split between "union" and "non-union" states, as if the City of Detroit were somehow responsible for the Taft-Hartley Act. He neglects to mention that many of the southern states that benefited from the relocation of plants from Michigan subsequently experienced plant closings as factories were moved to the developing world. But perhaps most of all he isn't even capturing the reality of what was happening in Detroit and surrounding communities. Take a look at a household income map for Michigan from the year 2000. If you don't know that Detroit is in southeastern Michigan, well, now you do - now take a look at that map and tell me where Detroit is located. You can see that the area surrounding Detroit remained quite wealthy, while Detroit had average wages similar to the most isolated and rural parts of the state. In 2010 Michigan's per capita income was $25,135. The state with the lowest per capita income was Mississippi, at $19,977. Detroit's per capita income was $15,261. Michigan certainly has struggled in the face of a global economy and a loss of traditional manufacturing jobs, but the areas immediately surrounding Detroit remain the richest in the state while Detroit sits, impoverished, in their midst.

Now a second map. This map shows the ethnicity of the residents of the Detroit metropolitan area, "White people are represented by pink, Black people are represented by blue, Hispanic’s represented by orange and Asians by green." How many seconds did it take you to locate Detroit? Knowing that that the northern boundary of Detroit was Eight Mile Road, how many seconds did it take you to figure out where that road is located on the map? Knowing that there's a separately incorporated city within Detroit, the City of Hamtramck, how many seconds did it take you to figure out where Hamtramck is located?

Don't get me wrong - I don't mean to suggest that there is some sort of racial redlining at work, or that the boundaries of Detroit were drawn to include only poor black neighborhoods. The problem is that as Detroit has lost population it has been unable to provide adequate municipal services, while its property taxes are high due to the low value of its real estate. If you're an employer thinking about opening a business in Detroit, you have to consider that your workers are probably going to want to commute in from a suburb where they have better schools and municipal services, and that they're going to pay a city income tax. Unlike the cities that have existing working class populations, and where living in the city can mean a shorter commute - or a commute on public transportation - working in Detroit can mean a longer commute, with a higher tax bill to boot.

Samuelson pontificates,

By reducing debt and pension payments — though hurting creditors and retirees — bankruptcy might break this cycle. But there’s no quick fix. What Detroit teaches is that those who deny economic change often become its victims.

It's difficult to see how reducing Detroit's debt will "break" its cycle - which is much less a cycle and much more of a decades-long downward trajectory. It's even harder to see how reducing pension benefits for the city's retirees, many of whom still live in the city, will benefit the city. By national standards the pension benefits aren't even particularly generous. Samuelson's theories of economics often seem to be driven by austerity theory and thus tend to be counter-factual, but surely even he can recognize that further reducing Detroit's per capita income and giving its people even less money to support local businesses is more of a stumbling block than a road to recovery. The cuts may well be necessary to balance Detroit's books, but if Detroit does not do far more than that to reinvent itself this is likely its first bankruptcy, not its last.

What I would like to see Detroit accomplish is a serious plan to consolidate its all-but-abandoned areas, and to engage in the wholesale removal of abandoned buildings. To do that effectively will require an infusion of state and federal money - many abandoned buildings are simply too large or require too much environmental clean-up for the city to do itself, particularly when it has no money. But I don't see that the void inside of Detroit will be filled with new people, businesses and jobs unless developers are looking at brownfields ready for redevelopment, as opposed to having to spend a small fortune demolishing an abandoned structure, and it's not realistic that developers will want to erect new structures or homes alongside vacant, derelict shells. The reasons that there is development around Detroit, but little development within Detroit, are not state secrets. Detroit is not going to become what Samuelson describes as an "incubator[] for new ideas and industries" as long as most businesses don't preface the idea of building or expanding in Detroit with the phrase, "anywhere but...."

Samuelson's admonition about "Detroit" holds more true for the state as a whole, which makes sense given that the State of Michigan is more aligned with that conception of Detroit than is the city itself. Contrary to Samuelson's suggestion, though, that Michigan workers get paid too much and have benefits that are too good, the fact is that Michigan is best served by trying to attract the sort of jobs and talent that keep wages high in the counties around Detroit. Samuelson observes, "New York has recovered, led in part by a resurgent (and maligned) financial industry", so let's be honest - being grossly overpaid relative to your contribution to society isn't an impediment to urban renewal, or even something to which Samuelson actually objects. (We can note, also, that Beltway pundits are paid extremely well for what amounts to a marginal contribution to society.) It's a matter of finding jobs and industries that fit with the present economy.

Race in America and the Beam in Michael Gerson's Eye

Michael Gerson complains that, in his recent speech on the Trayvon Martin shooting, the President didn't offer meaningful solutions to the problems of race and racism in American society. Gerson dismisses the criticism from some of his Republican peers, that the President who "attacked Obama for being 'divisive' and for injecting race into the Trayvon Martin debate", then continues,

The opposite criticism is more serious — that Obama has missed opportunities over the years to talk about race in a compelling and personal way. It is the unavoidable American issue. At one point, a third of all human beings in the South were owned by another human being. For a century beyond slavery, Jim Crow laws enforced a racial caste system. The election of an African American president — born three years before passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — is a wonder of national healing and historical compression. Who can argue that we have heard too much from Obama on this topic? For five years, he strategically downplayed the reality of his own miracle.

The "reality of his own miracle"? In another context, Gerson's "miracle" might be that our society has evolved so quickly since the 1960's that the President's race was a marginal factor in his election. In the context of Gerson's column, though, the "miracle" is that the President was twice elected despite the continuing level of racism and racial divisiveness within the United States.

I tried to find out how Gerson responded to the Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action and, although I found that Gerson had referred to Chief Justice Roberts as displaying "judicial arrogance", that was over his vote upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), not over his platitudinous statements on race issues such as, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race". It's interesting to me that a tax ruling caused Gerson to sound off like an overheated tea kettle, but Roberts' shrugging off racism as a continuing issue in society didn't seem to inspire him to so much as raise an eyebrow,¹ particularly given his explicit rejection of the notion that we're now living in a racially equal society:

Having finally engaged the issue of race, Obama drew the correct policy implication. Social divisions are deepest when it comes to African American boys and young men: often betrayed by schools, abandoned by fathers, treated with suspicion, unable to find jobs, wandering through dysfunctional neighborhoods, locked in prison in vast numbers and denied basic civil rights (such as voting) for the rest of their lives. Obama has a unique standing to address the challenges of minority youth. As a young man, he was prone to trouble and might have easily gotten enmeshed in an unforgiving legal system. The president can effectively argue that first impressions are not always correct and that second chances are sometimes necessary.

Giving credit where credit is due, at times George W. Bush spoke inclusively. He did not focus on traditional race issues, but was clearly interested in leading his party toward the greater involvement of minorities, made sometimes clumsy statements about Islam that were intended to diminish anti-Muslim sentiments, and at least once spoke inclusively of atheists. Gerson may have authored some of those lines. However, by any measure including word and deed, Obama has done far better.

Gerson complains about the President's policy proposals,

But Obama’s speech deserves this criticism: Its policy proposals — training police, reconsidering “stand your ground” laws, more community dialogue and “soul-searching” — were weak. It was as though the administration’s policy apparatus had never really considered the matter before — that it was somehow ambushed by America’s most obvious policy challenge.

Let me interject that the fact that the President proposes certain measures that might prevent a young black male, armed only with skittles, from arousing the suspicions of an armed self-annointed protector of the neighborhood, does not mean that he might not propose additional measures if he were broadly addressing the issue of race across society. Gerson's complaint is actually that the President spoke about the Trayvon Martin case without turning the speech into a broad narrative on race relations. Perhaps the President should give such a speech, but Gerson offers no challenge to the President's explanation of why he chose a different approach:

There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven't seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have. On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there's the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can? Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.

Frankly, Gerson need only look at the racial demagoguery of his Republican peers to know that the President is correct.

Gerson's suggestions for policy proposals that the President should have included in the speech, I think, betray the fundamental weakness of his position:

The problem of African American boys and young men is a complex mix of lingering racial prejudice, urban economic dislocation, collapsing family structure, failing schools and sick, atomized communities. But is there really nothing practical that can be done? How about providing family supports — mentoring, fatherhood initiatives, teen pregnancy prevention and removing the Earned Income Tax Credit penalty for married couples? How about strong accountability measures to close the educational achievement gap instead of granting waivers that lower standards? How about support for faith-based institutions that reclaim lives from gangs? How about prison reform, so that mandatory minimum sentences are at least reduced? How about expanding substance abuse prevention and treatment, which seem to have fallen off the national agenda?

First, let's be honest, there was nothing particularly "African American" about Trayvon Martin's story, beyond that noted by the likes of Richard Cohen and Geraldo Rivera, which I will unfairly - but not all that unfairly - paraphrase as "He was a black kid in a hoodie, so who wouldn't have wanted to shoot him?" A seventeen year old with divorced parents, acting out at school, smoking pot on occasion, perhaps involved in a petty theft, sent to live with his father because his mother thought he could use a stronger male presence in his life... that's much more an "American story" than an "African American" story. The President's speech addressed the key issues - public perceptions and community attitudes that contribute to the perceptions that caused a guy with a gun to see a kid coming home from a store with a package of Skittles and make a cognitive leap to "F--king punks... These a--holes... They always get away".

Second, had the President followed Gerson's after-the-fact suggestion, Gerson's Republican peers would have merely expanded their list of complaints from "race-baiting" and "divisiveness" to "And now he's trying to get more handouts, more goodies, for his 'base'." Gerson has to know that, and has to know that his peers play a huge role in how, when initiated by a politician - and more so when that politician is Barack Obama - these discussions "end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have."

Third, alas, Gerson's policy proposals range from weak tea to platitudinous. Had the President make such proposals and pretended that they were significant, Gerson would be entirely justified in his complaint. The fact that this, after Gerson's years working with G.W. Bush, years in sinecures with so-called think tanks, and years of writing for the Washington Post, is the best Gerson has highlights how difficult these issues are to actually address in a meaningful manner, let alone solve.

1. "How about providing family supports — mentoring, fatherhood initiatives, teen pregnancy prevention and removing the Earned Income Tax Credit penalty for married couples?" - There is nothing wrong with advocating for "family supports", but Gerson's ideas are neither novel nor helpful. Is Gerson unaware of existing mentoring programs? Is he unaware that live births to teen mothers³ are on the decline? What does he imainge a "fatherhood initiative" to be, and why does he imagine it will have any impact on poverty? What in the world does "removing the Earned Income Tax Credit penalty for married couples" have to do with questions of race, and how does Gerson imagine that it will have a material impact on poverty?

2. "How about strong accountability measures to close the educational achievement gap instead of granting waivers that lower standards?" - Gerson was part of an administration led by a President who touted fraudulent educational statistics as something of a miracle, that he could replicate across the nation. That Administration foisted "No Child Left Behind" on the nation, a program built on the supposed principles that led to Houston's fabricated "miracle", and a decade later the program was a complete failure. The obvious, inherent flaws of NCLB led to a situation in which, but for waivers, very good schools would be classified as "failing" due to their "lack of improvement". Contrary to Gerson's suggestion the Obama Administration has been pushing school reforms that it hopes will be superior to NCLB, but it's not clear that a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to reform will do anything but repeat NCLB's biggest mistakes, effectively diminishing the quality of better schools by focusing on standardized test results, enriching vendors of those standardized tests at the expense of overall school funding, and causing more dedicaated teachers to leave the profession. With Gerson's exposure to the debate, and the failures of NCLB, it's astonishing that he believes that a call for "strong accountability measures to close the educational achievement gap" is an actual policy proposal and not an exhausted platitude from his early tenure with the Bush Administration.

3. "How about support for faith-based institutions that reclaim lives from gangs?" - Say what?

4. "How about prison reform, so that mandatory minimum sentences are at least reduced?" - While acknowledging the high rates of incarceration and contact with the criminal justice system for our society as a whole, and how much worse the numbers are for minority populations, I would like to see Gerson flesh out this idea: What crimes should have shorter sentences, how much shorter should those sentences be, and how will that have a material impact on race or poverty? For example, I've seen kids who are repeatedly caught selling drugs get ridiculous sentences as habitual offenders, and those sentences seem to me to be an absurd use of tax dollars and counter-productive to integrating those young men back into productive society, but shortening those sentences to something more reasonable isn't going to have any material impact on the economic plight of their communities. The fact that long sentences don't meaningfully deter drug trafficking, particularly street dealing, suggests that the underlying problem is economic.

5. "How about expanding substance abuse prevention and treatment, which seem to have fallen off the national agenda?" - No objection from me, but why is Gerson of the belief that drug abuse is primarily a problem of race or of the inner cities?

Also what, in any of Gerson's ideas, would have influenced the type of thought process that automatically translates "black teenager in a hoodie" into "danger to the community"?

I am going to assume that Gerson means well, that he's not just concern trolling, but that of itself raises questions. If it's so easy for a President to stand before a microphone and heal racial and ethnic divides, why is it that those divisions seemed to expand under the tenure of his former boss? Surely that was not what Gerson and his fellow speechwriters intended when penning speeches for G.W. - if it's as easy as Gerson suggests to "drive and shape a policy debate" through grand Presidential speeches, why did we at best tread water on these issues, even as Bush called for tolerance, pushed NCLB and faith-based initiatives, and the like?

My suggestion to Gerson is this: As you're a partisan Republican, you should spend less time worrying about what the President is not saying in his speech, and spend more time thinking about what the politicians of your party are or are not saying in theirs. Seriously - as much as I would like to believe that the President has a magical power to give a few speeches and move the country toward a post-racial ideal, I think it would actually be much more powerful and much more constructive if we instead heard those speeches come from the mouths of prominent, right-wing Republicans and their party leaders.⁴
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1. Although there is a possibility that his employer's website has a flawed search engine, an "advanced search" on the Washington Post website starting with Jan. 1, 1987, turned up no articles by Michael Gerson that even mention "affirmative action".

2. November 3, 2004, "I will be your president regardless of your faith... And if they choose not to worship, they're just as patriotic as your neighbor."

3. Given that Gerson apparently believes that teen parenthood has a dramatic, negative impact on the welfare of children and communities, one wonders if he's willing to reconsider his opposition to reproductive freedom - provision of contraception to teenagers, the morning after pill, access to safe, affordable abortion, and the like. Does he continue to hold that allowing access to abortion "seems like addressing poverty by doing away with the poor; like fighting disease by getting rid of those with diseases" - and if so, how does he reconcile that with his own argument that we need to reduce or eliminate pregnancies among poor teenagers?

4. Even better, House Republicans can pass legislation moving those ideas from concept to reality. [And then I woke up.]

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.

If Republicans Obstruct Voting Rights, They Can't Pin the Consequence on Roberts

Ross Douthat purports,

If you believe Chief Justice John Roberts Jr.’s more overheated liberal critics, last week’s Supreme Court decision invalidating a portion of the Voting Rights Act is designed to make sure African-American turnout never hits these highs again. The ruling will allow a number of (mostly Southern) states to change voting laws without the Justice Department’s pre-approval, which has liberals predicting a wave of Republican-led efforts to “suppress” minority votes — through voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting and other measures.

These predictions probably overstate the ruling’s direct impact on state election rules, which can still be challenged under other provisions of the Voting Rights Act and other state and federal laws. But it is possible that the decision will boost the existing Republican enthusiasm for voter ID laws, and hasten the ongoing, multistate push for their adoption.

I think there's an inherent tension between suggesting in one paragraph that an argument is a ridiculous slippery slope theory advanced by "overheated liberal critics", then in the next to say that the predictions of those "overheated liberal critics... probably overstate" the impact of the ruling. At first blush it would seem either that a characterization of the critics as "overheated liberal[s]" is unfair or that the risk of vote suppression is dramatically overstated by the suggestion that it "probably" won't occur - is it truly a coin toss? Perhaps Douthat means to suggest that although only "overheated liberal[s]" are concerned, a much larger population of liberals and conservatives underestimate the possibility that they're correct? I suspect it's poor editing.

The "gift" Douthat perceives is that Republicans will continue their effort to disenfranchise African American voters:

A 2 percent dip is still enough to influence a close election. But voter ID laws don’t take effect in a vacuum: as they’re debated, passed and contested in court, they shape voter preferences and influence voter enthusiasm in ways that might well outstrip their direct influence on turnout. They inspire registration drives and education efforts; they help activists fund-raise and organize; they raise the specter of past injustices; they reinforce a narrative that their architects are indifferent or hostile to minorities.

This, I suspect, is part of the story of why African-American turnout didn’t fall off as expected between 2008 and 2012. By trying to restrict the franchise on the margins, Republican state legislators handed Democrats a powerful tool for mobilization and persuasion, and motivated voters who might otherwise have lost some of their enthusiasm after the euphoria of “Yes We Can” gave way to the reality of a stagnant, high-unemployment economy.

Oddly, despite having noted that tjhe "effects [of voter ID laws] are relatively limited" and that the resulting "reduction [in voting] crosses racial lines, rather than affecting African-Americans exclusively", Douthat seems unconcerned by those efforts on voters. His concern seems to be only that his party of preference may suffer for its actions. Douthat shares some numbers:

As Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics has pointed out, for all the talk about how important Hispanics are to the conservative future, the Republican Party could substantially close the gap with Democrats in presidential elections if its post-Obama share of the African-American vote merely climbed back above 10 percent — a feat achieved by Bob Dole and both Bushes. If that share climbed higher still, the Democratic majority would be in danger of collapse.

Such a turn of events wouldn’t just be good news for Republicans. It would be good news for black Americans, as it would mean that both parties were competing for their votes.

First, an implicit admission that Republican "voter ID" initiatives and similar measures were pursued in order to suppress the African American vote, and now an implicit admission that the Republican Party is not attempting to compete with the Democratic Party for Republican votes? But there must be something more to transitioning from the present state of affairs to a context in which "both parties [a]re competing for [African American] votes" than the Republican Party's merely retreating from efforts to suppress African American voter turnout. Douthat does not explain what that might be.

As Jon Stewart put it, if the Republican Party wants to win more African American votes, "You can’t just yadda yadda yadda the last 60 Republican years". Other than "Let's back off voter suppression efforts," what does Douthat suggest? Meanwhile, rather than suggesting that an outcome the Democratic Party opposed, and which Republican partisans have been seeking for decades, is a gift to the Democrats, perhaps Douthat should ponder the fact that if he's correct it will still be the Republican Party that cuts off its nose to spite its face. The gift in that imagined future is not from Roberts to the Democratic Party, it would be from the Republicans.

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Credit (Only) When Credit is Due

Rush Limbaugh rant,

We have achieved, brilliant, highly accomplished African-Americans, blacks, Hispanics, you name it, throughout the Republican Party. They serve in office. Many of them are CEOs. It doesn't count. It doesn't count in the media. It doesn't count in the Democrat Party [sic]. It doesn't count with Obama voters about whom it is said that stuff matters most. It doesn't count. Why not? Why, putting it somewhat coarsely, why doesn't the Republican Party get credit for Condoleezza Rice? Why doesn't the Republican Party get credit for Marco Rubio? Why doesn't the Republican Party get credit for Suzanne Martinez?

The short answer: You'll get the credit you want when you stop acting as if treating minorities as equal should result in your getting credit. When you realize there's more to the party's difficulties than a head count, and that your very act of singling out individuals who you believe justify your getting "credit" verges on declaring their prominence in the party to reflect tokenism.

When will they "count"? Perhaps when you stop counting - or even better, when it no longer occurs to you that a list of names and a head count is a basis upon which to demand "credit".

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 and the New Southern Strategy

Remember when Romney bragged after his NAACP speech,

By the way, I had the privilege of speaking today at the NAACP convention in Houston and I gave them the same speech I am giving you. I don't give different speeches to different audiences alright. I gave them the same speech.

We knew even then that Romney wsn't telling the truth - you don't have to work so hard to stay "off the record" at every single private fund raising events and meeting if you're saying the same thing in every venue.

I'm reminded of Santorum's comments, his expression that he didn't want to make the lives of bleah people better by giving them "somebody else's money". We know who the "bleah" people are, even if we're pretending that Santorum didn't catch himself half-way through a moment of honesty.

When Romney rails against people who don't pay federal income tax, he's not actually speaking about people who don't pay federal income tax. That's simply the latest shorthand for "bleah people" - the undeserving poor. He's taking advantage of the fact that most people don't differentiate between FICA and income tax, or even between federal income tax and state and local taxes, and that a lot of retirees, disabled workers, disabled veterans, people who collect unemployment, and similar groups of people who pay no federal income tax don't see themselves as falling into that category. They, unlike the undeserving poor, earned their benefits. (Never mind that Romney would put most or all of those benefits on the chopping block for reduction or elimination.)

If you look at the 47% you'll find a lot of Republican voters, and Romney knows that. You'll even find irrational voters - an acquaintance of my wife's supports her family through her husband's SSI (he lacks enough work credits for SSD, she has never worked), Medicare, food stamps, housing subsidies and the like, but is very concerned that Obama is going to take away her benefits and give them to somebody undeserving, presumably a "bleah person", and always votes Republican. Perhaps if people within the 47% had a better sense of who they are, the Republicans would have to change the code. But up to now it has worked, with Republican voters in that 47% "knowing" that the rhetoric is about somebody else.

The problem for Romney is less that he's using the code, and more that he refuses to admit that he was speaking in code. As long as he doubles down on the, "Yes, I really meant that my job as President would not involve worrying about anybody who doesn't pay federal income tax," he'll subject himself to questions about the classes of Republican voters who fall into that class. And if he starts qualifying his statement along the lines of, "Retirees who depend on Social Security? Disabled veterans? People who have worked their whole lives but can't find a job? I actually do care about them," sooner or later he'll be talking about a number far less than 47%. And that could put a very different complexion on things.

How the Republican Party Can Appeal to Minority Voters

In her "What if Barack Obama had been a Republican" column, Kathleen Parker, well, doesn't quite get it. She claims,

Obama was elected not only because of his attractive eloquence but because we are fundamentally a good people who value fairness and equality. Electing Obama was part of our reward to ourselves. It allowed us to feel that we were this good and this big.

She credits the President with devising a campaign "message of hope that felt like honey after eight bitter years of terrorism and war" and of appealing to "our best instincts" and desire to "become a purple, post-racial nation, never again to be divided", concluding with the rhetorical question,

Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

Perhaps she's speaking for herself, but I'm recalling a bitter, partisan election fight in which Obama was attacked and ridiculed, called a lightweight, a celebrity, and in which (shocker) his supporters were accused of only voting for him because they got some sort of thrill out of voting for an African American President (and you know those African Americans - they always vote on race, right?) The notions that Republicans pushed during the campaign - that Obama wasn't a "whole-blooded" American, that he didn't get our values, that he didn't understand business, that he was a socialist, possibly a Muslim, if not a terrorist himself certainly a guy who "pals around" with them, coalesced into the nastiness that is encapsulated by birtherism - with our reaching the point where one Republican candidate for the presidency was a birther, and the guy who came out on top attempted to rally his supporters with a birther joke (his after-the-fact attempt to explain it away being wholly unconvincing). Some people, Dinesh D'Souza comes to mind, are continuing to rake in millions by launching scurrilous, fabricated race- and ethnicity-based attacks on the President, who cares about the facts. A Member of Congress felt at liberty to break more than two centuries of comity and screech, "You lie" during a State of the Union Address - and became a Republican Party hero.

For that matter, has there ever been an incident analogous to Jan Brewer's disgraceful finger-jabbing at the President of the United States? For Justice Scalia's embarrassing rant from the bench, not over the case he was deciding but over the President's role in current events in the political world? What of all of the yammering about teleprompters, flag pins, not knowing how to behave in the Oval Office, bowing, fabricated stories about "apologizing for America"?

How does Parker summarize that history?

Republicans were certain that Obama was all style over substance, but their criticisms quickly were interpreted in some quarters as racial animus.

Calling the attacks on Obama an accusation that he puts style ahead of substance is... a rather disingenuous summary of what actually occurred. And while Parker's acknowledgment that "some who call themselves Republicans also can be called racist" is true, that would be an example of what is called "soft-pedaling". This goes way beyond the parameters of "racist content of some political dialogue" that is "out there" "on the Internet".

Parker attempts an artful dance around race issues, but her column is consistent with the right-wing trope that President Obama managed to be elected not based upon his skill as a politician but because white people felt guilty, and ignores the fact that, whether you like or hate those accomplishments, his first term accomplishments stack up impressively against pretty much any modern President. And that, despite inheriting a disastrous recession and a Republican Party that perceived great reward in trying to damage the President and obstruct his agenda - and reaped that reward in the midterm election. It's also more or less what Karl Rove is presently arguing, not a racist argument as such, but,

[S]peaking about racial politics clinically, astringently, the way political professionals do -- it is a shorthand that, as his audience's knowing laughter suggests, all these politicos comprehend. The same sort of analysis leads operatives of all stripes to make recommendations about how to energize target groups by exploiting race and class divides. That's the campaign we're all experiencing.

More directly, compare Parker's argument to Rove's description of North Carolina:

There, he said, in 2008 "New South independents" (meaning, I think, white independents) who were "racial moderates, economic conservatives" had supported Obama in the belief that "this will be really good for the country -- let's put the issue of race behind us." But now they are disappointed in Obama because he's "done a lousy job on the economy, and he's not a fiscal conservative." This analysis tells a story that Obama was elected, in the first place, because of his race, but that whites now think this was a failed experiment. The echo is pretty hard to miss: We gave a guy a boost he didn't entirely deserve in order to correct a historic wrong; too bad he wasn't up to it. Are white voters ready to conclude that Obama is an affirmative-action president

Although I think both of them know better, neither Parker nor Rove are willing to publicly articulate a theory under which the 2008 election was simply another election in which the better politician won. And no, I don't think it's a coincidence that Parker and Rove are simultaneously advancing the argument that "Obama's really an affirmative action President", an argument that has previously been raised less artfully by others, just as we enter the last few months of the 2012 election campaign.

Parker offers a, dare I say, whitewashed history of how the Republican Party found itself at a disadvantage with minority voters:

Republicans can honestly boast of having once been the party of firsts. The first Hispanic, African American, Asian American and Native American in the Senate were all Republicans. But that was before the GOP went south, banished its centrists and embraced social conservatives in a no-exit marriage.

Actually, through the Reagan Presidency, the Republican Party included a great many centrists. While Parker is correct that most of them would be purged from the modern party in the name of "social conservatism", the fact is that many (using Parker's phrase) "blacks and other minorities" are both socially conservative and deeply religious, so the realignment of the party in that direction would not of itself create a race issue. The unmentioned history? The Democratic Party's embrace of civil rights, and the Republican Party's conclusion that it could rise on the basis of its "Southern strategy". Parker knows this:

African Americans are not a monolithic group, obviously, and many likely would find comfort in the promises of smaller government, lower taxes, balanced budgets, school choice and so on that Mitt Romney put on the table Thursday night.

Parker notes that "appearances matter", but the problem is much less one of appearances and much more one of policy. The transformation of the Democratic Party to the adaptive, inclusive party that Parker describes was the product of a policy change. In terms of elections, it was a mixed bag - had the Republicans not pursued the Southern strategy and instead embraced the civil rights movement, Parker would not be writing this column and her fantasy of having an inclusive Republican Party might be our reality. She would not have to be brushing off dog whistles as "exaggerated sensitivity", for the same reason that Republican attacks on Joe Biden's "chains" comment failed - the Party of Lincoln needs to recall this political insight: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

The solution to the Republican Party's conundrum is not to invite people of color to its convention, then declare,

The impression that Republicans don’t welcome blacks and other minorities is, however, demonstrably false. Note the number of minority Republican governors recently elected: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

The solution is to declare that the Southern strategy is an artifact of the past, that overt racist acts and statements are career-ending, that speaking in code on racial issues will not be tolerated, that there is to be no more assumption or argument that anybody of color on the other side's team succeeded only because of white guilt and affirmative action, and that the party's official platform will explicitly embrace civil rights and equality.

Are any of my suggestions difficult to implement? I don't think so. Costly? In dollar terms, they're cheap. Controversial? They certainly shouldn't be. So let's give 'em a try and see what happens. Deal?

Update: Via Atrios, a quote from Lindsey Graham that echoes Parker's sentiments:

“The demographics race we’re losing badly,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.). “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

I'm surprised Graham was so candid, even more so that he was that candid on the record. The line about "generating enough angry white guys" sounds a bit tongue-in-cheek, but Graham might be well-served to reflect on how the GOP's efforts to manufacture outrage among white males play into their problems attracting minority votes.

Why the Romney-Ryan Medicare Scam is "Working"

In the interpretation of Scott Galupo,

This will sound harsh, but here goes. The brilliant cynicism of the Romney-Ryan Mediscare strategy is the bargain it strikes with the affluent white 55-and-over demographic — a critical segment of the GOP base this cycle. It says, “We won’t touch your benefits,” as it implies that Obama is taking those benefits and transferring them to his layabout black “base.”

That is, Romney and Ryan have concluded that today's seniors don't much care if, fifteen or twenty years from now, the next generation of seniors can't get decent medical care, but that they can be convinced to vote Republican if they are scared into believing that Obama will cut their benefits - even better if they can be led to believe that the supposed benefit cut will be used to fund a handout to the "undeserving poor". I don't want to keep harping on Romney's character, given that he has so little character upon which to harp, but....

Update: Daniel Larison concurs:

As it turned out, [my prior analysis of voter trends] understated how many elderly voters were moving into the Republican camp. 59% of this cohort supported Republican House candidates in the midterms. This is the result that Romney and Ryan would like to reproduce this year. What has changed is that Ryan has gone from being a bit player in the campaign to demagogue changes to Medicare in the ACA to being one of the lead demagogues. Most elderly voters don’t need to be convinced that the GOP is the party of the Medicare status quo for them. They already believe it to be true.

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.

Kathleen Parker's Continued Embrace of Race-Baiting

It's good that we have Kathleen Parker around to remind us of the fine distinction between racism and race-baiting. As we all know, Obama's race makes it more difficult to frame attacks on him despite his shortage of (as Parker puts it) "blood equity". The shame, apparently, is that the proponents of the ad aren't doing something more respectable, like offering insipid arguments that question the President's testosterone levels or imply that he's a (pussy) cat.

Parker argues,

Raising Wright now would have been a serious miscalculation and would have been interpreted as attempting to inspire racial animus. But it is unfair to smear Davis as a racist, as some have suggested. He obviously created a proposal based on his sense that this would appeal to Ricketts, who said upon viewing the rejected ­McCain ad: “If the nation had seen that ad, they’d never have elected Barack Obama.”

By the same token, a politician who cynically embraced the Republican "Southern Strategy" cannot be assumed to be racist by virtue of his actions. It's all but a given that many of them were cynical opportunists. Parker argues, Parker's editorial neatly elides any reference to the proposal's description of the President. Charles Blow is not as charitable:

“The metrosexual black Abe Lincoln has emerged as a hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician with more than a bit of the trimmer in him.”...

The proposal was racially charged, and its authors knew it. So they called for the enlistment of “an extremely literate, conservative African-American” as a spokesman to defend it. This should raise the hackles of black Republicans. There is a base that sees them as able to do racial damage while protecting the party from racial blame.

Given her own history of attacks on the President's masculinity, Parker can be presumed to be fully on board with trying to characterize him as a metrosexual. I am not sure if the President's blood is "full" enough, though, for the Lincoln comparison - we can only hope Parker shares her thoughts on that point. But here's the thing: if this isn't about race and race-baiting, what's the word "black" doing in there?

Parker whines,

The leaking of the document and the prominent display of the story have been a boon to Obama. They provided yet another welcome distraction, as well as a helpful fundraising tool, and smeared Romney by association.

If Romney is correct, the hurt from the leak of the plan is far less than that which he would have suffered from its execution. And as for guilt by association, although you and I might hesitate to make that argument, didn't Parker just get through telling us that in her view it's fair game?

The Wright Way and the Wrong Way

I've read a lot of commentary on the silly notion of a bunch of wealthy right-wingers that it would be sensible to attack the President based upon the footage of Reverend Jeremiah Wright's fiery sermons - footage we all saw four years ago. Never mind that there's no evidence that the President endorses Wrights views or attended the sermons at which the contentious remarks were made. There is a pervasive myth that McCain somehow would have won the 2008 race had only he been willing to attack Obama on race issues, and the apparent idea is to run a "Who are you going to believe - me, or your lying eyes" campaign depicting the President as an angry black man who has spent a lifetime merely pretending to be the calm centrist you see before you.

A lot of the commentary on Romney's effort to shut down that proposed campaign argues that Romney wants to keep the election focused on the economy, or sees potential in alienating moderate voters who may well be offended by race-baiting ads. And perhaps both of those theories are correct. But I see little evidence in Romney's own statements that he wants to limit the debate to the economy - the focus on the economy seems instead to come from his inability to gain traction on any of the other issues he's raised, such as the confabulated "apology tour", the missile treaty with Russia, his incorrect prognostications on the auto industry bailout, and the like.

On the other hand, one thing Romney does not have working in his favor is his religion. Despite his making a strong effort to minimize the differences between Mormonism and Christianity, evangelical voters continue to have a problem with him. It's difficult to distinguish to what degree their problem arises from his having, in the past, been sympathetic to gay rights, taken strong pro-choice positions, and having otherwise endorsed positions at odds with those held by religious social conservatives, as opposed to his faith, but it is fair to say that it was discomfort with Romney that buoyed Rick Santorum's campaign despite his obvious weaknesses as a candidate.

Romney has wrapped up the nomination process, and the polls thus predictably show that evangelical voters are lining up behind him. (Who else are they going to vote for?) Let's just say, this would be an awkward time for Romney to effectively make it "fair game" to attack a candidate based upon what he may have heard in Church. Given the nature of the Mormon priesthood and Romney's personal family history, there is little doubt that he has been exposed to religious teaching and preaching that many Americans would find alien and that, strictly speaking, evangelical voters would regard as dooming the believer to hell.