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It’s been probably a decade since I voluntarily gave an honest answer when asked for my race. I will be listing my race as “American” for the Census, and I wholeheartedly encourage everyone else to do so as well. We can’t make the racial bean counters stop their counting, but we can deprive them of beans.
Apollo posted this at 9:52 PM EST on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Race
Although he’s only the second man of color to serve in the Supreme Court, the Backstreet Boys have more standing in the black community than Clarence Thomas. That’s because he looks to the Constitution as “colorblind,” says he’s a man who just happens to be black and opposes government programs intended to help minorities. I’m not sure if the late Thurgood Marshall would want to pop Clarence ’side his head with his gavel, but there are plenty of blacks who would volunteer to do it for him.
Yeah, they went there.
This sparked some jackass from the California YAF to make this speech:
It gets better: after the speech, one of the attendees confronted said jackass — Ryan Sorba — about his comments. Some ugly words followed between them, which ended with Sorba physically threatening his opponent.
As others have noted, this is rather incredible, and in a good way: CPACers just booed a homophobic jerk off the stage, though whether it was for his homophobia or his jerkitude remains unclear (I’m guessing, but the boos in the first speech sure sound like they could be Sorba’s and they would certainly be consistent with his behavior in his speech). Still, it’s heartening to see CPACers of all people — the same folks who, a few years ago, thought it was hilarious when Anne Coulter called John Edwards a faggot — to reject some homophobic jerk in favor of a liberty-loving gay group.
* Alan Keyes certainly is embarrassing, but that feeling shouldn’t be limited to Black folks.
Tom posted this at 1:49 PM EST on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 as Ladies, Gentlemen, and the Rest of us, Race
Powerline has an interesting discussion of “racism” in modern America. Paul Mirengoff has this truism:
[T]here’s a scam being played out here, and at several levels. At the first level, conduct that isn’t really racist is sucked into that category. This increases the reach of political correctness and the ability of the likes of President Obama and Jesse Jackson to pass judgment on whites who aren’t sufficiently careful. At the second level, the useful liberal is absolved of “racism,” where the conservative would not be.
I’ve got a pretty low opinion of the Senate, and a pretty high threshold for people saying stupid crap. The comparison between Reid and Lott is useful, insofar as neither of them said anything racist, but at most said something insensitive or stupid. I liked seeing Lott lose his leadership position in 2002 mostly because I didn’t like Lott to begin with.* Reid’s comment is more directly racial than was Lott’s, but it’s main sin is using a word of questionable taste. Honestly, I think Reid’s comment that Obama has “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” is hilarious, as it attempts to describe the way that Obama changes his manner of speech depending on whether he’s speaking to a largely black or a largely white audience.** “Negro dialect” isn’t the phrase I’d use, but we all know what he meant, and it’s true.
*Knowing what we know now of how terribly the Republicans would fumble their majority in 2003-06, particularly during and after 2005, “Would we be better off if Trent Lott had remained the Republicans’ senate leader”? is the most interesting hypothetical I’ve thought of in ages. I’d actually forgotten about Trent Lott’s existence until the past day or two. But I think it’s indisputable that Bill Frist was, at best, no better than Lott. I think Lott might have done more to beat back the judicial fillibusters in 2005-06. Having a Senate majority leader whose house was destroyed in Katrina would have been a small boon during a time when small, stupid stories held sway in politics. Mitch McConnell strikes me as, more or less, Trent Lott with ever so slightly more scruples but significantly worse hair. They’re about the same, though, in terms of leading people to believe that Senate Republicans are mostly white guys who sound like Foghorn Leghorn.
**Q: Who’s the racist here – the guy who literally speaks to people of different races in different tones of voice, or the guy who points it out using a word that some don’t like? A: Rush Limbaugh. I hear he favors slavery.
Apollo posted this at 2:24 AM EST on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 as Race, Running with the antelope, Walking the Cat Backwards
Don’t try to join all the different metaphors in this Shelby Steele column, but it’s very much worth reading. A few excerpts:
Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency. . . .
I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness—not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world. . . .
He has not had to gamble his popularity on his principles, and it is impossible to know one’s true beliefs without this. In the future he may stumble now and then into a right action, but there is no hard-earned center to the man out of which he might truly lead. . . .
I’m not going to exert the effort required to search for all the posts, back in 2007 and early 2008, where I observed that Obama was an empty suit. But I thought it and said it quite frequently. I’ve admired Steele for a long time, but, obviously, Steele’s column neither proves nor disproves my point. Still, I’m extremely pleased to see that a year into the Obama administration, Steele and I are on the same wavelength. If I’m right, I’m right. But if I’m wrong, I’m hard pressed to think of better company.
Apollo posted this at 2:49 AM EST on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 as CHANGE!, Race
Look I’m not one of the knee jerk “dissident” conservatives who believe everything wrong with the right can be traced back to Rush Limbaugh.
But seriously?
Is there any way to construe that other than naked racism? Did anyone here listen to the full context of the quote? Maybe HuffPo is taking it out of context? (Which would not be shocking in the least.)
Jamie posted this at 11:27 AM EST on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 as Buffoon Watch, Race
While I generally can’t bring myself to care about the couple that crashed a party at the White House, their latest party crash is worth noting. Rich white people using the bus boy’s entrance to sneak into a meeting of black people. I’m not saying that it’s the fulfillment of Rev. King’s dream, but it’s something.
Also worth noting in the story is this great moment in comma usage: “Photos show the couple among the likes of Senator Roland Burris and his wife, Patrick Kennedy, and Star Jones.” Paging Jane Austen.
Apollo posted this at 11:47 AM EST on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Race
Thank you, Jonah.
Jamie posted this at 2:09 PM EDT on Friday, September 18th, 2009 as Race, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet
This is one of the most blatant, dangerous lies ever committed on cable TV. And that’s really saying something.
H/T: Radley
Tom posted this at 8:58 AM EDT on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 as Journalism, Race
Next time somebody tells me how wonderful and sincere our president is, I’m going to point him to this:
On the meeting’s being dubbed the “Beer Summit,” Obama said, “It’s a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys. This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day, and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other, and that’s really all it is.
“This is not a university seminar. It is not a summit. It’s an attempt to have some personal interaction when an issue has become so hyped and so symbolic that you lose sight of just the fact that these are people involved,” he said.
He said he would be surprised if the media makes the meeting out to be more important than his meeting Thursday with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Philippines, but “the press has surprised me before.”
Here’s the accompanying picture:
Tom posted this at 8:39 AM EDT on Friday, July 31st, 2009 as Race, That's Not Change!
For the supposed greatest public speaker of his generation, our president sure has to apologize for his word choice pretty frequently. But what does this mean?
“Because this has been ratcheting up and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could have calibrated those words differently.”
He doesn’t actually apologize for what he said, or even imply that he actually did anything wrong. It is indeed unfortunate that he maligned the police with his words (”gave an impression” – he said they acted “stupidly” and then went on a rant about racism). And he indeed could have chosen his words differently. But he stands by the position that it’s his job to run off at the mouth about these sorts of matters. And he continues with his old shtick that this isn’t about him or about any particular incident, it’s about America’s race problem.
My hope is is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what’s called a teachable moment, where all of us, instead of pumping up the volume, spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities, and that instead of flinging accusations, we can all be a little more reflective in terms of what we can do to contribute to more unity.
So we should learn from what he did. He shouldn’t have done anything differently. He could have done something differently, but he wasn’t wrong to do what he did. We’re all just wrong to have made a big deal about it.
Apollo posted this at 2:42 PM EDT on Friday, July 24th, 2009 as Fake Apologies, Race
On the Dish, Conor posts the following from a reader, who argues Gatesgate will wake-up white America to black victimization:
White Americans don’t necessarily relate to the young men who are arrested for driving while black, walking while black, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time while black. You can’t convince white Americans that the law is biased against blacks because whites believe (without necessarily admitting it to themselves) that young black men get arrested so disproportionately and go to prison more often because they deserve to.
And by whites, I don’t mean just Neanderthals. I mean most of the people you will ever run into. They assume that black men are more disposed to crime and so they don’t have to pay attention when you or Radley Balko or someone else points out how many have been railroaded.
This is patently absurd. However much sympathy Gates deserves — and I think he deserves some — there should be little question that he’ ended up in jail primarily because of his own belligerence and assumption that Sgt. Crowley was a racist.* As Apollo points out, that conclusion is based as much on Gates’ own comments about the incident as Crowley’s police report.
Contra Conor’s reader, the Gates case is a terrible example of the kind of police abuse that Radley Balko has brought to light, especially those with a racial angle. What pains me about this is that the next time Radley writes about something genuinely horrific, a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and assume it’s just another story about a whining black guy with a chip on his shoulder. Cory Maye deserves better.
* I’m more than willing to consider that Crowley’s behavoir was less than exemplary and I confess I’m sketpical as to whether or not Gates should have been arrested.
Tom posted this at 8:45 AM EDT on Friday, July 24th, 2009 as Race
This account of his own arrest from Henry Gates is impressive. He’s correct about one thing: the degree of open racial animosity and stereotyping that occurred during this engagement is shocking.
Apollo posted this at 9:15 PM EDT on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 as Race
Make it this one:
As someone who hates the stupid show of fealty to racial interest groups, and as someone who suspects Barbara Boxer’s middle name rhymes with Witch, that was thoroughly gratifying.
Apollo posted this at 1:15 PM EDT on Thursday, July 16th, 2009 as Race
I started reading this review because I thought it was going to be about white guys with Asian chicks. It sorta was. But it mostly wasn’t. Instead, it turned into some weird Said-ian rant where the reviewer turns what, at worst, seems to be the author’s fetish into some sort of vile racism. That’s what I get for reading a review from some guy who has a column in The Guardian: you don’t toe the po-mo line, you’re a racist.
It seems that the author’s thesis is something along the lines of this: through sexual interactions between East and West, the Eastern harem and open prostitution culture was turned into a generally monogamous culture, and the Western culture of shaming sex was turned into a much more permissive sexual culture. It sounds sorta vaguely interesting, if you’re into that sort of thing, but, again, I started reading because I thought it was going to be about white guys with Asian chicks.
At this point we get the truly boring part of Hari’s review, where he insists on continuing his condemnation rather than to actually be interesting:
This is, in the end, a darker and bleaker story than the one Bernstein wants to tell. European and American men really did find sexual liberation in the East. Some returned home and helped to sexually liberate their own countries in ways we all benefit from today. But the freedom came at the cost of exploiting an extreme form of patriarchy in the countries they went to, and to imply that the beaten-down, deeply deprived women wanted it is revolting.
An interesting discussion is this: if the author’s thesis is to be believed, how much Western sexual liberation is worth how much Eastern sexual exploitation? That is, how much value do we place on the trade-offs here. Leftists are uninteresting because they don’t like to talk about tradeoffs. This is a problem of ideologues generally, but it is particularly a problem of Leftists; conservatives, as keepers of the Tragic flame, frequently view trade-offs as a part of their ideology. This is why we are party poopers.
But the situation Hari outlines in the paragraph above doesn’ts strike me as dark or bleak in any serious way. On the one hand, he says we have a culture gaining someting “we all benefit from” (whether that’s true or not, I won’t discuss; this is about Hari’s argument). On the other, we have the mere “exploitation” of an already existing “extreme form of patriarchy.” I’m no expert of the sex lives of Flaubert and Burton, but it doesn’t sound likely that any additional women were forced into sexual servitude to accomodate them. Rather, they took advantage of women who were already subjugated. That doesn’t make it right, but the end result of Flaubert and Burton refusing to take advantage of these women would simply have been some Eastern man stepping up to the plate as a pinch hitter.
So on the one hand, Hari believes that all of Western civilization benfitted from this. On the other, we have some Eastern women who were occaisionally exploited by Westerners rather than Easterners. If that’s not Pareto Optimal, it’s at least very close. But instead of noting this obvious implication of what he’s saying, Hari would rather get on his post-modern high horse, and negate a large, culture-wide benefit with a few scattered tragedies that resulted in no ultimate net loss. As I say: uninteresting.
Apollo posted this at 12:44 AM EDT on Sunday, July 5th, 2009 as Philosophy, Race
Barry on his Supreme Court nominee:
I think that when she’s appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is
Considering that he nominated someone who “hopes” that “Latina women” make better judges than “white males,” I’m a little curious about what he considers “nonsense.” Because what she said struck me as, plainly, nonsense. For him to call criticism of her “nonsense” makes me wonder whether he agrees with what she said.
Apollo posted this at 12:39 AM EDT on Saturday, May 30th, 2009 as CHANGE!, I, For One, Welcome Our Judicial Overlords!, Race
