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David Harsanyi: Is This a Teachable Moment on Race?
When a story is too good to be true, it probably is.
It is safe to say that conservative gadfly Andrew Breitbart — whose notoriety exploded after helping expose ACORN’s tax-assistance-for-hookers program — ignored this journalistic truism when he rushed to release tapes of a speech by Shirley Sherrod.
Yet faster than an administrative assistant in the U.S. Department of Agriculture could type the words “we are in the midst of conducting an internal investigation,” the administration canned Sherrod in what is, no doubt, a particularly terrible time for the White House to be embroiled in any sort of scandal.
Whatever the sins of the participating parties, however, the most peculiar aspect of this kerfuffle has been the onslaught of manufactured distress and outrage leveled by many in the media over the very idea that a political activist might accuse an opponent of racism without sufficient vetting.
Because, you know, that sort of thing happens elsewhere.
Asked whether there was anything Americans could learn from this regrettable incident — considering President Barack Obama famously called for more dialogue on the topic when running for office — White House press secretary Robert Gibbs answered, “Well, look, I think this is one of those teachable moments.”
Let me suggest one lesson the nation might take from the Breitbart/Sherrod story: Let’s take a breather from any more national dialoguing on the issue of race. Please.
After all, can anyone recall the last productive conversation on the topic? Whenever we hear about race in politics these days, it typically is being wielded as a weapon to smear entire political movements, delegitimize a genuine national debate and ratchet up anger over imaginary slights.
Recently, Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller published e-mails from JournoList — the now-defunct virtual gathering place where 400 left-wing journalists engaged in off-the record conversations, bounced ideas off one another, talked about messaging and codified their lock stepping.
In one ugly missive, we find Spencer Ackerman of the left-wing Washington Independent chiming in during the Rev. Jeremiah Wright debate: “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Who cares, right? It must be noted that the majority of professional journalists — liberal or not — do not throw around irresponsible accusations. But for conservatives, this is just more confirmation that racism is often used to chill debate.
But it’s likely more complicated. Many progressives probably sincerely believe that proponents of free-market ideology, for instance, are inherently racist simply because their positions are (allegedly) damaging for minority communities. Surely, this is how someone rationalizes the disgusting act of character assassination.
Perhaps it’s because institutional racism has been eradicated in this country that activists who see all policy through the prism of class and race are forced to try to reinvent what it means to be a racist. For instance, if you believe that the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution still should mean something, you’re a “Tenther” and probably a fan of Jim Crow. If you’re worried about the president’s policies, you’re actually a bigot.
Nothing is as it seems.
So the Sherrod incident should be a teachable moment for the left, as well. It illustrates how easily a reckless charge of racism can destroy someone. And why, perhaps, we should stop injecting race into every argument.
— David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Click here for more information, or click here to contact him.
Comments
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» on 07.23.10 @ 07:33 PM
The angry right wing will resort to anything to attempt to elevate the failed, bankrupt conservative ideology through their sad efforts to discredit centrists and progressives. No, most electoral fraud isn’t caused by ACORN but by RNC-engineered “voter caging” an illegal practice that has disenfranchised millions of voters and denied Americans their choice of presidents twice in the past decade. Out of control federal spending, elevating the national debt into the stratosphere and expansion of government via the Pentagon? You have to look to Reagan, Bush I and Bush II for object lessons on that, not at Carter and Clinton. Agenda-driven distortions of reality and outright propaganda disseminated through “think tanks” and public policy organizations directly into the news media? The Republicans INVENTED it and have reaped the benefits through garbage such as Fox News, talk radio and their army of fascist talking heads on the airwaves and in print. Closeted gay hate merchants like Matt Drudge, Andrew Breitbart and their ilk are living personifications of the vainglorious, spiteful and racist poison that simply oozes out of the GOP, Tea Party and right wing slime machine’s pores.
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» on 07.24.10 @ 07:21 AM
Here’s real beauty of a quote: “Perhaps it’s because institutional racism has been eradicated in this country that activists who see all policy through the prism of class and race are forced to try to reinvent what it means to be a racist.” Honestly, Darsanyi’s sarcasm so completely permeates everything he writes I cannot tell if he’s serious when he says this, but I suspect that he is, and this statement has just about everything wrong with it.
Institutional racism has most definitely NOT been eradicated in this country, it has been driven underground. Those are not the same thing. Just look at Fox’s glee at the Shirley Sherrod tape, or the Van Jones “scandal”, or the HL Gates incident: they (Fox) are drunk with their own power of influence and their mastery of playing covert racial politics while being able to deny same. A plentitude of examples are available to those with an open mind.
“...Activists who see all policy through the prism of class and race” is an insult to sociopolitical activists who are motivated by these issues. That’s what activists do: work on a specific issue. Substitute “abortion”, “energy and the environment”, “gun laws” or “public education” for “class and race” and see if Darsanyi’s sneer applies.
“...Reinvent what it means to be a racist.” Believe me, there are a slew of people who don’t know what it means to be a racist, and the subtleties that epithet describes. It’s not just a bull-necked white guy with a swastika tatoo, or a frothing Black Panther Party zealot. Racism is a continuum of behavior and thought, with Hitler at one end and Gandi at the other (or pick your own exemplars, but that in itself is revealing) upon which all of us fall. The claim of “colorblindness” is in reality a nearly unreachable ideal, and used most recently by the right as an unassailable lever of argumentation. None of us are truly colorblind in our hearts except those who have done diligent, long-term soul searching and real hands-on work, but we can all modify our actions and words towards that ideal.
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» on 07.24.10 @ 11:51 AM
empty do you actually spend time sitting in the basement thinking up these inane commentaries. If you do, you are wasting your time….just regurgitate your old comments and then cut and paste. My god kid get out once and a while and enjoy life, this hate you have bottled up is going to make you old before your time and is eating you alive. Have mom pack you a nice PBJ, go to the park, sit down and just listen to nature. Whew.
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» on 07.24.10 @ 01:39 PM
Racism exists in the minds of those who believe race is important. The more people shout they are not racist the more their racist behavior becomes evident. I taught my children to be color blind, not by words but by actions. I simply treat people according to their behavior not their skin color or ethnic genetic make up. What we find in our new transparent presidency and racist culture is now behavior is excused and ethnicity is what it’s all about. If you challenge an illegal alien, who by their very presence in our country makes them a criminal, you are a racist. Criticize a black president, you are a racist. Doesn’t matter if the illegal is by their very behavior wrong, calling them out makes it racists in the racist mindset. Where does this institutional racism come from? The same minds that gave you the racist policies of affirmative action and bilingual education, liberal racist elites. People who think applying special treatment will hide their deep seated hatred and racism. They are wrong, it only exposes that nasty racial hatred bred into every white liberal/progressive elitist and their hate mongering minions in the party that brought you the Ku Klux Klan, the democrat party.
Ooooh, my fellow liberals, feel that sting? Not nice, is it, to be called a racist? Not nice when the hate label you so liberally apply to your political opponents is applied to you and is true. No its not nice finding out that it is you who are the real racists, you who divide and conquer, drumming up hatred between people by elevating their differences rather than building on similarities. Everything the liberal/progressive does is an outgrowth of intellectual narcissism driven hatred. The white liberal elite do not want the black man, the Hispanic or any other race they consider inferior, next to them. Better to separate them and let them stay with there own kind, now insulated by language and culture.
I am not perfect though. I too have cultural biases. I hate liberal/progressive thought. It is the most hateful and narrow minded suicidal thinking on the planet. The behavior it delivers smacks of pop cult shallow hedonism and creates the worst phonies on the planet always screaming about how unfair life is and then screaming even louder when they don’t get their special treatment. When liberal thought is exposed the liberal will fly into a rage like Empty above, drooling and snarling.
Institutional racism? All a white liberal elite needs to do to see it is look in a mirror.
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» on 07.24.10 @ 02:38 PM
Thank you, AN50 for once again providing what psychologists call ‘projection’: “...the unconscious act of denial of a person’s own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.”
~Psychological projection, wikipedia
That was perfect.
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» on 07.24.10 @ 03:05 PM
AN50 res just proved your points. Notice how in this supposed post racial utopia progressives are OCD with race. It’s the biggest mistake they have made. Yet it is their nature, they can’t help themselves.
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» on 07.24.10 @ 10:16 PM
Yes Mr. Petry, you and AN50 are certainly like two peas in a pod in many respects, especially in your hatred and disdain of liberals like me when we speak our mind, but back to the topic.
Calling liberals like me “OCD about race” is a way of saying that we worry about it too much, right? What that choice of words says about you is that you think there’s no problem if you just ignore it, which is a cowards way of dealing with a problem. Of course, since you’re a white guy maybe there is no problem. You never have to worry about whether you’ll be denied a loan because of your complexion, or have to endure the hundred or so suspicious glares per week you get from store owners when you walk into their store, and you never even think about some beloved ancestors who were lynched or somehow squashed into poverty and oblivion by the overt racism of the last century. But whether you’re willing to admit it or not, racism still exists in this country, even though it’s only a tenth of what it once was, and by racism I mean what it always meant: the denial of rights and social standing to someone simply because of their skin color.
The racists of our country, who decades ago were driven underground like the vermin they are, have been given some daylight by today’s media landscape and by Obama’s election. They feel safe coming out in the open, and some even feel (mistakenly, I hope) that they have a political home now in the Tea Party. I’m not one who thinks that every Tea Party member is a racist, not even close, but their rhetoric does comfort the racists who are used to being pariahs. They understand the double-meaning possibilities of a statement like “we want our country back”; it mirrors quite well what they have been saying amongst themselves for years. Some liberals may overstate the importance of this connection, but that doesn’t make them OCD. On the other hand, when conservatives deny the existence of racism, or make the delusional leap of blaming the NAACP or liberals in general, that’s just depraved and loony. Those emperors aint got no clothes.
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» on 07.25.10 @ 12:37 AM
Res let me help you out. OCD think obsessed. Get over yourself it is old and screaming racist doesn’t carry water anymore. Think of another avenue to use when trying to shut down dialog. Next you’ll probably be saying that the new Arizona illegal alien law is racist.
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