LIBERAL RACISM

Zev Chafets, a columnist for the New York Daily News, has some interesting thoughts on Sen. Harry Reid's racially charged denunciation of Justice Clarence Thomas:

Consider and post your reactions here.

"Reid's overt disrespect for Thomas is, at first glance, surprising. Reid is, after all, the conservative leader of a liberal Senate faction. He belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a denomination that banned blacks from the priesthood until 1978. And he represents Nevada, a state with a less than sparkling record on civil rights. In other words, Reid is vulnerable to the charge of racial insensitivity. And in this case, guilty.

Reid never would have had the brass to attack Thomas as an incompetent dummy without the encouragement of his party's black establishment. Black Democrats dislike Thomas not because of his intellect or performance--which fall well within the norm for Supreme Court justices--but because he is 1) a Republican, 2) a conservative, 3) an opponent of affirmative action.

Manning Marable, an African-American historian at Columbia University, summarized the case against Thomas at the outset of his court career: "Even though he is black in terms of his racial identity, Thomas in terms of his political program, in terms of his repudiation of civil rights, is arguably . . . the whitest man in America." . . .

More popular figures than Thomas have been pilloried by the black establishment for committing Republican heresy: Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Sammy Davis and Colin Powell all come to mind. Now, emboldened, whites have deputized themselves in the fight against black thought crime.

This sounds right to us. That last point is crucial, and it is why we suspect the Reid comment may be indicative of a coming change in American race relations. Chafets's surmise that Reid's comments have the approval of the "black establishment" is of a piece with cartoonist Jeff Danziger's defense of his racist Condoleezza Rice caricature: It was, he said, "suggested to me by a friend who is African-American."

The underlying assumption seems to be that black people cannot be racist--that "racism" refers only to one's attitudes toward or beliefs about other races. But this is nonsense. Suppose you're a white liberal Democrat who supports affirmative action. If another white person calls you a "traitor to your race" for holding these views, there isn't much doubt you would regard this characterization as racist. Likewise, those who call Clarence Thomas an "Uncle Tom" or, as Marable puts it, "the whitest man in America" for not thinking the way black people are "supposed" to think are acting racist toward blacks, notwithstanding that they may be black themselves.

To be sure, there is a qualitative difference between interracial and intraracial racism, particularly when the target is a group that has historically borne racism's brunt. It is awkward for a white person to say that members of the "black establishment," or the majority or a substantial minority of black people, are racist in their attitude toward other blacks. It has something of the feel of meddling in a family squabble, compounded by a sense of collective guilt over the depredations of pre-civil rights America.

Thus, when white politicians and commentators start attacking black dissidents in racial terms, everything changes. Harry Reid's disparagement of Justice Thomas's intelligence sounds a lot like old-fashioned racism, whether he has the political support of the "black establishment" or not. It reminds us of Kedwards' gay-baiting of Dick Cheney's daughter Mary. The "gay establishment" for the most part applauded what it saw as the exposure of a political foe's hypocrisy, and some antigay Democrats might have been persuaded to stick with their party's ticket. But to the majority of Americans, Kedwards' invasion of Miss Cheney's privacy was simply an affront to common decency.

The Democrats may or may not end up paying a price for Reid's ugly slur against Justice Thomas. (Recall that outside this column and kausfiles.com, there was nary a kerfuffle over the first Kedwards gay-baiting episode.) But sooner or later liberal racism will come back to bite them--and that may ultimately break down the whole racial protection racket."