Monday, September 17, 2007

So long, white boy   [Stanley Kurtz]

So reads the headline on this article from Salon, which argues that the Democrats should end–and in fact already are ending–any efforts to court the white male vote. Well, Salon’s headline certainly gets the message across, doesn’t it? The Economist has an interesting take this week on Until Proven Innocent, which it calls "a superb new book" by Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson. According to The Economist, in the Duke rape case, "Duke’s politically-correct faculty...produced a mirror image of the worst racism of the South in the 1950s...."

All this brings to mind decades old arguments over whether so-called affirmative action amounts to reverse discrimination. At the time, liberals argued that racial preferences were not a form of racism. Although preferences treat people more and less favorably according to their race, said liberals, the discrimination involved is not "invidious." Yet now we see that objectively racist policies have brought "invidious" racial attitudes in their train.

First the Democrats alienated many white men by supporting discriminatory preferential treatment policies. When these men refused to accept this discrimination, many of them left the Democratic Party. This, in turn, enraged many Democrats, who began to think "invidiously" about white men. So it would appear that racial discrimination in law and policy breeds racial discrimination in culture. If the Democrats lose a large chunk of the "NASCAR Dad" vote in the upcoming elections, it might have something to do with the fact that the Dems richly deserve to lose it.

09/17 10:54 AMShare