The Racial Dimension of Libertarianism

charleslb

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Let me just give it to you straight-out, libertarianism is the quintessential political expression of the same suburbanite urge to separate from our society's socio-economic troubles, born from its socio-economic disparities, that tends to produce "white flight". To really gnomically nutshell it right up front, the same middle-class, Me-Generation griping about affirmative action, multiculturalism, and the myth of "reverse racism" that can be heard around white-collar water coolers tightly focused into a phony, middle-brow free-marketarian philosophy = the modern right-wing political phenomenon of "libertarianism", and it's popularity predominantly among negrophobic and Hispanophobic folks of the Caucasian persuasion.

That is, "libertarianism" is the white-flight mentalité equipped with a political belief system. It's an irritatedly individualistic ideology for whiny white people who are disaffected from and would like to opt out of a welfare state that serves what they consider to be the parasitical dregs of society, i.e. mostly people of color living below the poverty line who because of limited opportunities find themselves entangled in our society's social safety net.

In other words, libertarians see the world from an everyone-should-just-look-out-for-#1 perspective with subtle racial overtones. Naturally they loathe the very idea of socialism, of being thrown together on equal terms with the needy non-white neighbors they wish to disown and distance themselves from. Socialism is about solidarity and what libertarians really want is isolationism from the economically challenged and "ethnic" underclass.

Libertarians aren't technically "racist" per se, they don't actually have hatred in their hearts for minorities, their hearts are too cold for that. They just lack any and all sense of connectedness with the underprivileged and the discriminated-against.

Libertarians certainly don't fancy being taxed one red cent to make a helping difference in the life of the stereotypical black welfare mom. Their mentality's motto is "Millions for prisons but not a penny for tribute to the poor masses of the economically distressed inner cities of the nation". And since African Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately represented among the recipients of public assistance, the libertarian's resentment against "free riders" becomes somewhat of a racial bias.

The libertarian's callous attitude toward those whom he perceives as society's leeches and losers rubs off on his attitude toward the victims of social and racial injustice, this is essentially how a racial tude is born from his worldview. It's the libertarian's selfish desire to not be bothered and burdened with the needs of capitalism's victims that leads to a lack of empathy and sympathy and a tendency to insensitively profile the poor that's tinged with classism and bigotry.

It turns out that libertarianism is largely just an intellectual construct that accommodates and rationalizes all of the above and allows the "libertarian" to put a principled spin on his version of political self-interest and identity politics. So, again, no, the libertarian doesn't quite have hate burning in his stony, selfish heart, he just doesn't have much love in it for anyone but himself and those with whom he identifies, which doesn't include poor black and brown folks.

Of course though, in some cases the libertarian's lack of affinity for the cash-poor and melanin-rich can become a palpable political animosity that really comes through in the stridency of his "politically-incorrect" stance, and that smacks of actual racism. But libertarians don't ever really let their racialist freak flag fly, they just become downright bold about ideologically dissing the disadvantaged dark-skinned demographic of society.

Well then, the libertarian's fondness for laissez–faire capitalism and his willingness to abolish social programs that feed poor children in the ghetto blurs together and it becomes a Which came first, the chicken or the egg question. Either way, libertarians definitely have their racial issues and need to fess up about this shameful truth of their psychology. Sure, behind a person's politics you always find psychology, none of us is truly all that objective, but sometimes it's an enlightened mind-set that shines through into one's politics, and other times it's a benighted mentality lurking in dark recesses of one's mind. Alas, in the case of libertarians it's sadly the latter.

Want some anecdotal evidence, have you ever noticed how many libertarians can get pretty cranky and conceited about the superiority of their logic when dealing with someone who disagrees with them? This is just another symptom that their philosophical point of view is that of an egoist with anti-egalitarian attitudes, someone who isn't interested in playing well with others on a level societal playing field. That is, libertarians are so deeply invested in and touchy about their politics that it becomes obvious that their politics are actually an extension of a certain chauvinistic type of personality and take on life.

A veritable misanthropic take on life that seems to single out and concentrate on categories of people that are an easy mark for it, such as women, immigrants, and certain races. The more intensely the libertarian spotlights such groups with his hostility, the thinner a veneer his ideology becomes for a subconscious racism.

But what would the libertarian's utopia look like, would it be such an inhospitable place for low-status groups to live in, would they be in a better position to raise their status in a libertarian promised land? Well, arguably the sort of free-for-all "meritocracy" that the libertarian advocates would soon degenerate into a plutocracy, those with a more ruthless drive to be on top would have a free hand with which to cut throats and would soon establish their social and political dominance over the rest of us. We'd find ourselves living under a feudalistic form of capitalism in which most of us are reduced to the role of white-collar vassals and blue-collar serfs. And since there'd be few if any legal protections against discrimination in such a system people who've historically been the victims of racism would continue to find things stacked against them and would end up being a sizable percentage of the serf class. Not exactly an inviting prospect for non-Caucasoids!

Libertarians like to retreat from this ugly reality into nice legal fictions of "social contracts", but would their kind of social contract, a social contract based on naked self-interest, even have an "equal protection clause" of any sort? And assuming it did, if libertarians abolished big brotherly courts in their free-marketeer's Shangri-la then who would enforce it? The free market itself? That's just ivory-tower theory that doesn't ever pan out empirically.

No, under libertarianism unchecked processes of social sedimentation would deposit most well-pigmented people in an underclass where they'd be at the mercy of Mighty Whitey and his capitalist ruling class more than ever. This prospect doesn't bother the libertarian too much though, both because he suffers from an empathy deficit and also because his social contract would provide him with an escape clause to be a selfish individualist with no social responsibility to the colored causalities of capitalism.

To sum up here, it's hardly surprising that many right-libertarians adored the angry white man's candidate Ron Paul (who in fact wrote racist newsletters in the 90s). At best the libertarian is insensitively indifferent to racial justice issues, at worst he sides with the opposition to racial justice on the grounds that freedom is an absolute that ought not be compromised to protect our civil rights. Ironically his love of freedom endangers those very rights that make freedom worth having! Yes, in a supremely ironic twist the libertarian turns out to be an anti-civil libertarian reactionary with a cold-bloodedly individualistic creed.
 
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Did you write all that yourself? If not, you should cite sources. This smacks of plagiarism.

But, that could be wrong. Maybe you wrote it.

If so, you're wrong. If not, then the author is wrong.

There is nothing racist about libertarianism, for one thing, and there is nothing particularly black about the welfare state. Most people on welfare are white.

Further, libertarianism supports the idea that the government exists to protect our god given individual rights, which includes the rights of minorities.
 
Did you write all that yourself? If not, you should cite sources. This smacks of plagiarism.
He made the same post 6 months ago on Debate.org and also on Freesteader.com, I believe it's original... Original in the sense that he wrote it. The entire post is one long ad hominem attack against members of the opposition and a huge red herring attempt to avoid all of their arguments, there's certainly nothing original about that.

There is nothing racist about libertarianism, for one thing, and there is nothing particularly black about the welfare state. Most people on welfare are white.
Don't bother... This guy is only going to copy and paste answers anyway, as he has done with the OP, and regardless of what points you make or what questions you ask.

Further, libertarianism supports the idea that the government exists to protect our god given individual rights, which includes the rights of minorities.
Charles is a Marxist-Socialist, so mentioning "God" will only result in another canned response of the cut and paste variety. As an Atheist, I can't agree that our individual rights are "god given", they are simply natural rights, but certainly apply to every individual.

But you're always claiming that Socialism is dead, that nobody wants the means of production in the hands of the state... Well that's precisely what Charles wants, he blames all the ills of society on private ownership, thinks Capitalism is racist, Libertarianism is racist, Conservatives are racist, basically anything or anyone who disagrees with his socialist views he calls a racist while not addressing any of the arguments made or points that are broached. Charles is truly a one trick pony.
 
He made the same post 6 months ago on Debate.org and also on Freesteader.com, I believe it's original... Original in the sense that he wrote it. The entire post is one long ad hominem attack against members of the opposition and a huge red herring attempt to avoid all of their arguments, there's certainly nothing original about that.


Don't bother... This guy is only going to copy and paste answers anyway, as he has done with the OP, and regardless of what points you make or what questions you ask.


Charles is a Marxist-Socialist, so mentioning "God" will only result in another canned response of the cut and paste variety. As an Atheist, I can't agree that our individual rights are "god given", they are simply natural rights, but certainly apply to every individual.

But you're always claiming that Socialism is dead, that nobody wants the means of production in the hands of the state... Well that's precisely what Charles wants, he blames all the ills of society on private ownership, thinks Capitalism is racist, Libertarianism is racist, Conservatives are racist, basically anything or anyone who disagrees with his socialist views he calls a racist while not addressing any of the arguments made or points that are broached. Charles is truly a one trick pony.

Sounds like you've met him before.

We do read a few rants from people who think they want the means of production in the hands of the state. Luckily, no one listens to them.

Socialism isn't quite dead, but just about. It still exists in Cuba and North Korea.
 
Sounds like you've met him before.

We do read a few rants from people who think they want the means of production in the hands of the state. Luckily, no one listens to them.

Socialism isn't quite dead, but just about. It still exists in Cuba and North Korea.

Ah, the weak tactic of being dismissive, as if libertarianism can't simply be dismissed as a fringe conservative ideology with no realistic prospect of ever being implemented on a societal scale.


:)
 
I certainly don't claim to be a psychic, but I do know from replies like the ones above what some of you-all are thinking, you’re thinking “Hey, I’m no racist because I’m not a hater, and as a libertarian I’m certainly not a hater”. This is of course a rather common and simplistic misconception, i.e. that being a racist = being a hatemonger. Nope, there’s another sense in which one can be a racist, a sense that’s more true to the word. One can be a racist in the sense of being a part of the problem, rather than a part of the solution of society’s structural racism.

And, what’s more, one can be a part of society’s systemic racism by passive participation, by being an apathetic accessory. This is certainly the case with quite a few conservatives-libertarians, after all. Well, folks on the right of the ole political divide haven’t exactly been known for their passionate support of the civil rights movement, or for the concept of social justice for the disadvantaged!

No, of course Caucasians in general, and conservatives in particular, aren’t prone to be malignant and vicious fans of racial enmity and strife. The majority of whites who are a party to the problem and share in the social sin of racism are such not because they have a little Klansman lurking in their unconsciousness, but rather simply because they are utterly unsympathetic to the real socioeconomic plight of the victims of racism.

Why are so many white individuals so insensitively indifferent about racial injustice? Well, of course many human beings simply have an unsympathetic psychological nature. Others, however, due to their unsympathetic psychological nature, gravitate toward conservatism and libertarianism, toward ideologies that make them more hardcore about being unsympathetic. This is because conservatism-libertarianism provides cognitive justifications, excuses for unsympathetic types to withdraw, to withdraw their sympathy and compassion from aggrieved people of color, to withdraw from being a constructive partaker in the societal process of resolving the societal issue of race in a progressive fashion.

Instead, conservatives and libertarians have a whole, prefabricated intellectual construct that legitimizes their preference to remain in dishonest denial and pathetically cry: “Wah, wah, wah, reverse racism! Boo-hoo and woe is me, I’m such a victim of affirmative action!”, and so on. Yes, in an ironic twist conservative white individuals arrogate and usurp the role of victim for themselves, while at the same time criticizing minorities for having a self-defeating victim mentality! Now this is what I call a case of being hypocritical with chutzpah.

Oh well, the upshot is that conservatism-libertarianism is a worldview that reflects, rationalizes, ratifies, and reinforces an unsympathetic attitude into a full-blown doctrinaire system of belief. A system of belief that is not about race or promoting racial hatred per se, but that does promote a defensive and resentful disbelief in the racial injustice endured by non-Caucasoid members of society. A system of belief that causes its adherents to turn a deaf ear to the cries of social pain and righteous indignation of minorities. A system of belief that often makes its indoctrinees callous and insulting in their opinions on race. A system of belief that promotes government policies that take us in the regressive direction of perpetuating and worsening, as opposed to addressing and ameliorating, race problems.

Conservatism-libertarianism, that is, is an ideology of deplorable racial ignorance, not commendable color blindness. Conservatism, and its peevish proponents of the delusionally unsympathetic fiction that racism is a thing of the past, in fact are in a very big way, in a ginormous way, a part of the problem. In this sense conservatism-libertarianism is very much tarnished by racism.

Libertarianism of course takes the tack of disengagement with society in general, embracing an extreme every-man-for-himself-in-the-free-for-all-of-the-free-market individualism in which we’re all asocially self-owning units with no ethical responsibility to the greater good of society. This intellectual attitude and dodge of capitalistically self-interested disengagement quite transparently allows libertarians to unsympathetically disengage from the misfortunes of minorities, to advocate abolishing such meager social mercies as food stamps and Medicaid, and to advocate utter neglect of the social problems stemming from racism, on the pretext of the theory that the forces of the “free market” will swoop in and right all wrongs. Mm-hmm, libertarianism is all about rationalizingly divorcing oneself from any obligation to social justice, and therefore is antithetical to racial justice, is de facto a part of the problem and ethically discredited by its own apathetic form of racism.

Yes, conservatism in general has its own racial issues that make it a force standing against progress on race, and that give it an all too strong family resemblance with the haters on its lunatic fringe. Just last night I saw a segment on The Ed Show about how conservatives in Congress have pressured the Department of Homeland Security to lay off of hate-spewing ultra-right-wing groups that are potential terror threats, and of course the obvious explanation is that conservatives recognize their family resemblance with these extremist groups. Yep, conservatives recognize them as kooky cousins whom they’d like to keep in the attic, and by giving them any attention the Department of Homeland Security threatens to out the ugliness at the heart of conservatism. Instead of finding the integrity and moral courage to face this ugliness, conservative have placed us all in jeopardy by nixing law enforcement’s ability to keep tabs on virulent and vicious rightist haters.

Well, what this all points up is that conservatives are dealing with the question of race very much in bad faith, and need to grow some moral you-know-what.

:)
 
This guy is only going to copy and paste answers anyway, as he has done with the OP, and regardless of what points you make or what questions you ask.

Nailed it... :)

Now one or two things are going to happen next:

1. A sock puppet will show up on the forum praising Charles for his genius and credit his brilliant post for completely changing his views on Libertarianism.

2. We will all be treated to another copy and paste job of Charles ranting about the racism of some ideology that supports private ownership of the means of production.

I certainly don't claim to be psychic, but I know a one trick pony when I see one.
 
Nailed it... :)

Now one or two things are going to happen next:

1. A sock puppet will show up on the forum praising Charles for his genius and credit his brilliant post for completely changing his views on Libertarianism.

2. We will all be treated to another copy and paste job of Charles ranting about the racism of some ideology that supports private ownership of the means of production.

I certainly don't claim to be psychic, but I know a one trick pony when I see one.

Well, psychic or not, you're right so far. Now, let's see about the rest.. waiting...waiting...
 
Nailed it... :)

Now one or two things are going to happen next:

1. A sock puppet will show up on the forum praising Charles for his genius and credit his brilliant post for completely changing his views on Libertarianism.

2. We will all be treated to another copy and paste job of Charles ranting about the racism of some ideology that supports private ownership of the means of production.

I certainly don't claim to be psychic, but I know a one trick pony when I see one.

Here you go, just for you, for the gratification of your acerbic conservative ego, some more thoughts on racism and its tie-in with capitalism and conservatism. Do you have the intellectual integrity and fortitude to actually read it?

_______________________________________

Capitalism, Conservatism, and Racism

Capitalism’s quintessential queen of mean, Leona Helmsley, once infamously said that paying taxes is for the “little people”. This disgusting bit of brazen truth-telling by the maladroit mother of all miserly capitalist moguls however does provide us with a good nutshell definition of capitalism. Capitalism is an inherently inequitable system in which the little people incur and endure all the human pain of maintaining the inhuman machine that is the economy. You know, the pain of taxes, of doing all the inglorious and tough jobs that need to be done in society, of being underpaid and chronically struggling to make ends meet, of recessions and inflation, and the existential pain of being mere cogs in the machine and of living in a state of constant anxiety about all of the above conditions and one’s unpromising prospect of a better standard of living. And meanwhile of course the fat owners get to sit pretty with all the perks, from tax subsidies (aka corporate welfare) to the posh, high-end style of living their ill-gotten green finances.

Such is capitalism down here in the real world, as opposed to up in the ivory tower of free-marketeers. Capitalism should be called capitalocracy, or moneyocracy, for capitalism is, quite naturally, a system in which those who control the capital, the money, for all practical purposes govern society and get to have their way with it, and with our lives. Which brings us to how capitalism figures into racism. Quite simply, in a system in which capitalists, i.e. owners, own and run the politico-economic show, well, in such a system owners get to enforce their own sense of ethnic identity and ethnic self-interest, their own identity politics, their own racial in-group vs. out-group thinking, their own racial favoritism and prejudices. And when you translate prejudice from something merely harbored in a powerless individual’s mind into prejudices enforced by the power structure of society, then, ta-da!, you have racism.

Capitalism, then, is a system that lends itself to such an enforcement of the ethnocentrism of the ruling class. That is, the dominance of the largely white capitalist ruling class “trickles down” to the rest of the white population, in the form of not being discriminated against on the basis of skin color, in the form of having lower poverty rates and an unemployment rate that’s half that of black and Hispanic citizens, in the form of not being redlined out of up-scale neighborhoods, in the form of not being overrepresented in the prison system, in the form of better funded schools, and in the form of an all-around higher and more advantaged status. In other words, capitalism is a system that structurally permits and promotes general inequality and racial disparities. Capitalism is the matrix of racism.

Now then, as for conservatism, conservatism is the political ideology and camp that doctrinairely defends capitalism as an abstract concept, and that most stridently takes up the cause of capitalists and corporations on the op-ed pages of newspapers, on talk radio, and in government’s halls of power and back rooms. Whether in the media or in Congress, conservatives shill for the big-business elite, and therefore share in the moral responsibility for societal sins such as poverty, hunger, unemployment, homelessness, classism, and of course the racism that spins off of classism. Sure, it’s not only conservative politicians who promiscuously get in bed with the moneyed powers that be, but it’s conservatives who do so with ideological gusto and self-righteousness, and who rationalizingly advocate revamping the entire system so as to give the rich even more license to victimize workingpeople, and people of color.

Conservatives, that is, believe as a matter of perverse principle that the already excessively empowered capitalist elite should be given the kind of deregulated wide berth that would allow them to set themselves up as an out-and-out dictatorship of the plutotariat, so to speak. This being their firm creed and mind-set, conservatives are constantly supporting the socioeconomic asymmetries of our capitalist society, and policies that will grow these asymmetries into even more glaring and gross inequities.

What’s more, identifying with and reserving all sympathy for society’s alpha capitalists, and lacking sufficient empathy for capitalism’s casualties, conservatives historically have opposed all legislation designed to improve the lot of society’s working class and racial minorities. For instance, conservatives oppose the very concept of a minimum wage to guarantee a more decent standard of living to the working poor – you know, those folks, white and disproportionately minority, who receive only the crumbs of the economic pie. Conservatives also stalwartly oppose compassionate social programs to aid the residents of our largely unemployed inner cities. It was also card-carrying conservatives who stood at the forefront of opposing the Civil Rights Movement, and the progressive legislation that came out of it. And conservatives are of course deeply antagonistic to the whole idea of “affirmative action” to combat racism in the job market.

Mm-hmm, conservatives just drown out the cries for justice of blacks and Hispanics subjected to unfair discrimination by employers by droning on about the “free market” and how it will spontaneously right all the wrongs of society if only left alone. Free-market theory is the conservative’s great philosophical dogma and ruse for rationalizing his/her uncaring attitudes and public policies. However, despite hypocritically hiding out behind the righteous persona of a true believer in economic freedom, we find that the typical conservative is someone with a mentality that’s unconscionably untroubled by the loss of freedom and dignity that overempowering the capitalist elite leads to for millions of poor people of all hues, and non-Caucasians in particular.

Alas then, conservatives are ideologically and integrally complicit in social and racial iniquity, and in the way it tends to take root in a system such as capitalism, in which wealth and power are so unevenly distributed. Conservatives are people who’ve chosen the dark side of human history and nature, in the sense that they’ve chosen to be allies of power, rather than champions of justice; partisans of the alpha dogs of society, instead of advocates for the rights of the rest of the pack; apologists of a status quo based on classism and racial discrimination, rather than upholders of the dream of a more egalitarian social order.

But certainly not all conservatives are venal politicians who’ve been co-opted by corporate lobbyists, what about blue-collar folks who are staunch conservatives? Why in the world would any workingperson in his/her right mind ever support the pro-business policies of conservatism? The simple answer is the psychology of identification. One needn’t have money & power, or be in the sack with the rich & powerful, to psychologically side with them, identifying with the alphas of society still has a payoff in terms of what it does for one’s self-esteem, i.e. the boosting effect it has on the ole ego.

The conclusion is located directly below
 
Conclusion of previous reply

Which is to say that the proto-human caveman tucked away in the recesses of our 21st century psyches still prizes strength, superiority, and dominance, and admires those who possess these primitive virtues. Today of course such brute values as strength & dominance take the more sophisticated form of “success” in business. The wealthy businessman and boss is very much the new alpha male and clan chieftain. Instead of wielding a caveman’s club though, today’s dominant individuals wield capital and the clout it bestows. But today’s dominant capitalists are still the ideal to aspire to of our inner Neanderthal, and still enjoy much respect from lower-status members of society’s extended clan.

In the case of conservatives, we find this appreciation of dominance becoming more of a pronounced element in their attitudes and worldview. The conservative waxes philosophical about one’s supposed God-given right to be a dominant capitalist, to exercise economic power over the less fortunate, and to do so free of interference from the weak members of society who try to assert their own rights through the democratic means of government. The conservative, you see, is really just a downright mental, ideological sycophant of the Caesars of capitalism’s own “evil empire”!

An empire whose chief evils are of course the classics, socioeconomic and racial inequality. Capitalism and conservatism, I’m sorry to say, are linked-at-the-hip pernicious isms producing the ongoing ugliness of racism in all its various forms, negrophopia, Hispanophobia, anti-immigrationism, Islamophobia, the First World’s wars to dominate the oil and economic resources of differently-pigmented Third World peoples in the name of bringing them mighty Western whitey’s democracy, etc.

At home and abroad then, capitalism & conservatism have created a world system that entrenches the predominantly white capitalist elite’s power, and by extension “white power”, in economics and politics. They, capitalism & conservatism, have established a kind of socioeconomic, poor vs. affluent apartheid that more and more, not less and less, falls along racial lines, the same racial lines as the original apartheid. Capitalism & conservatism wear black hats, or should I say white sheets, in the story of racism, and the sooner people of goodwill who would like to see society evolve beyond racism realize this, the better.

:)
 
Apparently many on the right of the political-ideological aisle are of the view that downplaying, disavowing, and shifting responsibility for racism to minorities themselves = not being racist. Conversely, if someone refuses to join in the collective soft-pedaling and denial of the reality that social discrimination and inequality is more grievous toward non-whites, if someone instead chooses to focus in a critical fashion on this unfortunate and reprehensible reality, well, that person is accused of villainies such as “race baiting”. And, what’s more, any strong criticisms of our society’s power structure vis–à–vis race are equated with racism, or “reverse racism”. In the warped ideological universe of conservatives it’s the critic of racism who’s the despicable bigot!

Yes, conservatives are wont to turn the argumental tables, project their own moral guiltiness, and glibly give back the charge of racism to those who lay it at the societal doorstep of white people. The conservative’s approach to dealing with racism is to not do so, i.e. to take the ole “see no evil, hear no evil, and most imperatively of all, speak no evil”. And in a bit of trite tit for tat, those who do have the chutzpah to speak, and speak honestly and critically about the evil of racism are the ones who are deemed to be the cause of our society’s race problems.

Society’s endemically inequitable capitalist status quo, which manifestly makes for socioeconomic divisions and disparities falling along both class and racial lines, is not viewed by conservatives as a troubling thing, or as the underlying socioeconomic matrix of all social and racial injustice. No, conservatives are of course the great apologists and advocates of capitalism, they’re not about to see any portion of blame for anything negative assigned to their ideologically cherished and idolized chimera of an idyllic capitalist society. So of course it has to be the complainers, the censurers, the condemners of capitalism and its tendency to harbor a classist & racist pecking order who are the troublemakers and sewers of racist attitudes. Such is the facile and fallacious reasoning of the right.

Most sadly, yes, when it comes to the question of our society’s ongoing miscarriage of racial justice, conservatives apparently lack the conscientious interest, the characterful integrity, and the critical intelligence to recognize and forthrightly fess up to the complicity of capitalism in permitting and perpetuating it – and the complicity of conservatism itself in capitalism’s many social and racialist transgressions.

The intellectual defensiveness, ideological escapism, moral cowardice, and self-protective psychological strategy of hiding behind anger practiced by conservatives on the issue of race is a rather obvious case of people not being able to come to terms with their own culpability in the world’s wrongs. Naturally enough, we all like to think that individually we’re above it all, above being a party to all the hate and harm perpetrated by our nation, our leaders, and our less noble-minded neighbors. Nope, none of us is too terribly eager to take on the moral stain of racism and all the other iniquities of our capitalist society. But conservatives, well, conservatives take the evasion of personal responsibility for societal sins to another level.

After all, conservatives are people of a dogmatic mentality, so of course they have a predictable tendency to get quite creedbound in their commitment to championing their ideology, and their beloved capitalist society against any and all adverse criticism. Add to this the fact that conservatism and capitalism have so much evil on their historical tab to be defended against, and is it any wonder that conservatives are so irritably defensive?! No, it’s no wonder at all, and not that complicated to understand.

As historically it’s been conservatives who’ve been the staunchest enemies of most social progress, of everything from the New Deal to help the victims of the Great Depression, to the Civil Rights Movement to redress some of society’s racial crimes; as it’s always been, as it still is today, conservatives who’ve advocated for the ruling class and their special interests, against the interests of the working class and the poor; and as it’s always been conservatives who are the hawks, the ones most gung ho for their country’s greed-motivated wars; as it’s the case that conservatives have all of this to justify, of course they become great rationalizers and highly, grumpily resistant to the slightest critical scrutiny.

Conservatives, then, are being rather hypocritical when they find fault with others for being too “sensitive”, when they disdain and mock “sensitivity”. For it’s conservatives who ironically are the most sensitive among us, sensitive to it being pointed up that they, their ideological confrères, and their capitalist heroes have so much innocent working-class, Third-World, black & brown blood on their hands.

Poignantly, conservatives are just too sensitive and vulnerable on issues such as race for most of them to summon the emotional and mental wherewithal to discuss the subject in good faith. Hence what you get instead is indignant recriminations hurled back at you, and the conservative’s unconstructive attempt to logocize his way out of his philosophy’s foibles. No conservative can be a part of a productive debate on the topic of racism until he/she first goes deep within to honestly and honorably examine the unconscious reasons for his ideological insecurity, and the negative, toxic nature of his conservative mentalité.

:)
 
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Race, rhetoric and reality
Thomas Sowell
This says it all...

The 1980s? Wasn't that the years of the Reagan administration, the "decade of greed," the era of "neglect" of the poor and minorities, if not "covert racism"?

More recently, during the administration of America's first black president, a 2011 report from the Pew Research Center has the headline, "Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics."

While the median net worth of whites was 10 times the median net worth of blacks in 1988, the last year of the Reagan administration, the ratio was 19 to one in 2009, the first year of the Obama administration. With Hispanics, the ratio was eight to one in 1988 and 15 to one in 2009.

Race is just one of the areas in which the rhetoric and the reality often go in opposite directions. Political rhetoric is intended to do one thing -- win votes. Whether the policies that accompany that rhetoric make people better off or worse off is far less of a concern to politicians, if any concern at all.

Democrats receive the overwhelming bulk of the black vote by rhetoric and by presenting what they have done as the big reason that blacks have advanced. So long as most blacks and whites alike mistake rhetoric for reality, this political game can go on.

A Manhattan Institute study last year by Edward Glaeser and Jacob Vigdor showed that, while the residential segregation of blacks has generally been declining from the middle of the 20th century to the present, it was rising during the first half of the 20th century. The net result is that blacks in 2010 were almost as residentially unsegregated as they were back in 1890.

There are complex reasons behind such things, but the bottom line is plain. The many laws, programs and policies designed to integrate residential housing cannot be automatically assumed to translate into residentially integrated housing. Government is not the sole factor, nor necessarily the biggest factor, no matter what impression political rhetoric gives.

No city is more liberal in its rhetoric and policies than San Francisco. Yet there are less than half as many blacks living in San Francisco today as there were in 1970.

Nor is San Francisco unique. A number of other very liberal California counties saw their black populations drop by 10,000 people or more, just between the 1990 and 2000 censuses -- even when the total population of these counties was growing.

One of the many reasons why rhetoric does not automatically translate into reality is that the ramifications of so many government policies produce results completely different from what was claimed, or even believed, when these policies were imposed.

The poverty rate among blacks was nearly cut in half in the 20 years prior to the 1960s, a record unmatched since then, despite the expansion of welfare state policies in the 1960s.

Unemployment among black 16 and 17-year-old males was 12 percent back in 1950. Yet unemployment rates among black 16 and 17-year-old males has not been less than 30 percent for any year since 1970 -- and has been over 40 percent in some of those years.

Not only was unemployment among blacks in general lower before the liberal welfare state policies expanded in the 1960s, rates of imprisonment of blacks were also lower then, and most black children were raised in two-parent families. At one time, a higher percentage of blacks than whites were married and working.

None of these facts fits liberal social dogmas.

While many politicians and "leaders" have claimed credit for black progress, no one seems to be willing to take the blame for the retrogressions represented by higher unemployment rates, higher crime rates, and higher rates of imprisonment today. Or for the disintegration of the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of government-imposed discrimination in the Jim Crow era, but began coming apart in the wake of the expansion of the liberal welfare state and its accompanying social dogmas.

The time is long overdue to start looking beyond the prevailing political rhetoric to the hard realities.

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