I had Monday morning off and I wandered back into Left Blogistan. I couldn't help myself... Kinda like driving by an old girlfriend's house...
The mid-term elections must have hit the lefties hard; they're cannibalizing themselves over there.
I stumbled upon a thread that illustrates why sensible people don't discuss race. The thread is also a beautiful microcosm of liberalism itself.
A blogger named Sheria wrote a piece about how she's tired of the left beating up on President Obama. She larded her sermon with standard liberal pieties and pontifications, and topped it off with spicy dashes of racial identity politics:
See, as a black person I'm so sick and tired of white liberals who have still enjoyed the privilege of being white trying to tell a black man how to navigate in a white world.The ensuing thread is bursting with fetishistic adoration of the author, and everyone congratulating each other on the profundity of their comments...
Wow - this is why I'm such a fan of yours.
I love how you make me stop and think.
the president might be black but the captains of industry are white and they call the shots.
When Sheria speaks, I listen. She challenges me, not just to think, but also to feel. Intellectual knowledge is not enough until you feel it in your bones.The author soaks it in...
I am truly honored by your "amen."Now some guilty white Marxista-babble...
I greatly appreciate your thoughtful response to my thoughts on this matter
Perhaps fair-skinned ultra-critics should just quit focusing their ire on the POTUS and instead view the matter dialecticallyIt was all going swimmingly until someone in the hallelujah choir decided to fly over the cuckoo's nest. TAO, a committed leftist, is tired of all the race-based blather...
What is the truth? That progressives are racists? Or is the truth that progressives cannot criticize democrats?Uh Oh! Holy Frijoles, Batman! Someone's escaped Camp Groupthink!
"Tao, I've really enjoyed my time at SZ and up until now, I've always the discussion to be stimulating and respectful. But you have crossed a line."Oooooh! At that point, TAO, a white man, should have retreated, tail between his legs, because in the liberal milieu populated with wise Latinas, a female minority is always morally superior. Heedless, MAO charged back with further info to clarify his point. He did his best to be conciliatory, but he refused to kneel before the altar of racial politics, so the author shut down the conversation:
I asked you to not address me but you don't listen very well.This preachy blogger goes out into a public forum, charges racism (or at the least white cluelessness and unworthiness to speak on the issue), plays the victim card, and then casts opprobrium on someone for not responding correctly. He's escaped the dialectical mumbo-jumbo framework and is speaking logically, so he must be shut down. That is liberalism in a nutshell.
This is why white "cowards" do not want to discuss race.
Nothing pisses me off more than in discussions about race, non-black folks always want to suggest that racism isn't really the issue.She starts by referring to President Obama as a black man, then ends up decrying the "one drop rule," and stating that Obama is "no more black than he is white." See? She owns the issue. The rest of us are there as a privilege she grants to us, as long as we sit in the corner, mouth politically-correct platitudes and otherwise behave ourselves. This is not conversation; it is lecturing.
This is not a "black" thing. It is a "liberal" thing. They want a dialog but then obsessively control it by alternately stroking and praising, and baiting and shaming. When attacked, they hide behind victimhood narratives.
TAO sums it up nicely:
How can we discuss race when you own it?Liberals closed all avenues of productive conversation with tea partiers by branding us all racists. So pardon our delight if we enjoy a self-satisfied chortle as they now turn on one another.
The Splash Porn
23 comments:
Fascinating.
The Wife and I were having dinner last Friday and it just so happens there was a black man sitting at the bar in the restaurant we were at.
We had ran into James at an earlier date {briefly} so naturally we struck up a conversation. James in an educated black man {and a liberal politically}, lectures at local educational institutions, and runs a small business of his own.
Being the [political animal I am the conversation turned to politics. Now since the evening conservation developed into about 2 and a half hours I will list the topics that we covered.
1) Work ethics
2) The Constitution
3) The Slave trade
4) Slavery in America
5) Racism
6) The vision of the Founding Fathers as well as the hypocrisy of the times
7) Diversity
8)Color blindness
... and many much more.
James shares the same values that most conservatives share. He is a strong believer in family and supports America. As he said frequently, America first.
He believes as I do in the inherent greatness of our founding vision and documents. He admires Washington for is willingness to allow blacks to fight in the army to gain their freedom, While at the same time wondering how great men such as Washington and Jefferson could ever hold slaves.
He views racism, or the use of it for political gain, as despicable acts. When I pointed out that while our skin colors are different but be all have red blood he got visibly agitated. To James the mere pointing out the obvious has no place in our dialog. James views himself first as an American then as a black man and he believes the challenge is to solve our problems and not exacerbate them by focus on race.
I suppose I am ambling. But my point is that not all liberals, whether black or white share Sheria's views. I am sure James would have been be in concert with TAO had he been there.
Anyway we had a intellectually honest evening together. We agreed to meet again. And when we parted I commented to James we could be brothers from a different mother given some our shared principles.
James smiled and said, right on brother.
Now that's the rational nation I know, and I think many share James views over Sheria's
Interesting ramble ;)
I have run into very few Sherias in my life. Being in the military, my black friends have either been conservative, or have been people more along the lines of your friend James.
But the military as an institution tends to be conservative, and finding a while liberal over 25 is a rare event.
Epic! Funny to find MAO in a classic 'hoist on his own petard' moment. Linked at LCR
The whole thing makes me think that the leftist charges of 'racism' vs. the tea party are as much a warning to fellow leftists to stay in line as they are an attempt to discredit the tea party in the eyes of the undecided or tea party sympathetic. I.e. its code language.
Well, the left cannibalizing themselves can't be a bad thing.
You guys really just have no idea about the modern American liberal mindset. Your opinions are so off base, so untrue, so ignorant, that it makes me wonder if any of you have even had a liberal aquaintance.
We saw race in the rise of the Tea Party when such arguments were made as "minorities caused the mortgage meltdown" and "round up the 'illegals' and throw them out," and "Obama is a Muslim, communist foreigner," and so forth. We didn't just project some simplistic hatred on you. We saw with our own eyes and heard with our own ears the tell-tale signs of angry, ultranationalistic, xenophobic racism.
You have to understand that there are those in your rightwing midst who are really terrible people. If you can not acknowledge that, then you are even less capable of understanding your own political movemnet than you are your alleged opposition.
The difference between mainstream, popular liberalism and conservatism is America is just a matter of degress. They are not in any way polar opposites. Your insipid belief otherwise is wrecking this nation's political discourse, degrading it to retarded 'us v them,' 'black v white,' 'right v wrong' encapsulations.
Things just aren't as simple as you guys would like to believe.
JMJ
Jersey: Nice MSNBC-approved talking points...
In case you haven't noticed, there are terrible people everywhere, in every demographic, including conservatives, libertarians and tea parties.
Can you acknowledge that evil people and nuts can also be found on the liberal left?
Finally, I did not make this up. Did you follow the link? You can read it all at that blog, so don't tell me I have no idea. I'm reporting on a verifiable blog post and the subsequent comment thread.
Go check it out--you'd fit right in over there.
Shane: I never thought of that, but I think that's a very astute observation.
I've always viewed their abuse of language as a means to control others, but yeah, even more importantly, it's how the control not just the useful idiots, but the fellow travelers as well.
LCR: Thanks for the bump!
Hoisted on my "petard" come on LCR I would have thought that you of all people could have been more enlightening.
One of the big mistakes that the tea party has made is to refer to the elites as "liberals" the reality is that the right and the left have elites and both of these groups work very well with each other to control things and to keep the "masses" in their place...
So, outside the executive order on abortion funding and the fact that one cut brush in his spare time and the other plays basketball nothing has changed....
But if I am a conservative I am supposed to fight the evil liberals and if I am a liberal I am supposed to fight the evil conservatives...and the whole time we are slinging our mud its business as usual in Washington....
As far as race goes...we live in a globalized world nowadays...you got white kids and asian kids dressing and singing like black kids...the two groups that are hurt the most by the current financial meltdown are black men and white men....
But yet we still want to frame the conversation in terms of "black man" in "white world" Tell the chinese or the japanese that it is a white world...
Then to claim that a man with a Kenyan father, raised by two white people in Hawaii has a shared experience with a black man in the south...that is really stretching it...
I might be a liberal, and a damn good liberal at that but I recognize individuality...which basically means I can piss off the right just as well as I can piss off the left....
The race argument on the right is as lame as the race argument on the left....its time to see beyond race and I don't care which side of the fence you are on....
By the way, LCR...stupidity is stupidity and I don't care if it comes from the left or the right....
Well said, Tao, although I do agree with LCR on your hoisted petard.
Maybe a better way to say it would be that old chestnut "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas."
You are not a doctrinaire leftist, you are more of a traditional liberal, and that is your problem, according to the new left.
Remember Silverfiddle, I have only voted three times in the last 34 years...
Its not because I am not patriotic but rather that the only real difference between the two parties has been no more than "six of one and a half dozen of the other"
Conservatives voting for liberals and liberals voting for conservatives....
If Barack Obama wasn't tall you couldn't really tell the difference between him and GWB....and actually if cutting spending and balancing the budget are important to conservatives then Bill Clinton should look pretty good to the right...
Bill Clinton stands up and says, "...the era of big government is over...." and all the traditional big government liberals cheer him and consider him his hero!
I think the absurdity of the two party system is becoming so painfully obvious nowadays....
Its politics, its not about principles or values but about winning....
I am not one who believes in the concept of "...the lesser of two evils...."
Oh Silverfiddle...
I am a businessman...I adapt, I change, I seek out solutions...if I was a "a doctrinaire" anything I would have been out of business a long time ago...
Again, and sadly, I must agree with you on politics. Unfortunately, I see no superior alternative, so we're stuck with what we've got.
I won't let the perfect become the enemy of the barely OK.
Liberals or crazy people? That might just be a distinction without a difference.
Silverfiddle...if you do not have an ideal then you have nothing to measure yourself by nor do you have anything to direct your activity to...
The Japanese call it "continous improvement"
Proof...some of us liberals are frighteningly sane and make some right wingers look crazy...
Fascinating interchange.
The "independent conservative" in me must reluctantly ;) agree with TAO.
Six of one and a half dozen of the other. That truly spells the difference between the Democrats (liberals) and the Republicans (conservatives) anymore.
I will continue to vote for the man or women "least likely" to do significant damage because it is a better choice than the alternative.
In the meantime I will continue to work for {in my own and perhaps insignificant way}a true individualist and capitalist society based on objective reasoning.
As TAO stated stupidity is stupidity rather it be from the from the left or the right. Same hold to for reason.
I agree with having ideals, and they are an excellent measure of progress. But as I stated earlier, pristine theory never survives collision with real life.
I understand why some run in horror from the political sausage factory, but I choose to stay engaged.
Les: Although I am not a Randite objectivist, I can easily see that an Objectivist world is much more preferable to a collectivist one.
And I can't believe two libertarians are agreeing with TAO!
Silverfiddle, it's unfortunate that you didn't read all of my comments. I never called anyone a racist; I pointed out what I think is the blindness of liberals who automatically believe that they understand everything about race but only filter racial issues through their own frame of reference. I'm not a victim, never characterized myself as such. My life experiences are what they are but I've never used them to gain the status of victim.
If you had read more, you would have also seen that I specifically rejected the notion that the Tea Party is filled with racists. The people that I know who are affiliated with the Tea Party appear to be concerned about where this country is heading. There are some racists in every group but I wouldn't characterize the Tea Party as a racist group.
Interesting that you would presume to understand and know my mind based on a few comments that you read on a blog. That's the problem with discussions about race; we make way too many assumptions. Oh yeah, I am tired of liberals assuming that they understand race because they are liberals. Quite frankly, I've found that some of the best attitudes about race are demonstrated in small southern communities where we actually know each other as people and not as representatives of our respective races.
@ Sheria...
"Quite frankly, I've found that some of the best attitudes about race are demonstrated in small southern communities where we actually know each other as people and not as representatives of our respective races."
Your comment above is further confirmation that a young black women educator I employed as a tutor for hispanics working in the company I was managing was correct.She made the same exact observation in discussions we in regards to racism in America.
While younger she had many of the qualities of James I referred to in my initial comment. I admire them both for they honesty and their personal integrity. Neither have a racist bone in their body, both are intellectually honest, and knowing then at that level I can say I am a better person for therm touching my life.
Fact is these are only two of many experiences throughout my life that has shown me your statement should be considered by all.
Thank you for coming here and sharing this. I for one appreciate you did so.
Well, this is a breath of fresh air. I appreciate your comments, especially concerning the tea parties.
I can even agree with you that I do not understand either those who presume to know all about what some person or group has been through.
This goes to the heart of discussing race. We all have different perspectives, and an honest question or observation can be taken the wrong way and then the person finds himself branded a racist when that was not his intent. Better just to shut up.
You did get pretty bent out of shape with TAO, and I think the language you and others used was controlling, but that is my opinion.
I don't presume to know anyone's mind, I just looked at the conversation thread and went from there.
I spent over 20 years in the military, and I wish the rest of the world treated race, gender and culture like it is treated there.
It's rarely discussed, and when it is the conversation is straightforward, often vulgar and funny and very un-PC. You learn a lot. Based on the friendships I have had, I know that profiling, dwb, being followed around in stores, etc is not BS.
I also learned that such things as skin color, gender, etc are very poor predictors of anything.
Anyhoo, thanks for stopping by. I won't be lurking around tide pool. Captain Crabbs and the gang ran me off months ago. I only swerved over because I heard my old nemesis TAO had been hoist of his own petard.
@Sherea: "Quite frankly, I've found that some of the best attitudes about race are demonstrated in small southern communities where we actually know each other as people and not as representatives of our respective races."
I would almost dare to say this reveals a universal truth. It is easy to hate and denigrate in the abstract, and familiarity in this aspect usually breed understanding.
Silverfiddle, I'll concede that TAO really pushed my buttons; however, somehow, I suspect that you're familiar with that experience. When I get annoyed, I get obstinate.
The truth is, I think that we bandy the word racism around far too much. I've found that when people talk and listen to one another, it's amazing how many commonalities that we discover that we have. We don't have to be identical in order to have shared values. I also think that labeling people ends dialog before it even starts. I'm interested in people and I find people who come from backgrounds different than mine are some of the most interesting people.
A good friend who is in the military characterizes the attitudes towards race in the military much in the same way that you do.
Too bad that you aren't still hanging out at SZ; I think that you would add an interesting perspective to the conversation there.
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