The Governing Class' Childish and Vicious Definition of Racism

Imagine the reaction if a Republican specifically urged white men to turn out at the polls like they've never done before.

An excellent essay ...

From Ace:

As Gabe posted below, Obama is urging all Americans to turn out for the polls in November to create a historic level of participation among all colors, races and creeds.

Well, not so much, of course. He wants "young people, blacks, Lations and women" to show up at the polls. White men needn't bother.

Is this racist? If the liberals' typical definition of racism were applied consistently, of course it would be racist. But of course it's not applied consistently. Racism is something white people, and Republican white people in particular, do. Liberals and especially black liberals are incapable of being racist.

If Obama's exhortations for only some of the electorate to participate in democracy sounds racist to you, why, that's probably a defect in you character -- and, in fact, probably evidence of a deep-seated, subconscious streak of racism in you yourself.

But that's just the standard-issue double-standard we all know and loathe. There's another disturbing element to it -- the automatic presumption among the privileged class that wherever blacks and whites diverge in political thought, it must be whites who are in the wrong, and not only in the wrong, but almost certainly motivated by racism.

But if it's not racist or wrong for blacks to generally vote according to the perceived "black economic interest," why is it wrong for whites to do the same? This is rarely explained, and when it is explained, it usually amounts to little more than rationalized ipse dixit restatement of the double-standard. It's wrong for whites to vote according to their perceived economic interest because they benefit from "white skin privilege" and they are the "dominant social group," upon whom a greater burden of acting for the greater good is placed, etc. Asked to defend the huge assumption of the rightness of a racial double-standard, academics tend to simply dream up closely-related assumptions and assert them (and claim those assumptions, in turn, "prove" the assumption they were asked to prove in the first place).

Let's not be childish about this. We are instructed every day that blacks are poorer than whites. There is no lack of evidence for this fact. It is therefore no surprise at all that blacks should generally favor wealth redistributionist policies more than whites, as blacks, being poorer, will tend to pay less into such a regime and receive more benefits out of it. Nor is it any surprise that whites should generally oppose such policies, as whites, being richer, will tend to pay more into such a regime and receive less.

There is hardly any cause here for liberals interested in honest, civil debate -- which they all to a man assure me is all they care about lately -- to scream "racism" over differences in white and black opinions over Obama's wealth-redistributionist agenda. You can call opponents of it greedy (but then, how are poorer blacks who are to be favored under that system any less greedy than whites, given that both are acting according to the precise same factor -- perceived personal net-economic self-interest?), but you can hardly brand someone "racist" for wanting to have an extra two or three thousand dollars.

Go read the whole thing.