AfriKlan-Americans
Mark Noonan, the newest conservative media star, takes note of Reaclearpolitics' Tom Bevan taking note of an opinion piece in the Chicago Sun-Times by Mary Mitchell:
Like that itself isn't sniping.
It comes down to one unbridgeable philosophical divide: between individual guilt and collective guilt. Conservatives (aka "classical" liberals) believe that each man is responsible for his own sins and nobody else's; liberals (aka neoMarxists) believe that guilt assigns not to the individual but to the group. And they have a dark-hatted group for each issue - the "rich" on economics, the "snake-handlers" on moral issues, the "military-industrial complex" on national security, and "white America" on race.
You and I look at Mitchell's race-hustling and laugh at her. My paternal ancestors were living in the North German Confederation during the American Civil War, and my maternal ancestors were Unionists. I couldn't possibly have any direct culpability for slavery, and have no indirect connection to it either.
But people like Mitchell would say I do. Why? Because I'm white, and I'm American, and that's enough.
Aside from the extortion angle, what this reparations "argument" not-so-subtley implies is that if you're white, you're racist by definition and would re-enslave black people if you possibly could. It is itself appallingly racist, on a par with the worst (verbal) atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan, and those of Mitchell's point of view should be excoriated as the bigots they are.
But they won't be, because she's "speaking the truth to power," or some such, and no conservative would dare call her out for fear of, that's right, being denounced as a racist.
I have my doubts about "there [coming] a time in this country when we will finally say enough is enough." More likely such an optimistic evolution will see such voices fade, not from any self-imposed civility, but because the rest of the country will leave them behind.
I don't know what it will take for the folks in control of this country to understand that reparations for slavery is going to happen. I can't say when it is going to happen, but it will. Despite legal setbacks, black conservatives and David Horowitz, reparations is the best way to build a bridge across our great divide. Otherwise, African Americans and Caucasians will just keep sniping away at each other.
Like that itself isn't sniping.
It comes down to one unbridgeable philosophical divide: between individual guilt and collective guilt. Conservatives (aka "classical" liberals) believe that each man is responsible for his own sins and nobody else's; liberals (aka neoMarxists) believe that guilt assigns not to the individual but to the group. And they have a dark-hatted group for each issue - the "rich" on economics, the "snake-handlers" on moral issues, the "military-industrial complex" on national security, and "white America" on race.
You and I look at Mitchell's race-hustling and laugh at her. My paternal ancestors were living in the North German Confederation during the American Civil War, and my maternal ancestors were Unionists. I couldn't possibly have any direct culpability for slavery, and have no indirect connection to it either.
But people like Mitchell would say I do. Why? Because I'm white, and I'm American, and that's enough.
Aside from the extortion angle, what this reparations "argument" not-so-subtley implies is that if you're white, you're racist by definition and would re-enslave black people if you possibly could. It is itself appallingly racist, on a par with the worst (verbal) atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan, and those of Mitchell's point of view should be excoriated as the bigots they are.
But they won't be, because she's "speaking the truth to power," or some such, and no conservative would dare call her out for fear of, that's right, being denounced as a racist.
I have my doubts about "there [coming] a time in this country when we will finally say enough is enough." More likely such an optimistic evolution will see such voices fade, not from any self-imposed civility, but because the rest of the country will leave them behind.
posted by JASmius at 2:32 PM
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