As Racist As They Wanna Be

Consider - if Justice Clarence Thomas was a liberal instead of a conservative, would any newspaper write the following about him?

An editorial in the Tuesday edition of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel seems to call into question the content and character behind the color of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ skin....

"In losing a woman, the court with [Samuel] Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America.”

Where to begin? Look which side of the ideological divide is obsessed with race and gender; it sure as hell isn't the Right. Look which side completely misunderstands the role of the Judicial Branch of government as a representative (aka legislative) body instead of an independent, apolitical arbiter of established constitutional and statutory law - it sure as hell isn't the Right. And look which side believes that all members of a particular racial or ethnic group are supposed to think the same way - they way they're told to think - and that Justice Thomas doesn't qualify as a member of "mainstream black America" because he dares to be intellectually and philosophically independent of his race's political plantation overseers.

Never mind toilet paper like the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel not "asterisking" Justice Thomas if he were a liberal - can anybody imagine the Washington Times or New York Sun or Boston Herald or any other center-right media outlet similarly dissing an oligarchist black judge, or Justice Thurgood Marshall back in his day?

And yet which side is incessantly and caustically accusing the other of racism?

Our readers should remember the (most recent) disgusting bigotry hurled at Maryland Lieutenant-Governor and U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele by a hard-left "news" blog. You would think that more African-Americans would come to Steele's defense than join in the lynching.

You would be wrong (via RCP):

"Party trumps race, especially on the national level," [Maryland state Dem senator Lisa A. Gladden] said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse, but it is democracy."

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

During the 2002 campaign, Democratic supporters pelted Mr. Steele with Oreo cookies during a gubernatorial debate at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

In 2001, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. called Mr. Steele an "Uncle Tom," when Mr. Steele headed the state Republican Party. Mr. Miller, Prince George's County Democrat, later apologized for the remark.

"That's not racial. If they call him the "N' word, that's racial," Mrs. Marriott said. "Just because he's black, everything bad you say about him isn't racial."

There is so much of this that is just twistedly demented. How is conservative political philosphy "anti-black"? Don't vast majorities of African-Americans believe in law & order? So do conservatives. Don't vast majorities of African-Americans believe in educational excellence and opportunity? So do conservatives. Don't vast majorities of African-Americans adhere to religiously-grounded social values? So do conservatives. How is expanding economic opportunity "not in the interests of "the masses of black people"? And how is a welfare state that has laid waste to the black family and sewed crippling social pathologies and chronic dependency that not even slavery itself managed in those interests?

And yet if a black man dissents from this sick orthodoxy, he just "takes his chances"? The racial solidarity that the Jesse Jacksons and Al Sharptons and NAACPs and Urban Leagues push is that conditional?

A blizzard of Oreo cookies? "Uncle Tom" not racist? Isn't it these very black liberals who give utterance to these slurs that their white comrades cannot who fulfill that role? As RCP's Tom Bevan challenged, how would Delegate Marriot feel about being described as "Aunt Jemima"? Would she accept the dismissive tossoff that it's "just politics"? And can't "party trumping race" stop short of the hurling of black-on-black racial epithets?

Apparently not. As Cap'n Ed concluded....

Th[is] shows the leadership of the Democrats as they truly are - a hate-based faith system that takes any means necessary to win elections. Cheating, violence, smears, and now racism are all acceptable as long as Republicans are the targets. If the Republicans happen to be members of minority communities, so much the better.

After all, it's not discrimination when you hate someone more because of the color of their skin or their ethnic background, is it?

Not if you're a leftist Democrat, it isn't.

You know the old saying: the more things change, the more they stay the same.