Ta-Nehisi Coates:
Racism vs. the Race Card - National - The Atlantic: From comments:
We conservatives will have a purge of the folks you liberals especially hate if you liberals have a purge of the folks we especially hate.
I think this sort of thinking is endemic to how the conservative movement thinks about racism. For them it isn't an actual force, but a rhetorical device for disarming your opponents. So one does not call Robert Weissberg racist and question his ties to National Review because one seeks to stamp out racism, but because one hopes to secure the White House for Democrats. Or some such. Even if you have a record of calling out bigotry voiced by people deemed to be "on your team," it doesn't much matter because there's no real belief in it existing to begin with.
The conservative movement doesn't understand anti-racism as a value, only as a rhetorical pose. This is how you end up tarring the oldest integrationist group in the country (the NAACP) as racist. The slur has no real moral content to them. It's all a game of who can embarrass who. If you don't think racism is an actual force in the country, then you can only understand it's invocation as a tactic.
This is a very old way of you thinking. It's what you get out of watching Buckley's bumbling response to Baldwin--he neither regards Baldwin with any seriousness, nor the issue with any real concern. It's a game to him. He is effectively a homer for team red. Nothing else matters.
That tradition of viewing racism, not as an actual thing of import, but merely as rhetoric continues today. To abandon that tradition, I suspect, would be cause for an existential crisis.
EDIT: A bit more:
so, in your view, this justifies black panthers' death threats or the racism of al sharpton and the likes (White folks was [sic] in caves while we was building empires), or the racist attack mobs of black youths against white people, the fact george zimmerman is hispanic but the "post-racial" leftwing media shoved down everyone's throat that he in fact is a "white hispanic" ensuing a nationwide anti-white wave amongst black thugs, black teenagers murdering 90 year old white women, etc, etc.
Notice the same formula. The argument isn't really important. What's been written in this space isn't really important. It's a game.
And:
The Blacks and the Conservatives: One problem with getting African-Americans to regard the conservative movement with anything other than antipathy is that movement's persistent proximity with white racists. National Review is seemingly the house organ for sane conservatives. Up until last week they regularly featured the writing of an admitted racist John Derbyshire and "race realist" Robert Weissberg.
Above you can find Weissberg, discussing how he believes Jews view blacks. If you are black, be careful. The urge to punch through your monitor will prove quite strong. What's most insidious is Weissberg implicates other Jews in his attempt to rehab the word "schvartze." (It's not like Nigger!) National Review's editor Rich Lowry was obviously "shocked and appalled." Alex Pareene shows even more links.
Again the thing to note here is the base level of inhumanity you see on display. Never forget that when Derbyshire is telling his kids to cultivate black friends and use them to deflect charges of racism, he isn't merely responding to, say, the rhetoric of Al Sharpton (which would be bad enough) he is responding to the death of someone's child, Pay close attention to Weissberg's tone toward African-Americans.
When white resentment is a significant plank in your platform, cruelty follows.
