by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n When 40%, not 97%, Is Illiberal<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the legacies of the Obama presidency is that \u201cwhite male\u201d as a term of embarrassment has now transcended the hothouse of the campus and gone mainstream. We are lectured by media figures, celebrities, and politicians\u00a0ad nauseam<\/em>\u00a0that the November election is really about a new America of diverse minority groups, gays, feminists, and green pitted against a dying and shrinking number of old white guys. Sometimes that narrative requires absurd assumptions.<\/p>\n If blacks vote this election in ratios of 97% for Obama, it is not really proof of racial solidarity, but because Romney somehow is a racist. In this regard, consult\u00a0the wisdom of Louise Lucas<\/a>[1], a Virginia state senator, who is part of something called the Obama \u201cTruth Team\u201d: \u201cWhat I am saying to you is Mitt Romney, he\u2019s speaking to a segment of the population, who does not like to see people other than a white man in a White House or any other elected position.\u201d Note that Lucas adduces no evidence to back up her slander.<\/p>\n In turn, Romney supporters allegedly have employed racial \u201cdog whistles\u201d \u2014 coded language like \u201cgolf,\u201d \u201cwelfare,\u201d or \u201ccool\u201d \u2014 intended to call out white racist males who favor Romney by supposed margins of 40% to 60%. Again, examine the logic \u2014 when various minorities prefer Obama by margins of 70% to 97%, we are to assume that they are both enlightened and that Romney is a racist; when white males vote in far greater percentages for Obama than do minorities for Romney, we assume they are racist and illiberal. That white males usually vote for the more conservative candidate, regardless of race (ask John Kerry), is ignored.<\/p>\n You\u2019re Pale, Not Me<\/strong><\/p>\n Harry Reid, the rather old, white, wealthy, and grumpy Senate majority leader,\u00a0recently remarked<\/a>[2] that \u201cthe day after the election 17 angry old white men will wake up and realize they just bought the country.\u201d I am not as angry, old, white, or wealthy as Harry Reid, so I assume he has better claims on membership in that guild than I \u2014 and millions of white male others.<\/p>\n Radio host Richard Fowler joked to rather pale, unexciting, and male Bill Press on the latter\u2019s TV show that the Republican National Convention was\u00a0\u201cpale, stale, and male.\u201d<\/a>[3] Giddy on hearing the glib stereotype, and apparently assured that his own liberalism meant that he was not included in it, Press chimed up that they were \u201cold farts.\u201d<\/p>\n Not long ago, an upscale, well-paid host on MSNBC by the name of Melissa Harris-Perry attacked Paul Ryan as a\u00a0\u201cwealthy white man.\u201d<\/a>[4] Ryan, of course, makes a lot less than does Harris-Perry. A bit earlier, the rather boring and very white NBC host Brian Williams asked Mitt Romney whether he would pick as his VP candidate another \u201cincredibly boring white guy.\u201d These examples of the new racial polarization could be multiplied, from the idiot rantings of a quarter-educated\u00a0Cher<\/a>[5] to supposedly serious entertainers like\u00a0James Earl Jones<\/a>[6],\u00a0Morgan Freeman<\/a>[7], and Chris Rock (the 4th of July is now\u00a0\u201cwhite people\u2019s independence day\u201d<\/a>[8]) to the ranting of the Congressional Black Caucus to\u00a0\u201cput y\u2019all back in chains\u201d Joe Biden<\/a>[9].<\/p>\n Rules of Racialism<\/strong><\/p>\n There are a few general rules in these new daily racial obsessions. Stereotyping is not just permissible, but welcomed as long it is never reciprocal. If one were to answer Fowler by invoking skin color in a derogatory way of those not \u201cpale,\u201d he would lose his job. If someone watching Ms. Harris-Perry were to use her language to say that he resented a \u201cwealthy African-American woman\u201d ranting on TV, he would lose his job. Try using the word\u00a0\u201cniggerization\u201d<\/a>[10] as did someone calling himself Tour\u00e9, and see what happens.<\/p>\n Generally the ignorant in politics and the media take their cues from\u00a0the even more ignorant<\/a>[11] in academia, who for nearly half a century have sermonized that race or gender stereotyping is applicable only to, and mostly welcome when aimed at, white males. Given supposed \u201cpower imbalances\u201d and a \u201chistory of oppression,\u201d all but white males can stereotype with exemption. When a Harry Reid or Bill Press takes up the white male slur, they take their cue from the archetypical university president, who for decades has entrenched his own position, and deflected criticism from his usual mediocrity, by warning the campus community of the -ologies and -isms of the white male like himself. I have known about 20 college presidents; they often had one thing in common: they usually upon retirement never followed their own prior loud tutorials. Instead, once out to pasture, the whiny liberals sought out exclusive communities and social engagements with mostly rich white people like themselves.<\/p>\n So liberal white males never imagine that their own slurs could easily apply to themselves. We are to believe that Harry Reid is not old, white, and rich by the fact that as a liberal he caricatures others less liberal with such labels \u2014 and feels that his own rather startling success in making money while in office does not mean that he qualifies as wealthy. The same is true of Bill Press or Brian Williams, who likewise trust that their loud liberal credentials offer a pass from the smears that they level at others. I doubt that either thinks that a John Kerry or John Edwards is rich and white, or if he were, that his race or gender matters.<\/p>\n So we come to another disconnect: almost all of those who level these charges are well-off. A Reid, Chris Matthews, or Harris-Perry seems to think that the white males that they stereotype are uniformly of their own privileged class: white guys of the sort they see daily on Wall Street, in the Senate, or on campuses \u2014 but not quite like the vast majority of those who instead irrigate in Bakersfield, run a machine shop in Lansing, or wire houses in Houston. I would have some respect for a Harry Reid had he given his grumpy old white man speech to a room of white male laid-off workers, or had Brian Williams suggested that his Akron Chamber of Commerce audience was \u201cincredibly boring,\u201d or had Harris-Perry had one of\u00a0her psycho-dramatic meltdowns<\/a>[12] at a NASCAR rally.<\/p>\n Does the cheap smearing also earn psychological penance? The more Chris Matthews and Cokie Roberts\u00a0hear racial dog whistles<\/a>[13], the less they have to live in integrated districts or send kids to inner-city schools. After Harry Reid cited \u201cwhite men,\u201d was he freed then to talk of Barack Obama as a light-skinned Negro\u00a0who talked like a white person<\/a>[14] when he wished? The more Joe Biden warns that \u201cthey\u201d are going to put \u201cy\u2019all in chains,\u201d the more it was then permissible for him\u00a0to have once said<\/a>[15] of Barack Obama that he was a \u201cclean\u201d black and a \u201cnice-looking guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Just \u201cThem\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n With this fixation on race and gender, note how individualism fades and character matters less, as we regress into cardboard caricatures of human beings. In the world of a Harry Reid or Robert Fowler, white males can be pale or old, but are not mere individuals who may intermarry or have less money and fortune than females or non-whites \u2014 unless they pass muster as liberals and thus are given free rein to stereotype others by their race and gender.<\/p>\n Yet I would resent sharing anything like \u201cwhite maleness\u201d with Harry Reid, an unscrupulous and unhinged demagogue. I have far more in common with the Mexican-Americans I live among than with Sen. Reid; in that sense, some of those most responsible for the decline in American values and culture have been white males in Hollywood, the universities, the media, and politics. Again, the more white males talk about pernicious white males, the more they seek to be exempt from their own advocacies. The Harvard Law faculty, Obama\u2019s campaign advisors, the ACLU, and the major motion picture companies are far less diverse than the average white middle-class public school.<\/p>\n I was introduced to this phenomenon at 30, when as a young professor at CSU, I had a shouting match with a senior (white male) professor in the philosophy department. He raged on and on about the \u201clack of diversity in our department!\u201d \u2014 in explanation of why he would not hire a gifted young and exploited white male part-timer. So I reminded him that he and his eight full-professor colleagues \u2014 unpublished, hired ABD without finished degrees in the heyday of the 1960s, and poor teachers \u2014 should then resign after a good 30 years of mediocrity and give their slots to young minorities and women, especially given that the white male part-timers they discriminated against were far better qualified than were the tenured faculty. His answer: \u201cChaos!\u201d \u201cAnarchy!\u201d<\/p>\n Is an all-wealthy, all-powerful Oprah or Michael Jordan \u201cgrumpy\u201d or \u201cold\u201d or \u201cwealthy\u201d? How about Clintonites Franklin Raines or Jamie Gorelick, who hand-in-glove helped to loot Fannie Mae for millions and were at the heart of the 2008 housing bubble and collapse? Was another liberal Clintonite, James A. Johnson, who drained Fannie Mae, one of Reid\u2019s rich and old white males? In this regard, don\u2019t look to our leadership for guidance, since we live in an age where the president of the United States urges Latinos to \u201cpunish our enemies\u201d and the attorney general talks of \u201cmy people.\u201d<\/p>\n Bosnization<\/strong><\/p>\n If an America is to become Bosnia, as a white male am I then to regress to claim greater affinity with Jefferson than does Barack Obama? I am \u201cproud\u201d of Lincoln because he was a white male in a way the Asian-American cannot feel such affinity? Do I have special claims on Socrates or Jesus by virtue of being \u201cwhite\u201d and \u201cmale\u201d? Or alternatively, should I curry favor with the new racial barons, by jesting about those \u201cwealthy white men\u201d and \u201cold white males\u201d? Or again, am I responsible for Harry Reid or Bill Maher?<\/p>\n Where Does the Nightmare End?<\/p>\n At best, race will become irrelevant as it has in the case of a Susana Martinez or Marco Rubio. Both can win a state-wide race in a way that members of the Latino or Black caucuses could not, because race is as incidental to their personas as it is essential to race-based congressional cliques. If Rubio were to commit a crime, he would be held to account, in a way that a Charles Rangel or Maxine Waters never will, since everything in the latters\u2019 case become racial, a sort of calculated insurance against accountability.<\/p>\n At worst, the proverbial white male will begin to see society as does a reactionary, bigoted Richard Fowler or Louise Lucas or Melissa Harris-Perry \u2014 all of us as little more than mooing cattle, herding in groups in the pasture on the basis of the particular spots on our hides and the size of our horns, or perhaps the United States as the common prison yard, where we divide up as tribal hoodlums by the color of our skins and nothing much else.<\/p>\n Is Hell for a white male such a place where you are supposed to have natural solidarity with a buffoon like Michael Moore?<\/p>\n URLs in this post:<\/p>\n [1] the wisdom of Louise Lucas:\u00a0http:\/\/nation.foxnews.com\/2012-presidential-race\/2012\/07\/23\/obama-surrogate-accuses-romney-stoking-racial-fears<\/a> <\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media When 40%, not 97%, Is Illiberal One of the legacies of the Obama presidency is that \u201cwhite male\u201d as a term of embarrassment has now transcended the hothouse of the campus and gone mainstream. We are lectured by media figures, celebrities, and politicians\u00a0ad nauseam\u00a0that the November election is really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[120,96],"tags":[12,207,1026,1036,32,1042,93],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-7u","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":516,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/white-on-the-brain\/","url_meta":{"origin":464,"position":0},"title":"‘White’ on the Brain","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The election of the biracial Barack Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of racial harmony. Instead, that dream is becoming a tribally polarized nightmare \u2014 by design, and intended to assist in the reelection of Barack Obama. Consider the increasing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":498,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/white-on-the-brain-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":464,"position":1},"title":"‘White’ on the Brain–II","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner \u00a0 Every now and then someone sends me an incoherent blog posting by someone named Conor Friedersdorf, who attacks a column I\u2019ve written \u2014 usually in a way that reveals his inability to follow a simple argument. In the latest case of \u201c\u2018White\u2019 on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-hope-and-change-to-fear-ad-smear\/","url_meta":{"origin":464,"position":2},"title":"From Hope and Change to Fear ad Smear","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-problem-last-night-was-not-just-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":464,"position":3},"title":"The Problem Last Night Was Not Just Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":714,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-way-of-the-community-organizer\/","url_meta":{"origin":464,"position":4},"title":"The Way of the Community Organizer","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner As the campaign heats up, and the self-imposed restrictions of 2008 disappear, we will likely hear more about the once proud associations and friendships of Barack Obama that were all Trotskyized by the media ministries of truth during the unhinged summer of 2008. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8617,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-democrats-too-old-and-too-white\/","url_meta":{"origin":464,"position":5},"title":"The Democrats: Too Old and Too White?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Leftwingers\u2019 taunts in 2008 and 2012 have come back to haunt them. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online In the jubilation of the Obama election victories of 2008 and 2012, the Left warned Republicans that the party of McCain and Romney was now \u201ctoo old, too white, too\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Democracy"","block_context":{"text":"Democracy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/democracy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/OldDemocrats082515-500x281.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[2] recently remarked:\u00a0http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/articles\/315029\/drop-racial-rhetoric-deroy-murdock<\/a>
\n[3] \u201cpale, stale, and male.\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/video\/2012\/09\/07\/black_libtalker_rnc_was_pale_stale_and_male.html<\/a>
\n[4] \u201cwealthy white man.\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/www.theblaze.com\/stories\/real-news-from-the-blaze-left-attacks-paul-ryan-for-discussing-natural-rights\/<\/a>
\n[5] Cher:\u00a0http:\/\/twitchy.com\/2012\/08\/21\/cher-id-kill-myself-after-1-verse-of-america-the-beautiful\/<\/a>
\n[6] James Earl Jones:\u00a0http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2012\/07\/10\/james-earl-jones-i-understand-racism-so-i-think-ive-figured-out-the-tea-party\/<\/a>
\n[7] Morgan Freeman:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2011\/09\/23\/morgan-freeman-admits-hollywood-has-failed-its-progressive-mission\/<\/a>
\n[8] \u201cwhite people\u2019s independence day\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/Big-Hollywood\/2012\/07\/04\/Chris-Rock-independence-Day<\/a>
\n[9] \u201cput y\u2019all back in chains\u201d Joe Biden:\u00a0http:\/\/freebeacon.com\/biden-on-romney-theyre-going-to-put-yall-back-in-chains\/<\/a>
\n[10] \u201cniggerization\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/tatler\/2012\/08\/16\/msnbcs-toure-romney-is-engaging-in-niggerization-of-obama\/<\/a>
\n[11] the even more ignorant:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2012\/08\/24\/interview-david-gelernter-on-america-lite\/<\/a>
\n[12] her psycho-dramatic meltdowns:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2012\/09\/02\/shirtsleeves-to-hair-shirt\/<\/a>
\n[13] hear racial dog whistles:\u00a0http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10000872396390444506004577613510351533878.html?KEYWORDS=JAMES+TARANTO<\/a>
\n[14] who talked like a white person:\u00a0http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/noel-sheppard\/2010\/01\/09\/reid-once-called-obama-light-skinned-no-negro-dialect-media-mostly-mu<\/a>
\n[15] to have once said:\u00a0http:\/\/articles.cnn.com\/2007-01-31\/politics\/biden.obama_1_braun-and-al-sharpton-african-american-presidential-candidates-delaware-democrat?_s=PM:POLITICS<\/a><\/p>\n