{"id":602,"date":"2012-07-31T22:31:02","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T22:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com.108-166-28-151.mdgnetworks.com\/wordpress\/?p=602"},"modified":"2013-05-07T03:02:32","modified_gmt":"2013-05-07T03:02:32","slug":"the-medias-racial-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-medias-racial-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"The Media’s Racial Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Thornton<\/p>\n

Frontpage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president in Virginia, told a radio interviewer, \u201cMitt Romney, he\u2019s speaking to \u2026 a segment of the population who does not like to see people other than a white man in the White House or in any other elective position. Let\u2019s be real clear about it \u2014 Mitt Romney is speaking to a group of people out there who don\u2019t like folks like President Barack Obama in any elective or leadership position. We know what\u2019s going on here. And some people may be afraid to say it, but I\u2019m not. \u2026 He\u2019s speaking to that fringe out there who do not want to see anybody but a white person in a leadership position.\u201d Given that over 45% of voters support Governor Romney, Lucas\u2019 \u201cfringe\u201d is quite sizable. And just in case anyone missed the smear of these voters behind these words, Lucas went on, \u201cI absolutely believe it\u2019s all about race, and for the first time in my life I\u2019ve been able to convince my children, finally, that racism is alive and well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mainstream media, of course, ignored this crude racism. Not so with the next incident, which took place while Mitt Romney was in England. TheGuardian<\/em>\u00a0quoted an anonymous Romney \u201cadviser\u201d as saying, \u201cWe [England and the US] are part of an Anglo-Saxon heritage, and he [Romney] feels that the special relationship is special.\u201d In contrast to the lack of a response to Lucas\u2019 comments, the Obama administration, via its dyslexic attack dog Joe Biden, called the comment \u201cbeneath a presidential campaign\u201d \u2014 unlike, I suppose, calling your opponents racists, as Lucas did. Charles Blow, columnist and blogger for the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, designated the comment a \u201cpoisonous idea\u201d on the paper\u2019s Campaign Stops blog. Blow went on, \u201cNot all Republicans are intolerant, but the intolerant seem to have found a home under their tent. And instead of chasing the intolerant out, the party turns a blind eye \u2014 or worse, gives a full embrace \u2014 and counts up their votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of condemnation of Lucas\u2019 remarks on the part of an administration that promised a new post-partisan, post-racial political world, and the lack of interest on the part of a media usually meticulous about documenting and decrying racism, show just how intellectually and morally corrupt is our national public discourse about race. On the other hand, the mainstream media\u2019s hysteria over an unnamed advisor\u2019s historically accurate, even banal, remark \u2014 one Romney immediately disavowed \u2014 is equally revealing. Whether through historical ignorance or convenient historical amnesia, the interpretation of the phrase \u201cAnglo-Saxon heritage\u201d as somehow referring to race or DNA, as Blow does or as blogger Joan Walsh did on\u00a0Salon<\/em>, illustrates how thoroughly ideological race-consciousness has become the reflexive explanation for everything.<\/p>\n

The idea that \u201cheritage,\u201d however, means \u201crace\u201d lives on only on the fringes of American political discourse. Most people understand our Anglo-Saxon heritage to refer to cultural and political ideas shared by England and America, the same ones that lie behind much of the political order enshrined in the Constitution, and that influenced founders like Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was an \u201cAnglo-Saxonist\u201d who venerated the semi-mythical Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa, and whose political thought was influenced by Obadiah Hulme\u2019s Historical Essay on the English Constitution, which credited the Anglo-Saxon government with linking popular rule to limited government, and making both the guarantor of political freedom.<\/p>\n

These ideas today have nothing to do with race or ethnicity, and everything to do with the \u201cshared values\u201d of the English-speaking countries or Anglosphere, as Roger Kimball puts it in an essay from his new book,\u00a0The Fortunes of Permanence<\/a><\/em>. \u201cIt is a unity,\u201d Kimball quotes the Indian scholar Madhav Das Nalapat, based on \u201cthe blood of the mind\u201d instead of the \u201cblood of the body.\u201d And the core ideal uniting the Anglosphere, Kimball writes, is \u201cthe depth and strength of the Anglosphere\u2019s traditional commitment to individual freedom and local initiative against the meddlesome intrusion of any central authority.\u201d It is this passionate dedication to freedom that has characterized the history and heritage of the English-speaking peoples, who for all their mistakes and crimes nonetheless have led the world in spending blood and treasure to protect, defend, and nourish freedom.<\/p>\n

Despite attempts in the past to racialize those Anglo-Saxon values, to ground them in the \u201cblood of the body\u201d rather than in the \u201cblood of the mind,\u201d a true understanding of these shared values could not be further from the crude, materialist determinism of today\u2019s race hacks, who imprison individuals in their race, and see everything they say and do and think through this discredited template. Remember when Harvard\u2019s Derrick Bell said that Clarence Thomas \u201cdoesn\u2019t think like a black man\u201d? Likewise Lucas dehumanizes Obama\u2019s white critics, seeing them not as free individuals with different ideas about where America should be heading and what policies will best get us there, but as slaves to their irrational bigotry and inherited moral corruption, and thus easily stirred to hatred by racist \u201cdog whistles\u201d blown by Republican politicians.<\/p>\n

But notice too how this racial essentialism, this reduction of individuals to simplistic racial categories, demeans blacks as well as whites. By blaming everything that happens to blacks on white racism, the race-mongers strip black people of their agency, reducing them to passive victims condemned by their race to inferiority. And of course, we must wonder about progressives who endorse and institutionalize a racialist discourse that infantilizes the people they claim they want to be fully equal. Do they not understand that a victim is at some level always inferior to his oppressor?<\/p>\n

But don\u2019t forget the political advantage that comes from having a class of political clients whom you have absolved from any responsibility for their actions and lives. Such an idea has justified the creation of a vast social-welfare bureaucracy that has expanded the federal government, provided patronage for public employee unions, and allowed intrusive government interference in our social life and economy through affirmative action programs, hate speech laws, and sexual harassment policies that have less and less to do with office lotharios and more to do with protecting designated categories of persons from getting their feelings hurt. Yet this patronage likewise demeans its presumed beneficiaries, stripping them of the dignity that comes from personal autonomy and responsibility, fostering the \u201csoft racism\u201d of low expectations, and thus keeping them in a state of inferiority and dependence on those who oversee the transfers to them of taxpayer money. As the African proverb puts it, \u201cThe hand that gives is always above the hand that receives.\u201d<\/p>\n

That progressives who fancy themselves smarter and more sensitive thinkers, more respectful of nuance and complexity, than conservatives would endorse such crude racist thought is one more example of the bankruptcy of the progressive mind, and its corruption by politics and power. Given how much the progressives have to lose if Romney wins, expect even more of this intellectual corruption as the Democrats try to misdirect the voter from Obama\u2019s dismal record.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president in Virginia, told a radio […]<\/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":[22,120,536],"tags":[12,1026,1028,1044,32,1042,129],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-9I","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":516,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/white-on-the-brain\/","url_meta":{"origin":602,"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":418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-clear-alternatives-in-the-presidential-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":602,"position":1},"title":"The Clear Alternatives in the Presidential Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Forget all the pre-debate handicapping and advice about what Mitt Romney needed to do or what Barack Obama had to avoid. Last night\u2019s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. 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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":467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-hare-romney-the-tortoise\/","url_meta":{"origin":602,"position":3},"title":"Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop's classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls \u2014 only to fall back to about even\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":392,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-game-changes\/","url_meta":{"origin":602,"position":4},"title":"The Game Changes","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama\u2019s exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama\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":469,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-is-obama-still-likable\/","url_meta":{"origin":602,"position":5},"title":"Why Is Obama Still Likable?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine The Democrats\u2019 convention was the public coming-out bash for the party whose political clock stopped in 1972. Every speaker and speech celebrated the musty left-wing ideology and smug arrogance of those who idolize big government because it gives them the power to tell everybody else\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. 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