{"id":7227,"date":"2014-04-16T10:21:14","date_gmt":"2014-04-16T17:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7227"},"modified":"2014-04-16T10:21:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-16T17:21:14","slug":"what-eric-holder-doesnt-want-to-talk-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-eric-holder-doesnt-want-to-talk-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What Eric Holder Doesn’t Want to Talk About"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Remember when Attorney General Eric Holder called Americans a \u201cnation of cowards\u201d who put \u201ccertain subjects . . . off limits\u201d? Holder,<\/p>\n

\"Claude
Claude McKay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

of course, was referring to \u201csubjects\u201d that in fact we do nothing else but talk about non-stop \u2013 the refusal of whites to admit the persistence of white racism and its responsibility for all the ills afflicting the black underclass.\u00a0To quote Paul Krugman for this received wisdom, \u201cRace is the Rosetta Stone that makes sense of many otherwise incomprehensible aspects of U.S. politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Holder was unwittingly accurate, for there is a subject the mainstream culture and political discourse never touches: what Harlem Renaissance novelist Claude McKay called the \u201cyellow complex.\u201d This is the psychological condition of light-skinned blacks that was explored in novels of the 1920s like McKay\u2019s\u00a0Home to Harlem<\/i>\u00a0and Wallace Thurman\u2019s\u00a0The Blacker the Berry<\/i>.\u00a0 Back then, the mulatto or light-complexioned black, especially the well educated, lived in a social and psychological limbo, excluded by racism from the white world, and forced by segregation to live among darker blacks whom they often despised and looked down on. Yet darker blacks themselves experienced conflicting emotions, at once attracted to and resentful of the light-skinned who scorned them.<\/p>\n

Thurman\u2019s Emma Lou is a sympathetic portrait of this complex from the perspective of a woman whose mother is a mulatto, but who inherited her father\u2019s black skin:\u00a0\u201cEmma Lou had been born in a semi-white world, totally surrounded by an all-white one, and those few dark elements that had forced their way in had either been shooed away or else greeted with derisive laughter.\u201d When she matriculates at an exclusive Negro college, she despises Hazel, another dark-skinned girl who attempts to befriend her, as \u201cjust a vulgar little n***** from down South.\u201d Emma Lou \u201cwas determined to become associated only with those people who really mattered, northerners like herself or superior southerners, if there were any, who were different from whites only in so far as skin color was concerned.\u201d What she discovers, however, is that most of the light-skinned students to whom she is attracted despise her as much as she despises Hazel.<\/p>\n

A creation of racism and segregation, the psychology\u00a0explored in this persistent theme of classic black literature was\u00a0supposedly transcended by the \u201cblack is beautiful\u201d movement of the 1960s. In black identity politics the poles of value were reversed: the snobbish mulattoes or blacks\u00a0who lived by so-called \u201cwhite\u201d values\u00a0were attacked for \u201cacting white,\u201d and authentic black identity comprised everything that separated blacks from the white majority, whether complexion, accent, or especially political ideology, morality, and virtue. Blacks of any shade who adopted proper English, social decorum, or traditional virtues were scorned as \u201cUncle Toms\u201d and \u201crace traitors.\u201d Though millions of American blacks rejected much of this ideology, it reshaped public discourse and popular culture, and created today\u2019s racial orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Partly because of the understandable commitment to racial solidarity among the majority of blacks who just want to live their lives and get ahead like everybody else, publicly the melodrama of white racism has overshadowed all the other complexities of black American life. Yet those issues still exist, and no doubt are still alive among black people who are loath to break ranks\u00a0in front of white people. The presidency of Barack Obama, however, has exposed how detrimental to our collective political life and race relations has been the refusal honestly to confront these issues, mostly by empowering a race industry that benefits the black elite and middle class, even as it worsens the plight of the black underclass.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s public career reflects some dimensions of the \u201cyellow complex\u201d that persist\u00a0today. At the beginning of his political rise there was briefly some talk that he wasn\u2019t \u201cblack\u201d enough. After all, he was raised by whites in Hawaii, one of the whitest states, where he attended an exclusive prep school before moving on to exclusive, white-dominated universities. Joe Biden let the cat out of the bag when he said in 2007 that Obama was \u201cthe first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.\u201d A year later Harry Reid was amazed that Obama was \u201clight-skinned\u201d and had \u201cno Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one.\u201d\u00a0In other words, not \u201cblack.\u201d Jesse Jackson\u00a0also revealed this tension in the black community when he responded to candidate Obama\u2019s \u201cmoral lectures\u201d to blacks by saying, \u201cI wanna cut his nuts out\u201d for \u201ctalking down to black people.\u201d Perhaps Jackson heard the snobbery of Emma Lou in Obama\u2019s scolding. But the media and race-industry quickly snuffed out these modern evocations of the \u201cyellow complex,\u201d with Biden, Reid, and Jackson all issuing groveling apologies. Ever since then, Obama\u2019s public persona is of an authentic \u201cblack man,\u201d that is, a victim of white racism (\u201cIf I had a son, he\u2019d look like Trayvon\u201d) fighting to improve the lives of his struggling\u00a0\u201cbrothers\u201d and \u201csisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet is it just a coincidence that Obama has been surrounded by so many lighter-skinned blacks\u00a0who,\u00a0like himself,\u00a0come from middle or upper class backgrounds? There\u2019s Jeremiah Wright, Obama\u2019s trusted counselor until he had to be thrown under the bus when his racist sermons were exposed. His father was a Baptist minister, his mother a high school teacher and a vice-principal. Obama\u2019s senior advisor and closest confidante is Valerie Jarrett. Her\u00a0father is a pathologist and geneticist, and she spent her early life in Iran and London. She is a Stanford graduate with a J.D. from Michigan law school. Eric Holder\u2019s father and maternal grandmother were immigrants from Barbados. His father was a real-estate broker. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. and J.D. Susan Rice\u2019s father was a Cornell University economics professor and the second black governor of the Federal Reserve, and her mother is a fellow at the Brookings Institute. Her grandparents emigrated from Jamaica. Rice is a Stanford and Oxford graduate. In other words, all of them are untypical of the lives of ordinary black Americans whose ancestors were slaves or lived under legal segregation.<\/p>\n

All of this should be irrelevant, and would be if Martin Luther King\u2019s dream that blacks be judged by character rather than color had been realized. But the racial orthodoxy\u00a0created by identity politics assumes a Jim Crow one-drop rule that bestows on every black in America \u2013 no matter how privileged, no matter if their parents and ancestors, like Obama\u2019s, never suffered through American slavery and legal segregation \u2013 the mantle of victim of racism, which qualifies them to be spokesmen and less threatening proxies for millions of other black Americans who lack their advantages. By this ahistorical and incoherent racialist calculus, the child of a Kentucky coal miner or a Dust Bowl migrant has more social capital by virtue of a genetically endowed \u201cwhite skin privilege\u201d\u00a0than a half-white Harvard-trained lawyer. The immense advantages bestowed by parents with college degrees and non-ghetto zip codes are invisible. Many middle and upper class\u00a0blacks enjoy what David Horowitz and John Perazzo\u00a0call<\/a>\u00a0\u201cblack skin privilege,\u201d\u00a0even as\u00a0in the sixth year of Obama\u2019s presidency millions of their underclass fellows\u00a0remain mired in unemployment, dependence, crime, addiction, and broken homes.<\/p>\n

The \u201cyellow complex\u201d is just one of the necessary topics of\u00a0the adult conversation about race in America we should be having. Of course, after the Civil Rights movement, affirmative action programs, and the expansion of the black middle class,\u00a0complexion has not been as important as socio-economic class, education, and especially politics. But it still is a factor, and one necessary to address if we want a dialogue on race that, rather than trading in crude simplifications of \u201cblack\u201d and \u201cwhite\u201d identity, instead acknowledges those nuances and complexities that liberals claim to love so much. But don\u2019t hold your breath waiting for those \u201cembarrassing\u201d subjects, as Holder called them, to go public. Too many people get too many economic and political benefits from keeping things just as they are, no matter how many generations of black Americans have to be sacrificed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 Remember when Attorney General Eric Holder called Americans a \u201cnation of cowards\u201d who put \u201ccertain subjects . . . off limits\u201d? Holder, of course, was referring to \u201csubjects\u201d that in fact we do nothing else but talk about non-stop \u2013 the refusal of whites to admit the persistence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,120,383],"tags":[217,215,342,321,1036,63,468,1042,93],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Sz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":663,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/get-ready-for-more-charges-of-racism\/","url_meta":{"origin":7227,"position":0},"title":"Get Ready For More Charges of Racism","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 4, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine The implosion of the Obama administration will create more and more desperate narratives on the part of progressives as we head toward the November election. With no record of achievement to run on, Obama must try to misdirect voters by shifting blame elsewhere: so far\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6228,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/race-industry-leeches\/","url_meta":{"origin":7227,"position":1},"title":"Race-Industry Leeches","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 18, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine The trial of George Zimmerman is over, but the persecution of him by the race industry isn\u2019t. The Department of Justice is currently combing through the case to find some pretext, no matter how specious, for charging Zimmerman with a violation of civil-rights laws.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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But the American idea of sexismand racism in the 21st century \u2014 unfailing, endemic, and institutional\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/sexism-racism-leftism-d-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7945,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-politics-of-victimhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":7227,"position":3},"title":"The Politics of Victimhood","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ Defining Ideas\u00a0 Gabby Giffords, the former Democratic Congressman from Arizona who was shot in the head at a campaign rally in 2010, has come under fire recently for exploiting her horrific experience for political gain. Using her celebrity as a famous victim of gun violence,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Defining Ideas"","block_context":{"text":"Defining Ideas","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/defining-ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/download-14.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-racial-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":7227,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Racial Politics","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Never has America been more assimilated, integrated, and intermarried \u2014 as is evident in everything from politics to popular culture, from statistics to anecdotes. Yet from late 2007 to 2012, Barack Obama has been establishing new rules of racial referencing. In general, his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7166,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-race-hacks-defend-their-industry\/","url_meta":{"origin":7227,"position":5},"title":"The Race-Hacks Defend Their Industry","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 The race-hack usual subjects recently attacked Congressman Paul Ryan for stating that the problems plaguing the poor\u2013\u2013incarceration, fatherless children, drug abuse, rampant violence, and welfare-dependence\u2013\u2013 are a consequence of a dysfunctional culture that scorns marriage, parenthood, education, work, and virtues like self-control. Given that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7227"}],"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=7227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7230,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7227\/revisions\/7230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}