Nulan claims:
2. The existence of negative special recognition and concommittant acceptance and utilization of the same for socio-economic ends by folks who actively deny any such proclivity, undermines any possible claim for basic decency by ordinary, middle-class white folks. You simply can't have it both ways and make a credible claim for being morally decent.
I expect that the economically qualified answer to this net effect is swirling somewhere inside the noggin of David A. Bositis (God of the Black Left) and all those who read his newsletters. This is something I might be interested in understanding better. However I think that the best demographic evidence is already clear that the material conditions of African Americans are rising steadily and outpacing most other ethnic groups. But if I understand Nulan's position correctly, little of this matters when it comes to race relations. His argument distills the reason for a moral insurgent imperative for the black partisan. Basically this: whitefolks are morally poison, and particularly suceptible to the evils of white supremacy in America. The degree to which this is true invalidates any claims they might make, or might be made on their behalf to basic moral decency.
In other words, we are surrounded by white devils. I think I've heard that before.
I find this a specious claim of course. But what are Americans to make of racism? How can we measure its real effect outside of such ghastly ravings? Is there anybody credible out there on this outside of the Freakanomics crew, Bositis, Sowell, Loury and Hacker? OK there's Walter Williams and Orlando Patterson, Kozol and several others I'm sure I've heard of but can't remember now. Why don't they come up with a Racism Index? Maybe the IEM guys will do it. Or is this just ideologically impossible and irreconcilable to science?
I think that if people say it is irreconcilable to science, then there's more racial hypochondria in this nation than we think.
