Why Race Talk Doesn't Work

Comments

[Cobb]

I expect some demurring from this theme because it only talks about personal identity and not institutional racism. But institutional racism works in the context of economics, and the solution to that is found in economic advancement which cannot be leveraged permanently on personal or political solutions. Yet I say institutional racism is really the only stuff that counts because I'm very skeptical of the psychological deprivations of that whole mental thing. Slaves become free all the time. What matters is how long they think of themselves as ex-slaves, subject to enslavement.

I'm more interested in not so much the permanent eradication of racism, which can no more me eradicated than rats or war or sin. I'm interested in pointing the way towards limiting its influence in the context of a proper citizenship. Which is to say a democratic ethos which ultimately becomes normalized in our culture.

This also means that you don't seek remediation in racial terms, but in terms of the damage itself. Example: I didn't get that job because I'm a black man. The reward isn't a black job, and you are not an oppressed black man requiring a black solution. You are a man without a job. When you get a job, you are not a black man with a job, you are a working man. To carry the identity of your victimization (nobody doubts you didn't get the job because of racist discrimination) past the remediation is a fault.

I'm sure there will be much more later.

[Michael Fisher]

Why don't you start by defining racism?

[cnulan]

Race "Talk" doesn't work because Race "existentials" put the lie to the hypocritical claim by the beneficiaries of America's historical and continuing racist patterns and praxis - that they don't want to BE racist. How you live and what you do with others tells the entirety of whether you are racist, or not.

The truth of the matter Cobb, is that most of your constituents live profoundly apartheid lives and simply don't want to ever be CALLED racist despite the monochromatic way that they CHOOSE to live.

Walking the walk is not perfection, it's simply honest anti-racist praxis. What simultaneously fascinates and infuriates your constituents about conscientious dissent and refusal to acknowlege a "shared humanity" - is the fact their words always and everywhere betray the extent to which in their own lives they don't walk the walk.

[Cobb]

Fish,
I'll go to the archives, and this time I will double check myself to see whether or not I think the premises are useful.

The book that really got me dead onto the subject in an advanced way was Kwame Anthony Appiah's 'In My Father's House'. This guy was son of the Kwame Nkruma's right hand man, and he basically went through all of the black liberation movements in America and Africa and analyzed why they failed. His fundamental premise was that too many of them adopted the same racial philosophies of the systems of power they were trying to escape and replicated the same non-democratic errors. In other words, white people called non-white people black, dehumanizing them and they in turn accepted that racial label and remained dehumanized, even in their attempts at liberation.

You might say that the 'system of global white supremacy' defines blackness, and as long as you accept the idea of being black you remain under that system's influence, in which case you have to transcend race of whites and blacks.
--

CN, I disagree slightly. How you live and what you do are influenced by your intentions and what you believe. If you believe certain things about race, inevitably you will do thinks that reflect that belief.

--
All,

Here is the race man section. Again, I'll review and revisit it.

This is what I wrote some 10 years ago or so...

racialism:
The belief that there are differences between human beings which are inherited such that they can be ordered into separate races in such a way that each race shares traits and tendencies which are not shared by members of any other race. Each race has an 'essence'.

All forms of racism build from the premise of racialism. Notice that racialism is not saying anything 'good' or 'bad' about races just that mutually exclusive races absolutely exist and divide the species. The racialist would argue that you could trace the bloodlines of Jews throughout history and that you can definitely determine the 'jewness' of any human being according to his racial 'essence'.

A racialist does not necessarily believe that the races, as we understand them in America are complete. He may say that there are, in actuality, 37 races. We just don't know what they are yet. The racialist's point however is that race, whatever it turns out to be, is deterministic of human behavior and that we need to know.

extrinsic racism:
The extrinsic racist says that there is a moral component to the 'essence' of a race which warrants differential treatment. These differences are, to the extrinsic racist, not particularly controversial. The extrinsic racist, while maintaining the belief for example that Jews are greedy, might not feel anything wrong with befriending a Jew. The extrinsic racist might very well applaud the Jew who proves himself not greedy and call him a credit to his race.

intrinsic racism:
The intrinsic racist says that the moral 'essence' of a race establishes an incontrovertible status for the race. no matter what an individual member of a race does he should be treated just like the rest of his race. the intrinsic racist would argue that the Jew is so greedy that he would hide his greed in order to gain other's confidence or that this generous person is simply not a Jew.

I use these definitions for a purpose. My interest is in generating and maintaining anti-racist praxis in individuals for the primary purposes of ridding racism from American politics. Thus it is important that these categories work for political ideologies as well as the thoughts of individuals. An individual bigot may be converted for better or worse any day of the week, but a policy enacted by like-minded individuals at any moment in time survives the individual.

Thus whether or not one individually holds racist ideas, the existence of racist policies is that citizen's responsibility.

[Cobb]

For what it's worth, I think most Americans are unreflective and talk about race in an extrinsic form, and they call it 'culture'. Understand that multiculturalism is an essentially extrinsic racist form that dodges the genetic bullet. It says that for the sake of 'authenticity' everyone should act out their official culture.

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"can be ordered into separate races in such a way that each race shares traits and tendencies which are not shared by members of any other race. Each race has an 'essence'."

Ok. Now, if you please, tell us what the "traits and tendencies which are not shared by members of any other race" are that make up the "black race" and the "white race".

[Cobb]

I'm not a racialist. I don't believe such traits exist.

[Michael Fisher]

If such traits do not exist, since you say you are a black pundit, what makes you black?

[cnulan]

The "multicultural" label is yet another hypocritical dodge. Don't go changing the subject once you've gotten off to an auspicious start;

institutional racism works in the context of economics, and the solution to that is found in economic advancement which cannot be leveraged permanently on personal or political solutions.

Let's get down to some brass tacks here, shall we?

Truly racist white Americans - across socioeconomic lines - don’t believe that America needs Black folks. They believe us totally dependent on "their" economic, political, and cultural "exceptionalism", and that Black folks resort to charges of white racism to obfuscate the fact of our dependency.

That’s the “race” problem in the United States, and as long as cultural production from this quarter goes unchallenged, racial realities in America will never change.

quoting Manuel Garcia;

Yes, there is White-on-Black racism (along with many other forms), but its root is not primarily simple emotional hatred, rather it is both fear (of two kinds: xenophobia and the historical guilt over slavery that Thomas Jefferson admitted to) and greed. The mania for control is driven by greed, and the essential fear is the anxiety over the loss of that control. Ascribing White-on-Black racism to simple emotional hatred is the most comfortable overt explanation, as is clear from its prominence in the depictions of racism in popular culture (e.g., movies). The dominant culture finds it comforting to imagine that racism is confined to people with ungovernable hatreds and undisciplined minds. This relieves the majority who are comfortable with inequitable economic arrangements from any responsibility for the inevitable consequences of those arrangements; and even from any reproach in the eyes of recognized public opinion.

Racism is an instinctive tool to capture resources and deny them to competitor "species."

Garcia continues;

commentary on racism is most incisive when it keeps its focus on the economic dimension -- which I believe is central -- rather than the emotionalism about "hate" wallowed in to excess by infotainment for the unthinking. It is better to focus on the intent and the purposes of the racism, which are to create and maintain economic disparities. From such focal points, one can advance policy and law enforcement arguments to eliminate these imbalances. Then, you are speaking about the here and now in a clear, unvarnished and rational manner. This can be extremely hard-hitting without being pitiful and cloying. This is in the spirit of Malcolm X and Frantz Fanon, and that is momentum, that is self-respect, that is pride. If we got enough of this, it might also be revolution.

Tony Snow came very close to speaking to the essence of the thing yesterday on his friday fill-in for Bill O'Lielly. Snow said that the ONLY answer is to stop talking about it at all, and for folks to busy ourselves with actual interpersonal engagement with real projects that better everything for everybody. Of course, he then inserted the partisan line concerning what those projects should be, but at least in principle, he actually articulated the necessity for "work".

As senior IT professionals, you and I each know that "work" is an effective antidote, if not "the only" effective antidote. I believe that the economic long emergency will confront America with options for constructive engagement a la 21st century WPA - and - some options for truly chaotic tribal balkanization.

I think the foundations of American response to the pending long emergency will be laid over the next four years. I've never yet seen any evidence that your candidate or your constituents are constitutionally up to the task of constructive engagement with the problems at hand.

[cnulan]

I see you're wrestling with a posterchild (Nahn-Cee) for what I wrote above. Good luck with that....,

[E.C.]

COWARDICE & "RACE TALK" IN THE U.S.

On March 14, 2008, after an interest-convergence-framed speech he gave at my law school, I asked Derrick Bell a question about Cowardice as the antithesis of Courage.

First, I reminded him and the audience of his conception of Courage, as he defines it in Ethical Ambition. "Courage is a decision you make to act in a way that works through your own fear for the greater good as opposed to pure self-interest. Courage means putting at risk your immediate self-interest for what you believe is right." (Derrick Bell, Ethical Ambition, p. 43).

Then I asked him about something he does not address directly in the book. Since he was able to sagaciously define Courage for us, or, more specifically, what he believes constitutes a Courageous action or a Courageous life, I thought he might be willing to define 'Cowardice', or 'Cowardly action', or 'Cowardly life'. My question and his answer were recorded and are available here, beginning at the 52:05 mark.

Bell realized I was baiting him, trying to trick a heroic sage into admonishing a group of satiated and privileged professional folks, most of whom have taken few courageous risks during their privileged and comfortable lives. He would not take my bait. He probably suspected that a direct answer to my question, publicly sharing his definition of 'Cowardice', would have made most in the audience very uncomfortable.

The reason why race talk (I prefer "culture talk") doesn't work is because resolution-focused race/culture talk is courageous talk. When it's honest, it can be painful, ugly, exhausting, and cathartic talk. Xenophobia, ethnocentrism, cultural-supremacism, and anti-syncretism are not topics that appeal to privileged cowards who have been psychologically and economically enriched by these benighted illnesses born of fear and weakness.

U.S. citizens who have been long comforted by their easily earned opulence are often also U.S. citizens who seek out convenient ideologies, complex normative arguments, long-run economic theories, dubious statistical analyses, or other excuses to justify or rationalize their xenophobia, ethnocentrism, cultural-supremacism, linguicism, and anti-syncretism, to justify their utter failures to act in accordance with humanistic moral or religious principles. To them, race/culture talk threatens to decrease their self-esteem and to decrease the comfort they find in allowing or forcing themselves to believe they're relatively good people, living relatively good lives. Lives that are much more like Jesus's or Mother Teresa's than they are like Hitler's or Juvénal Habyarimana's.

Race/Culture talk threatens to strip them of their comforting delusions. It threatens to convince them that they, due to their ignorance, immorality, amorality, apathy, nonfeasance, or indirect malfeasance, should be held more accountable for the most egregious ongoing racially/culturally-driven injustices in their communities, cities, states, nation, and world. It threatens to convince them their actions and inactions have far more influence on ongoing racial/cultural injustices than they likely have enough courage to admit.

Race/culture talk doesn't work in the U.S. because we have wittingly (via manipulative politics, laws, regulations, cultural warfare, and other forms of social engineering) or unwittingly (under the spell of a benighted culture that advertises the sins of John Milton's Satan as the virtues of its great men) distributed our social resources poorly. We have distributed far too much of our society's wealth, power, and prestige to cowardly people who perceive few or no economic or social incentives to talk courageously about race/culture in the U.S. These people, most of them members of the economically dominant race or culture, prefer to believe they are living relatively good, relatively courageous lives. They do not want to have the conversations that would prove them wrong.

[Michael Fisher]

E.C. Looks like Bell either ignored or didn't understand your question. Lot's a rambling, unfortunately.

[Cobb]

Your comment at 10:46 CN, I think is the closest you have come to describing the entire reason why I bother with conservative & republican politics. For me, it has always, always been about the economics. As far as I'm concerned blackfolks have always had everything we needed in every other sphere of life. Where we have failed is to take advantage of the economic infrastructure of America, the wealthiest country on the planet. By extension, I am interested in understanding America in the context of Western Civ. I think if you give the race/culture people more to talk about, all they'll ever do is fill up the world with words and never build wealth. Fish, I think you jumped on my case when I said something about the fact that skyscrapers are built and that I'm fascinated by that. Yeah. Still am a prima facia gearhead. All I watch is the Discovery Channel.

I am interested in what kind of politics and economics it's going to take to get blackfolks to abandon all that race and culture talk and BUILD something, which again is why I don't bother myself with the deprivations of Sherwood Forest as a worthwhile subject matter.

What raises my concern is the extent to which identity politics is a circular firing squad, and degrades the quality of our democracy. It's simply not a proper subject. How many times do I harp on the matter of modernity? Always. Your ass fits into the bucket seat, quit griping about the song on the radio and drive the car! I think that blackfolks who gripe about the racist background noise of America really don't know how to drive the car, and they use that excuse when they wreck.

I am not convinced, EC, that race and cultural talk threatens anyone who is not invested in the identity politics of the Right as Nulan describes. That is to say, I firmly believe that if I walk up to George P. Schulz or Dick Cheney with a bunch of diplo-speak they'll give me a polite fuck you, you can't even speak Arabic and I've done 10 billion dollars of business with Arabs. Here it is that we all can speak English and we're not even doing business in America with American's (that's a generous 'we') instead playing multicultural identity games. Who gives a shit, really?

I'm sorry to get upset about it but Nixon was right. Benign neglect. Let the Affirmative Action bodies hit the floor and see how potent your black kung-fu really is. The clock is ticking. If it's not an economic skill, what is it really? Listen. The black nationalist bigot in me really cannot stand what Indians are doing in American IT. But the Western Civilization modernist in me says, compete globally or die. At least *somebody* gets it. In the end, I'm with Western Civ, because a lot of you Americans are trifling. When you're picking up after the first dirty bomb, I'm going to tell you I told you so. The last time I took Reparations seriously was October 2001.

--
How am I a black pundit? I know where I come from. Simple.

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"How am I a black pundit? I know where I come from. Simple."

And where would that be? "Black"land?

Michael, if there are no "black" traits and tendencies...

(1) WHY DO YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE BLACK?

(2) What is "Black"?

If you can not answer that, then, logically, every word you ever wrote, every video you ever made is for naught and without validity, for the writings and recordings and words uttered would have been made by a person who does not exist.

[unclesmrgol]

A few comments on your speech:

a) Personal racism is a prejudice (pre-judgement) for people of your own race. Governmental racism is preference for people who claim a certain race/races. The two are different in their effects and the solutions.

b) Racism isn't just a black/white thing. A few years ago, there were race riots at Santa Monica High School. The perpetrators were people associated with La Raza and the Black Student Union. No whites needed to apply to this riot, which caused the school to be locked down and a lot of "soul-searching" to be performed by the administration of the school.

c) When you think you are not racist, you can use accusations of racism to empower yourself. It empowers you to people who are indeed racist but guilty about it, and to those who are racist but want to pretend they are not. Anyone who is either secure in their own conscience, or doesn't give a rat's behind, will either be unmoved by your accusation, or moved in an opposite direction (e.g., to counter-accusation) if they feal it to be false.

d) Racism on a personal level is a sin against another, especially if it leads you to act in a way counter to their best interests. Jesus used this concept to great effect in the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

e) "post-racial" society is a society which discounts racial identification as a chip in personal interchanges. We are certainly not there yet, when Obama (the ultimate self-pitched "post-racial" man) can step into the dog-doo he just did. Our society is still sensitive to racial identification, and the reason for all that ruckus is that Obama had tried to position himself away from the Farrakhan and Sharptons, and turns out to have the equivalent as a pastor.

f) Your own racism is not just your own at the moment the Government gets involved. If the racist bus driver who ordered Rosa Parks to vacate her seat had not had the power of the government (in the form of laws allowing preferential seating based on race) behind his act, it would have been a personal confrontation, not a societal one, and would have been handled far differently. In a previous post, you mentioned Ward Connerly's view -- he would prevent the Government from discriminating on the basis of race in any of its individual interactions with citizens. I'm there. When Government favors anyone based on race, history says it breeds discontent and rebellion. [Note that I'm not saying that Government cannot favor low income people for services; it's also in our society's best interest to not permit the concentration of mega-wealth into the hands of a few hereditary aristocrats]

Racialism. By your definition, isn't this just a substitute for ethnicity? If I eat haggis and toss legally-obtained telephone poles around in my back yard during my spare time, that's one thing. If I use my neighbors' cats and dogs for my haggis, that's another.

E.C. -- Cowardice is obviously the opposite of Courage. Given that he has defined Courage, he has also defined Cowardice. Defining the proposition defines also the opposition. So both your question and his evasion were for naught. And I'm sorry I could not hear neither your question nor his response since I'm on a Linux box -- you used a .wmv file, which makes your comment a slave to William Gates.

[unclesmrgol]

What simultaneously fascinates and infuriates your constituents about conscientious dissent and refusal to acknowlege a "shared humanity" - is the fact their words always and everywhere betray the extent to which in their own lives they don't walk the walk.

Cnulan begins to see the light -- that the accusor of "not-see" has three fingers pointing back, and that those three fingers might be meaningful.

[cnulan]

That club of belmont is a truly filthy nest of snakes.

[E.C.]

"I am not convinced, EC, that race and cultural talk threatens anyone who is not invested in the identity politics of the Right as Nulan describes."

Race/cultural talk threatens all who would see the world and their role in its political economic systems as they are. It threatens those who would acknowledge that the world's wealthiest people stand firmly on poorest people's backs and that we use social sorcery like race and culture to veil the immorality of our actions and inactions, to convince ourselves our God would be proud of us despite our apathetic dispositions towards others and our benighted, if indirect, malevolence. It threatens all who would attempt to answer the hard question the impoverished multitudes put to John the Baptist, "What then must we do?" (Luke 3:10).

"I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet I assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back." Lev Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do?, Chapter 16

Tolstoy helps explain how race/culture talk can even threaten people like me, people who believe we are more egalitarian, more culturally competent than the rest yet who are still convinced we are doing too little with the kingly resources we inherited. Kingly resources? When compared with most of the world's citizens, even when compared with the poorest and most marginalized 20% of our own countrymen, we middle- and upper-class U.S. citizens control kingly levels of wealth, power, and prestige. And some of us wish we were courageous enough to stop deluding ourselves so successfully, so we would start using more of our easily earned wealth, power, and prestige to promote both long-run and short-run national and international political economic fairness. But most of my kind would still prefer to stand on others' backs, making us, in the big scheme of things, only marginally better than the most avaricious, merciless, selfish, and Satanesque few who strive to live as gods on earth by furtively and cunningly scheming to control most of the world's capital, in part by using race and culture to divide, weaken, conquer, and manipulate the multitudes.

[cnulan]

smrgol, I hate to burst your bubble, but I've walked the walk of necessity since before you were born. my refusal to validate your morally and politically leaky bucket has nothing to do with ontological reality, it has to do with the fact that your ethical and economic equivocation marks you as someone with whom I genuinely have very little in common.

the difference between your world and my world is simple. I've been all over yours, and it holds no mysteries for me. OTOH - my world is as alien and inaccessible to you as if it was physically removed light years from where you sit and spin..., that you fail to grasp this fundamental difference between our respective experiences of the world is what in largest measure makes you a not-see.

like your girl Beth in Mobile, you don't go to a Black church, you haven't been to a Black church, but those facts notwithstanding, you have a condemnatory opinion to offer on the Obamas and their pastor. go challenge the racist atavisms over at the club of belmont and stop pretending that you have a substantive axe to grind with the proven human essentialists over here.

[Cobb]

Fish,

Black is a cultural, political and existential creation. It is a product of intellectual movements of the 50s and 60s borrowing on previous intellectual movements particularly of the Harlem Renaissance. My blackness is a product of the cultural, political and intellectual ferment of a particular moment in American history, and I have informed it with a broad selection of readings. It is, for me, finally an intellectual garment for my humanity.

James Baldwin puts it best:
All you are ever told in this country about being black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and re-create yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to impose, in fact - this may sound very strange - you have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
--James Baldwin

In that regard blackness is always contingent - it is flexible, it is personal, it is the way you decide to deal with the world. Sometimes it's not even necessary. James Baldwin again:

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which robes one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.
-- James Baldwin

Blackness is a mask, a garment, a pose, a style. It isn't inherent. It is optional. It is a way of presenting oneself that suits one.

Blackness is therefore something that can be shared, but it is not necessary that it be shared.

Historically, the kind of blackness I inherited was always in the process of creation. As most people here know, I was present at the creation of Kwanzaa and in the ferment of the black cultural change in Los Angeles. Black Arts was always a big part of it. Black Consciousness was always a big part of it. I was there as Negroes were improvising and coming up with better and worse ideas for blackness - it wasn't fully baked as I grew up black. So I have always, always been aware of how changing environments and changing ideas changed what blackness was - it has always been an intellectual creation by a vanguard of which my family was a part.

We put down stakes in what blackness was. You ask me what's black and I cannot imagine giving any credibilty to anyone who answers without respect and consideration to that intellectual, literary, political and cultural movement. In that respect, blackness was always something of a top down definition. It was very Marxist in that regard. It was about creation of a new man. It was about the destruction of the Negro and the creation of something that had never been. In that way it was also an error.

You might ask me what about the millions of people who call themselves black? I say this: They wouldn't even know they were black if the black intelligentsia hadn't told them to be.

There will always be people who are lost. Blackness today remains an attempt to capture their attention and guide them. This has always been the prerogative of the Talented Tenth. But I resigned from the Talented Tenth, I resisted, after a life of inheriting that arrogant prerogative, of carrying it forward. That is because I finally realized that African Americans are exactly who they want to be, with no further assistance from anyone. The monolith is broken.

What I have been doing at Cobb is attempting to rescue the strengths of what we learned from this history of movement and adapting it to the world as it operates today - to transform black nationalism, an old movement, to American nationalism. To rid black nationalism of its Marxist economic theory, and of its racial separatism, and to capture the imagination of the most successful blacks of my generation to participate in this update. To fix what's broken in the Talented Tenth and insure our best and brightest inherit what is proper in Western Civilization.

What I have discovered is that the quest to rid the planet of racism is vain and stupid if it cannot inherit Western Civilization, and those who would spite the material prosperity and infrastructure of the West are doomed. The conservative thread of African American struggle is self-reliance and not a vanguard, which is why I'm with Booker T and not with DuBois. It's why I reject Talented Tenth prerogatives. I believe in simpler hierarchies which do not require scientific Marxist theories of human organization, which I think have been adequately disproven. So what I have in common with other African Americans is a respect for the intellectual ferment of a vanguard without the arrogant presumption that a vanguard must lead African Americans through new kinds of identity, rather that you lead African Americans like any people, through economic, religious and political incentives. A clean fixed black nationalism becomes an American nationalism with black cultural flavor - not Diddy, but Hansberry.

I am a writer, first and foremost. I inherit a tradition from Jean Toomer, from Ralph Ellison, from Langston Hughes, from James Baldwin, from Gerald Early, from Toni Morrison, from H.L. Mencken, from Mark Twain, from Albert Murray, from many others to comment upon the American scene and to inform opinions with wit and candor and sometimes with insight. I want to be that writer. But I also want to live in a big house and drive a Porsche and provide for my kids, so I program computers and collect fat American dollars. My wife would say I'm a bit unbalanced, and now she's hitting me upside the head...

sorry i got to go shopping.

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"Blackness is a mask, a garment, a pose, a style. It isn't inherent. It is optional.

If blackness is optional, can you, Michael Cobb Bowen, if you so desired, opt to be white? And make it stick so that anyone, "whites" included, accept your classification as white?

[Cobb]

I wrote a pithy response at midnight. It obviously got lost in the works. It's just as well because the real answer is very simple. Nobody exists outside of history and one cannot be arbitrary. I can call myself anything I want, but that's not relevant to what moves the crowd. If one seeks to be effective at anything other than a personal level, one must respect what has transpired. Sure I could call myself white, but that would just be perverse - it defies the lived experience of people and it defies history. Could I do it? I could do it just as well as Eddie Murphy in Coming to America. Ah hah hah!

[Cobb]

I would add this note, part of the entire problem with identity politics and personal ethics is that the personal isn't necessarily political. It cannot effect real change. That is exactly why the discussion of Obama's personality is so foolish. It is exactly why the discussion of whether or not I choose to be 'white' is foolish, and it is exactly this kind of discussion that people interested in progress wish to disable.

Somebody just (probably with the right intention) sent over part of this discussion to the Belmont Club in which I describe myself and my role. I take that to be an example of asking the question 'is this person good or bad' which presumes whether or not i should be heard out and a referendum on any discussion I might have on race from this point further. There's only two way that can go Messiah or Pariah. Again, this is the evasion of a political responsibility towards the aims of liberty. If everyone understood the Constitution we'd have a more representative democracy and disable cults of personality because we wouldn't be so heavily proxied. It is a fundamental aim of my conservative nationalism to disable proxies - more personal responsibility.

[Michael Fisher]

Cobb...

"I can call myself anything I want, but that's not relevant to what moves the crowd."

I take that as a "no".

So if you don't have the power to define yourself as white, then, logically, you didn't have the power to define yourself as black.

Which means that "racial" identity is something imposed on you, Michael Cobb Bowen, by outside sources. Since it ain't biological, it's got to be socio-political.

Ergo, racialism exists. Since the category "black" is imposed upon you regardless of your will, and thus by force, you are subjected to racism which I define as "racialism" plus "force'.

And this is why you reacted as you did when I made the unfortunate and stupid mistake to call you a N****r.

Ergo, again: Racism is alive and well, and sticking out heads in the sand will just cause us to get our posteriors drilled down deeply. The only way one can be a true humanist is to oppose this socio-political system of immoral force and get rid of, IN PRACTICE, of the notion of "race" as a functioning socio-political category altogether. However, and I repeat, you can't get rid of something you don't acknowledge.

Happy Easter, Michael

[Mr. Noah]

Cobb, I tried to take your racism survey but it kept trying to make me give my address and contact info to advertisers, so I gave up!

[Cobb]

Fish, I actually agree with everything you said. I think we simply disagree on the size, scope and ebeddeness of white supremacy within American society and Western Civilization. As well, I'm fairly sure we differ on the our methods of reform.

Noah, sorry about that, I hosted it there about 5 years ago and I haven't gotten many responses. Maybe they've changed the system. I'll post results though.

[thegrayconservative]

The only way one can be a true humanist is to oppose this socio-political system of immoral force and get rid of, IN PRACTICE, of the notion of "race" as a functioning socio-political category altogether. However, and I repeat, you can't get rid of something you don't acknowledge.

So does this mean that you're more of a libertarian Fisher?

Do you support, in principle, the following initiative of the Libertarian Party?

Racial classification campaign picks up more endorsements

The Libertarian Party's campaign to abolish the federal government's "official" racial categories has won a flurry of endorsements over the last several months -- ranging from radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy to a newspaper in Oklahoma to a well-known political commentator. David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and popular television commentator, said in August, "I applaud the Libertarian Party's Just Say No to Racial Classifications campaign. I am against these racial categories -- this is truly American Apartheid."

Horowitz, a 1960s leftist turned 1990s opponent of "political correctness," has long been an opponent of race-based politics, which he has called a "racial/ethnic spoils system [which has made us] a race-conscious society in a way that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago."

On August 17th, the Daily Oklahoman (Oklahoma City, OK) wrote a friendly and supportive editorial about the campaign -- the first newspaper endorsement of the party's anti-classification efforts.

The editorial noted: "Our supposedly colorblind society forces people, under penalty of law, to declare their race on census forms. The Libertarians' campaign aims at getting Americans to refuse declaration or race. . . The choice is yours."

The newspaper also wrote: "Libertarians are a party of ideas, many of them good... The party's Just Say No to Racial Classifications idea is at least worthy of discussion."

On August 25th, popular right-wing radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy -- nationally syndicated on 100 stations -- read an article from the Washington Times about the LP's campaign, including the fact that someone's race was none of the government's business.

Added Liddy: "It's none of their damn business!"

Five "official" categories

The goal of the LP's campaign, launched in July, is to eliminate the U.S.'s five "official" racial categories from all government forms, and to urge Americans to refuse to disclose their race on the 2000 census forms.
"We want to use this campaign to build public awareness of how politicians exploit racial classifications to further divide the nation along racial grounds," said LP National Chairman Steve Dasbach. "Every single American can strike a blow for a more tolerant, colorblind society by saying 'no' to the census takers and 'no' to racial classifications."

In fact, this question is open to anyone - does anyone here have ay reason to disagree with what the LP is trying to accomplish?

[unclesmrgol]

Nulan,

No need to get all outraged. I'm just pointing out the obvious. Your resume of "hard knocks" doesn't interest me, as I see you as you really are, not as you write. Yuppie, maybe better, as you've hinted in several posts, and as you just state for the record:

I've been all over yours, and it holds no mysteries for me.

I'm glad my world is visible to you. You've been so ineloquent in describing it that I didn't recognize that fact for a moment.

With regard to the black church experience, I doubt you've been in every service in which Barack Obama's been present -- in fact, I'm really sure, unless you commute 387 miles (or so) to church every Sunday. So both you and I get to vicariously experience it via www.tucc.org, back issues of The Trumpet, youtubes of the good reverend's speeches... Each of us carry something away from those. Obviously, what you carry away is quite different from what I carry away. I will say this -- if some priest at St. Agatha's or St. Augustine's were to pull that crap, they would not offer another homily. I expect my Christianity to be unadulterated by hatred or deceit. I had one priest at St. Anne's do a Bloody Prot homily, and I made sure the bishop knew. Your agreement with the guiding principles of Barack's church says everything I need to know about your religious faith, nulan.

Belmont. Why would I need to go over to Belmont? You are being handed your kiester quite nicely by Nahn-Cee (a graduate of Captains Quarters) over there. Why should I pile on to the loser? She's quite a bit more to the right than I am, and disposed to occasional rants, but she seems to be doing the job of besting you quite nicely. You can't even begin to raise your so-called sniper rifle without receiving a head shot. 10 seconds into the game and you need a respawn. Cobb could take on Nahn-Cee (the more to the left or right they are, the closer they are to actually falling), but she's totally out of your league.

Does it help your self-esteem to know that I, like your two nemeses, occasionally wear a skirt as well? Have a nice day.

[cnulan]

I had one priest at St. Anne's do a Bloody Prot homily, and I made sure the bishop knew.

You went and tattled?

Does it help your self-esteem to know that I, like your two nemeses, occasionally wear a skirt as well?

Smrgol, it now appears I have no nemeses, just republican fangirls "challenged" by aloofness.

Have a nice day.

You too hon....,

[unclesmrgol]

You went and tattled?

I tried to make the priest understand the error of his position. When he didn't, I took it up the hierarchy.

Nulan, you built an entire career in network security tattling on people to their bosses, and that's the best retort you can manage? Don't you think your tattles are necessary to secure safety for the organizations which employed you, as well as their customers?

[Michael Fisher]

Gray...

"So does this mean..."

Gray, we've been over this several times. If you don't get what i am saying about race and racism/white supremacy yet, I have to conclude that you are either deliberately obstructionist or just plain ole' stupid. Take your pick and let me know which one applies.

[cnulan]

Nulan, you built an entire career in network security tattling on people to their bosses, and that's the best retort you can manage?

The vocation is public domain Doug, and comparatively mature. Which is to say, there's enough information widely available about it that almost no literate and sensible person - at this juncture - would imagine that THIS is how it works.

Don't you think your tattles are necessary to secure safety for the organizations which employed you, as well as their customers?

No - that authoritarian presumption - which suffuses and deforms so much of "conservatism" - doesn't really have any place in the technical security world.

OTOH - I suspect your occasional "skirt wearing" might be a serious cause for concern - there in the diocese.

[thegrayconservative]

Gray, we've been over this several times. If you don't get what i am saying about race and racism/white supremacy yet, I have to conclude that you are either deliberately obstructionist or just plain ole' stupid. Take your pick and let me know which one applies.

None of your choices apply here, but this either/or line of questioning is very typical coming from you—the master of the False Dichotomy. I already know your positions on race/racism as we've hashed it out many times. This question was different. I asked you a basic question about your political beliefs: is that libertarian initiative representative of your positions on race? In the time it took you to type up your smug little reply and put together those hrefs you could have responded with a simple yes or no. So what applies here is a third option. It's not that I'm stupid or deliberately obstructionist, it's that I generally have no idea when you're going to respond to my questions like a normal person or if you'll become needlessly combative, as you did above. So I'm going to go with option 3 and say that you're being silly (as usual).

[unclesmrgol]

Nulan,

I'm of Scots ancestry. You know, the telephone pole thing, the skirts, the screaming cats, Glen Coe. The Diocese could care less. Yah. Since you've picked up my identity (not hard because I don't do that stupid godaddy obscural thing), you also know my last name, one of the more infamous ones in Scottish history (and sort of undeserved by my branch -- we were Jacobites).

No - that authoritarian presumption - which suffuses and deforms so much of "conservatism" - doesn't really have any place in the technical security world.

So, let's see. In performance of your job, you find that an employee has attached an unauthorized modem to their office computer (unknown to their employer) which represents a security threat vector to the computing infrastructure you are auditing [the scenario is right out of the article describing what you do]. You don't tell the boss? I'm amazed -- what other method is there to instruct the repair of what's broken than to list the broken things you've discovered and their mitigation? Is there a "liberal" method to do security?

Putting this same question into a racial context -- I was once drying my car in Venice at the Lincoln car wash when a black guy came up and requested a ride 'to deliver medicine to his grandmother'. Being the once-stupid liberal, I gave him the ride -- into the Oakwood area, where he and three other guys pulled me from my car and started beating me. The whole thing was witnessed by about 20-30 people, who formed a ring around the incident -- just watching, not helping either side, but obviously having a good time. Once I woke up to what was going on, I managed to break one guy's arm over my knee and break another guy's foot (don't mess with someone wearing fatigues and army boots). That let me break away, get through the circle, and start running down the street. I left my car in the middle of the street and just ran. I thought I was dead, but the two remaining don't follow me. As I'm running past a side street, I hear a little girl (about 8-10 years old) call out and she says "Mister, I've called the police. But don't tell them who did it, because the gang will kill me." About two minutes later, police arrive and it's over. cnulan, that little girl deserved a medal that she'll never get. I pray for her each evening, and hope she's done well in life (she'd be at least 40 years old now). There's more to the story, but suffice to say that I view the word "tattle" as the last insult by the lawbreaker who prefers the silence of the lambs.

Hence, I tattle frequently and often. You will love me if the accident wasn't your fault, and hate me if it was, because I will stop to make sure everyone's ok and leave my name.

[Cobb]

Uh, what's the telephone pole thing? I thought black men were supposed to be bigger. This is all new to me.
--
Anyway Gray, the Libertarian impulse is useful, but so is authoritarian proxy. What has checked my consorting with the likes of Ward Connorly is that he lacks a legal understanding of the necessity of counting noses by race in assessing compliance with the promise of anti-discrimination. Connorly asserts that the cure is worse than the disease, but I think he speaks out of pure frustration but not a sensible understanding of the deeper dynamic. The deeper dynamic is that the ethnic temptation is always going to be there. Nobody ever gets beyond 'race' there will always be some social construction ripe for exploitation, and therefore we must always be on guard against that exploitation. Government forms did not create race, people did. And since we all know racism and racialism to be caustic to democracy, we must always be vigilant against it, therefore we must always count noses by race if we are to enforce sanctions against racial discrimination.

One of my arguments has always been that the Declaration of Independence is a list of complaints against the crown and that with those complaints in mind the Founders understood to build institutions that would forever change the way power was wielded in society, to guard specifically against the excesses of monarchy. Were they to complain against racism, they would have similarly built institutions so that such usurpation would not occur for racist reasons. A racist could not be empowered in such a state, just as a monarch could not be. In order to build safeguards against racist abuse we should be aware of the ways in which it aggregates power and limit the power any racist can have. Racism is a form of tyranny. It's not a far stretch to make adjustments. But a libertarian assumption, that we are naturally predisposed to amity and that institutionalizing safeguards inevitably lead to solutions that are worse than the problem is wrongheaded. Libertarianism doesn't scale.

[unclesmrgol]

Uh, what's the telephone pole thing? I thought black men were supposed to be bigger. This is all new to me.

och, Cobb. You can be a Scotsman too -- choose the name Dubhghall, which means "Black Stranger" in Gaelic (the common native language of Ireland and Scotland). An auspicious name, since Dubhghall was King of Ireland and Argyll in the late 12th century. It's like "Talk like a Pirate Day", only better. The telephone pole. Every culture has its oddities.

I forgot to tell cnulan about the purse. I do not keep a hip flask within, otherwise I might be tempted to sing the Drunk Scotsman once too often.

With regard to your answer to Gray, we did fix the Constitution to outlaw state racism. The amenders didn't address a person's inner thoughts, but the extrinsics. To enforce such a law to its logical conclusion (such as found in Heart of Atlanta) requires a strong central government. Again, in agreement with your argument, libertarianism fails here.

[Cobb]

I'll stick with Bowen which is Welsh, or maybe just drop the B, but that sounds more Irish neh? I'm not up on my Welsh stereotypes.

[dr_snacks]

Government forms did not create race, people did.
Of course the issue isn't about something as specific as just government forms, though that's the main way the government continues to officiate race. While mere forms didn't create race, the government did codify race by law, both directly through the Dred Scott decision that ruled, federally, that blacks had no rights, and by allowing local governments to legislate race through Jim Crow and one-drop laws.

Furthermore, "people" didn't come up with race - A people came up with race. We didn't just all naturally decide to divide ourselves based on cultural differences - one group of people defined the delineations to the detriment of the people being delineated and had said topography backed by law.

Now that it's unconstitutional to discriminate based on those declinations, what good could come of continued delineation by the government, which created the problem in the first place by defining people in such a way (or at least legalizing said definition)? How can the government fix the problem by doing the very thing that created the problem in the first place?

How can you take for granted that race is a constant knowing its very recent history?

[dr_snacks]

And in what situation can counting noses by race possibly assess compliance with the promise of non-discrimination. All that can do, and does, is highlight disparities, which can just as easily be used to justify discrimination as it can to implicate discrimination. When can counting noses by race cleanly and unambiguously expose discrimination?

[Cobb]

Snacks,

I don't have an adequate short answer. I think you cannot manage what you cannot measure. I think you'll agree. Whether or not government can manage the problem of racism well is another question, but certainly without a real delineation we're off into never-never land.

I asked this question before: How would I know that a racial epithet applies to me? If somebody calls me a spearchucker, how am I supposed to know that's a racial insult? If somebody says, 'we don't hire jungle bunnies' how am I supposed to know he means me? Obviously it's in the culture for us to know such things. How is anybody to judge the emotional impact of such a statement in whatever context it was made? Clearly there's not a form with 'jungle bunny' on it. Can I rank that on a scale of 1 to 10? So I think there is some necessary jurisprudence and social awareness that is required in any court that would decide such matters, and exactly what the form or checkbox says is beside the point. I am confident that juries and judges are competent to assess intent whether or not the government is keeping statistics.

On the other hand, how do we compare a jungle bunny statement in California to a nappy headed ho statement in NY? How do we compare a denied loan in Alabama to a traffic stop in Kansas? How do we compare income & education levels in Seattle with incarceration rates in Florida? I think the government has to be responsive to all sorts of claims related to race because people are *saying* that they are related to race, and so the government must have some baseline understanding with which to compare the offenses to see whether or not they are egregious. That requires some subtle judgment.

When people were suggesting that theatres were selling the wrong tickets to Spike Lee movies in a conspiracy to deflate the success of black oriented films, I think it would be crazy to count theatergoers and ticket sellers by race. But when someone suggests that black kids are getting kicked out of public schools on a different basis than white kids, I think counting is necessary.

I think that our government and laws can be sophisticated enough to recognize the proper sorts of standing that race merits in our courts. I further believe that the temptations of racial and ethnic discriminations are forever with us, just as they are for any sort of crime. We have an obligation as a society to guard against these crimes, and so we have to see them, mark them, monitor them.

[thegrayconservative]

Hmmm. Well, I think the problem with libertarianism (and I'd say the same about classical liberalism in general as well) is that it forces you into a type of legislative balancing act where you have to manage what is essentially an ebb and flow that exists between liberty and order in a republic. The advantage of authoritarianism is that you don't need to balance liberty and order, you just concern yourself with the ordering. If we're going to go back to the intent of the Founders and the language of the Declaration of Independence, then we'd have to admit that this republic was founded and grounded in the spirit of classical liberalism. If something of the character of classical liberalism is still conveyed in what we mean when we use the word "libertarianism", then I'd say the basic precepts of libertarianism have scaled rather well, and have aged well in that we are still engaged in the basic and fundamental activity of balancing liberty and order—the Federalist Papers are still relevant.

The problem with "race talk" in the context of a discussion about the proper balance between liberty and order is that we tend to superficially gloss over the tumultuous relationship that exists between libertarianism as an ideal and the history and lived reality of libertarianism in which the limits of libertarianism are made plainly obvious by the historical realities of race. We should not, for example, place the entire ideal of libertarianism on trial or treat it as unworthy simply because the principles of libertarianism were the basis upon which the State allowed individuals to own slaves—or allowed States to institutionalize racism in the form of Jim Crow. The fact individuals were free to engage in racist behavior shouldn't indict freedom itself. However, this is precisely what we have done, and it's why I suspect you cling so faithfully to the belief that libertarianism "doesn't scale".

The historical reality of race (as played out scene by scene and act by act in the history of this republic) has become a lengthy footnote that accompanies our understanding of the ideals of libertarianism. Every instance of the central government stepping in to protect individuals against racist laws and behaviors is another negative footnote in the history of libertarianism. It proves that individuals cannot be left to their own devices because, as you have said, the temptations of racial and ethnic discriminations are forever with us. Each instance proves that libertarianism isn't vigilant enough to act as a safeguard against the constant threat of the moral failings of individuals who would exploit on the basis of social constructs—the same constructs that the modern Libertarian Party is seeking to abolish. Because of our history, we've essentially thrown a rather large blanket of doubt on the concept of libertarianism because history has shown that the type of laissez-faire attitude that emphasizes the emphasis on personal liberty in classical liberalism is wholly insufficient to act as a safeguard against the potential abuses of racial categories by both the State and individuals (never mind the fact that it was always the State who sanctioned the categories in the first place). I think this libertarian initiative to abolish racial categories is legit, but I mostly wanted to get Fisher's take on it. But beyond that, libertarianism will always "scale" to the degree that it can always legitimately implicate the State in the unjust sanctioning of official racial categories. Thus the marginal utility of the libertarian impulse that you admitted to earlier. To say that it doesn't scale because it acts as a lazy sentry in defense of Order isn't exactly a fair conclusion because libertarianism (understood as the modern implementation of classical liberalism) admits of the need for the balancing act between liberty and order.

Back to the Founders though. Libertarianism's complaints against official racial categories are valid in terms of what the legacy of racial categories has left us with in terms of the quality of our discussions about the balance between liberty and order in society: Instead of us treating the precepts of classical liberalism as virtues that have been historically exploited by the moral failings of individuals with regard to race, we instead place all of the blame upon libertarianism itself such that we arrive at the conclusion that the precepts themselves are to blame for being insufficient to properly deal with the moral failings of individuals in the form of racism, while the moral failings of individuals are ultimately dealt with and guarded against by an abiding faith in a strong central government—that ever vigilant sentinel. Instead of us having a mature conversation about the proper balance between liberty and order, we are given to having discussions in which we are encouraged to be constantly aware of the eternal corruptibility of persons in liberty. In the most ridiculous instances, people have been told that Republicans will "roll back the clock on Civil Rights"; or that Regan's self-described belief in states' rights in the 80s is somehow a not-so-subtle signal that he supported a return to the Jim Crow of the 60s. At various points, the rhetoric about remaining ever-on-guard against the temptations of ethnic discriminations has tended to descend into the most absurd scenarios and fear-mongering imaginable—most of it coming from Democrats. This is the ultimate triumph of new-liberal statism over classical liberalism. The price paid for incremental and legislative racial justice was the apparent death of federalism. Of course, this doesn't mean that the cure is worse than the disease, but the cure has invariably left us with a certain type of common folk narrative in which the libertarian emphasis on liberty has become the villain, rather than the hero it started out as at the founding of the republic.

What has been bequeathed to us in the modern age is a type of Grand Meta Narrative of race and libertarianism in which we are all made to assume that the phrase states' rights is permanently and incontrovertibly linked to something racist and sinister; and limited government is not an ideal which is worth having and which is constantly under threat from liberal statists (i.e., something uniquely American to be upheld), but rather is something which is a racist code word which signals the desire of individuals to cling to or return to their racist way of life without interference from a strong central government. This Grand Narrative tells us that the Republican party is the party of states' rights, all Republicans are racists, and that Ronald Regan was the devil incarnate. Regan's libertarian 'heart of conservatism' is black, according to the Grand Narrative.

We simply can't go back and undo history in order to make libertarianism all rosy again such that the ideals of classical liberalism become free of any glaring contradictions—there is no such time machine. But in lieu of this time machine, we are seemingly content to let history dictate to us what the proper balance between liberty and order should be; and History's verdict is that only the State's royal Order is sufficient enough to guard against the ever-present threat of abuses of liberty by racist individuals. If libertarianism was a Java program it would always be throwing a Racism exception before you even got to the try statement (central government is always the catch).

[Cobb]

Needs much further study by me.

When I say libertarianism doesn't scale, I primarily mean that I've never heard of a libertarian standing army. The authoritarianism I expect from Republicans has to do with that, primarily. Furthermore, I'm not convinced that libertarianism would have given us the reforms of capitalism that socialism did, and thus enabled the great consumer economy we have today. So I wonder exactly what kind of middle class we might have without the great constructive projects of FDR and other massive state interventions that American apparently needs from time to time.

Race is the tail wagging the dog. I wouldn't blame libertarians demise on the overproductions of liberal statist anti-racism and the welfare state. They stand clearly to blame on their own. Indeed I think along the same lines as Cruse when it comes down to it - what's wrong with separate but truly equal, and why not have a black state or three with their own states rights? I might not go as far as to suggest that African America has been totally crippled by dint of not having freed themselves from slavery by violent rebellion, but there are certainly great legacies of liberal hovering which have done damage to our self-determination.

[unclesmrgol]

I think that our government and laws can be sophisticated enough to recognize the proper sorts of standing that race merits in our courts. I further believe that the temptations of racial and ethnic discriminations are forever with us, just as they are for any sort of crime. We have an obligation as a society to guard against these crimes, and so we have to see them, mark them, monitor them.

Measurement is indeed the first step. There is considerable disagreement on what to do with the measurements.

Our Constitution is littered with references to race. Various state and Federal laws condone government discrimination in provision of benefits on the basis of race. We have hate crime classifications which impart weightiness of punishment to criminal motive based on race. It's all there.

When I say libertarianism doesn't scale, I primarily mean that I've never heard of a libertarian standing army.

Amusing -- that's what the Confederate States of America discovered when it tried to wield a national army. Officers from one state would not take the field when commanded by officers from another state. All residents of the CSA served at the will of their native state, and could (and sometimes were) recalled for political advantage. The Confederates were cleaved in twain -- into the nationalists and the conservatives:

At all three levels-individual loyalty, local politics, and judicial proceedings-James Hickman's case engages pressing issues in Civil War scholarship. First, his behavior over the course of the war testifies to the complex and sometimes tenuous nature of southern loyalty.3 Second, the months of public debate surrounding Hickman's loyalty highlight the central role that civil liberties played in the creation of political culture in a Confederate community. In Confederate Huntsville, military and government officials pursued reprisals against suspected disloyalists and curtailed civil liberties within the community. Local conservatives derived strength from the controversy that followed. By positioning themselves as the champions of individual rights, conservatives challenged nationalists' support for centralized government and their influence in the community.4 Finally, James Hickman's case sheds light on the workings of the Confederate judiciary, a topic generally unexamined by scholars. The case of the Confederate States of America v. James Hickman sheds light on the relationships among the Confederate district courts, local politics, and public opinion during the war. It suggests that the courts, specifically jury trials, offered a forum in which individual liberties were protected in wartime communities.5

In this article the term nationalist characterizes the faction that allied itself with the Davis administration and supported the centralizing tendencies of the Confederate government and the authority of its military over civilians. Conservative describes the faction that held libertarian values that challenged the expansion of central government, conscription, and military arrests of civilians. Conservatives had Whig and national Democratic antecedents, and most had been cooperationists in the secession crisis.

[A. Charles]

"Instead of us having a mature conversation about the proper balance between liberty and order . . ."

One way of avoiding that mature conversation is to debate an extreme caricature of the other side instead of what the other side actually says.

"In the most ridiculous instances, people have been told that . . . Regan's self-described belief in states' rights in the 80s is somehow a not-so-subtle signal that he supported a return to the Jim Crow of the 60s."

In a far less ridiculous, and actually undeniably correct instance, people have been told that while Reagan didn't advocate a return to Jim Crow, his self-described belief in states' rights at his campaign kickoff at the Neshoba, Mississippi County Fair in 1980 was an appeal to the sentiments of those whose primary gripe against the federal government was that it forced integration on them.

If it is your assertion that your own personal and neutrally principled current definition of the term "states rights" was the one commonly understood by the audience Reagan spoke to in Mississippi in 1980, I'll gladly debate that one with you.

"What has been bequeathed to us in the modern age is a type of Grand Meta Narrative of race and libertarianism in which we are all made to assume that the phrase states' rights is permanently and incontrovertibly linked to something racist and sinister;"

Put aside the "Grand Meta Narrative" for the moment, and instead address the pragmatic political narrative, which is this: despite the fact that "states rights" is for some a principle with no link to race, the folks who linked "States Rights" with "Racial Integrity," (the two elements of the motto of the White Citizens Councils still around in the 1960s) are not all dead, and those two groups combine with purely political opportunists to ensure that today's Republican party, on a national level, won't be advocating any federal programs that are seen to disproportionately favor blacks.

"and limited government is not an ideal which is worth having"

No, it is not an ideal worth having, and I doubt that you think it is, either.

You wouldn't do away with the defense department and the U.S. military, would you? You wouldn't leave America's defense to state militias, would you?

I'd bet not.

Now, if you would, I'll stand corrected, and salute you for being true to the principle that limited government is indeed an ideal. I will also ask you why you think it is that nixing the federal military hasn't seemed to sweep the nation. And I'll give you the answer: a working majority of Americans do not think of limited government as an ideal; they think big and powerful government is fine for doing the things they think it needs to do.

Which dumps most of them right smack into the pragmatic political world (arguing about which things go on the "needs to do" list), and gives the lie to the claims that a majority of Republicans think that limited government should be an end in itself.

"and which is constantly under threat from liberal statists (i.e., something uniquely American to be upheld),"

If you hold limited government as an ideal, you ought to be just as concerned about the threats it faces from right-wing statists, too, right? The Medicare drug bill, the Bear Stearns bailout and warantless wiretapping all ought to be just as troublesome to you as anything coming from the left, if you're being principled rather than partisan, shouldn't they?

"This Grand Narrative tells us that the Republican party is the party of states' rights,"

Again, putting aside the Grand Narrative, practical reality tells us that those who cheered Reagan's genuflection to states' rights weren't so beholden to the principle when the question was whether the state of Michigan had the right to have affirmative action programs in admitting students to its university. Us political pragmatists see the same people thinking that states' rights was a great principle when it was wielded against integration, but not so great when it was wielded in favor of affirmative action, and we think that the Republicans are the party of states rights when they like the result the principle produces, but not when it doesn't.

"all Republicans are racists, and that Ronald Regan was the devil incarnate. Regan's libertarian 'heart of conservatism' is black, according to the Grand Narrative."

Instead of "all Republicans are racists," try this: racist Republicans plus Republicans who don't want to see the government doing anything much for anybody plus Republicans who want to see the government doing more for them and less for everybody else combine to make a critical mass within the Republican party that will not support government efforts to do what I think it needs to do.

"But in lieu of this time machine, we are seemingly content to let history dictate to us what the proper balance between liberty and order should be; and History's verdict is that only the State's royal Order is sufficient enough to guard against the ever-present threat of abuses of liberty by racist individuals. If libertarianism was a Java program it would always be throwing a Racism exception before you even got to the try statement (central government is always the catch)."

If Libertarianism always presumes to strike the order/liberty balance in favor of less government instead of doing what a majority of Americans think government should do, it fails analysis from the left and the right. Libertarianism is the presumed "Mikey" from the old Life cereal commercial: "He won't eat it, he hates everything." If I want to get together a "let's not spend government funds on them" coalition, I can count on the libertarians to sign up. If they don't want to notice that the coalitions they are a part of keep changing based on who's the denied of the day, that's their own blindness.

But even if they don't want to acknowledge who their bedfellows are and why, it doesn't make sense for them to act like the rest of us can't see.

[cnulan]

Put aside the "Grand Meta Narrative" for the moment, and instead address the pragmatic political narrative, which is this: despite the fact that "states rights" is for some a principle with no link to race, the folks who linked "States Rights" with "Racial Integrity," (the two elements of the motto of the White Citizens Councils still around in the 1960s) are not all dead, and those two groups combine with purely political opportunists to ensure that today's Republican party, on a national level, won't be advocating any federal programs that are seen to disproportionately favor blacks.

The same is true of the Clintons and the DLC who have worked assiduously to break the back of the democrat party reliance on the Black voting block. Clinton is in it to the death - because as slick Willie put it the other day - the general election should be free of "distractions" and about important issues and between two candidates whose patriotism is beyond question, i.e., McCain and Billary....,

[A. Charles]

The same is true of the Clintons and the DLC who have worked assiduously to break the back of the democrat party reliance on the Black voting block.

Yep, their repeated steps toward racializing Obama's candidacy sure say to me that they'd trade the black vote to be able to assemble the same coalition that has worked for the Republicans in presidential campaigns. (As if we didn't already know that from 1992.)

It's pure politics, so it's not like I'm blaming them. As with all politicians, it's worth looking to see where they seem to think their bread is buttered.

[Cobb]

I have been barking back at the states rights dialog, but now that I think about it, I have to confess that I am at a loss to see exactly what the racist South actually got out of their bargain with Reagan. I am willing to accept and concede that Reagan via whathisname, the vile campaign guy who invented Willie Horton, cosigned to the rhetorical patronage of 'states rights'. But over the same period as the Reagan revolution, Atlanta became known as the 'black mecca'.

The Republicans got the racist vote, yeah I'll say it. But what did the racists get? What kind of power did neoconfederates get over blacks in the South that they didn't have before under Carter? If I remember correctly, Morris Dees but the skinheads and the Klan out of business - what were the racist advances? I can only think of the murder of James Byrd, and the vicious rise of Matt Hale, the publication of The End of Racism and The Bell Curve. Rodney King didn't happen in the South. Exactly where did Republicans turn back the clock as a result of the Reagan revolution, specifically in the South? If I remember correctly, Fred Smith's FedEx was the biggest economic boon to the South in the 80s as well as the expansion at Hartsfield. Both employ blacks in huge numbers.

Sure you can argue that the whole battle was taken on at the Federal level, but then what does the federal level have to do with states rights?

Let me just say that A. Charles is the best commenter to hit this site in a long time. I love being able to come here and bounce ideas off you guys. I don't know if you've realized it yet Cobb, but you've put together one awesome venue here. With that said:

One way of avoiding that mature conversation is to debate an extreme caricature of the other side instead of what the other side actually says.

I'd have to agree with this statement, but this really depends on what you mean when you say "extreme caricature of the other side", because apparently for you, your unwavering belief that Republicans are comprised mainly of what you've described here as being essentially a loose coalition of racialist individuals is not—at least in your estimation—an extreme caricature. That is to say, it isn't exactly clear to me that you're framing the discussion of the proper balance between liberty in order in terms of what the other side has actually said. Case in point: I quoted some Newt Gingrich for you the other day in which he expressed verbal support for providing federal funds to demonstrably successful students in inner cities. You went on to say that you'd theoretically be in support of that, but prior to me me pointing that out to you, your general line of thinking in that particular thread was that it was your belief that Republicans at the national level simply weren't interested in providing government largesse to black folk. So the question is: To what degree does it become necessary to provide on-the-record statements in order to factually invalidate the extreme caricature of Republicans? How many counter-examples should be provided such that the extreme caricature becomes less extreme and the mature discussion of the proper balance between liberty and order can proceed to be bracketed by what is actually said, and not bracketed in terms of the Grand Narrative? But the thing is, no matter how many counter-examples and on-the-record statements are produced, it remains doubtful to me if it will ever be enough to appease the skeptical. For example: I pointed out that none of the Republicans running for their party's nomination for president has expressed any interest in abolishing the Department of Education (save for Ron Paul). I also pointed out that Romney changed his position on it. In the face of these factual counter-examples, you simply responded that the reason we didn't hear any of that coming from Republicans this year was that it wasn't the proper "election cycle" for them to be doing so. So how is a mature discussion possible when the factual counter-examples to the extreme caricatures are not evaluated in terms of what was actually said but instead are summarily dismissed out of hand as a mere fluke of the current election cycle?

In a far less ridiculous, and actually undeniably correct instance, people have been told that while Reagan didn't advocate a return to Jim Crow, his self-described belief in states' rights at his campaign kickoff at the Neshoba, Mississippi County Fair in 1980 was an appeal to the sentiments of those whose primary gripe against the federal government was that it forced integration on them.

If it is your assertion that your own personal and neutrally principled current definition of the term "states rights" was the one commonly understood by the audience Reagan spoke to in Mississippi in 1980, I'll gladly debate that one with you.

For me personally, it really doesn't matter how the audience understood the term, and I admit that my definition of states' rights is necessarily normative given the current popularity and legacy of the grand narrative—but supposing for a moment that what you're saying about how Regan's audience understood the term states' rights is incontrovertibly true, why would that necessarily render the entire concept of states' rights invalid? If it does invalidate it, then what I said in the second paragraph of my previous post is true.

Okay, let's assume that the people at the Neshoba, Mississippi County Fair in 1980 did indeed have a particularly racialist interpretation and racist definition of the term states' rights that doesn't match my neutrally principled and current definition of states' rights—am I not allowed to make my normative and iconoclastic argument twenty years later? Or rather, is my normative definition eternally invalidated by the grand narrative?

Put aside the "Grand Meta Narrative" for the moment, and instead address the pragmatic political narrative, which is this: despite the fact that "states rights" is for some a principle with no link to race, the folks who linked "States Rights" with "Racial Integrity," (the two elements of the motto of the White Citizens Councils still around in the 1960s) are not all dead, and those two groups combine with purely political opportunists to ensure that today's Republican party, on a national level, won't be advocating any federal programs that are seen to disproportionately favor blacks.

I find it interesting that you're saying to put aside the grand meta narrative and focus on the pragmatic political narrative given the cognitive dissonance that the persistence of the grand meta narrative has inflicted upon Obama in recent months. I'm reminded here of Hillary Clinton arrogantly chiding Obama about his praising of Ronald Regan which caused Obama to have to explain the context of his statements during one of the Democratic debates. When he dared to violate the scripture of the narrative it caused a minor flap about how he was too quick to praise the devil of the story; which when viewed in the context of your shifting away from the grand narrative and towards a focus on political pragmatics is rather revealing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a great deal of political appeal accrue to Obama on the basis of his pragmatic approach to politics? In the past few days I've seen you post excepts of articles which highlight Obama's willingness to work with white conservatives in the Illinois senate and in the U.S. Congress, but yet, he is criticized by Clinton for daring to fix his mouth to heap even one percent of praise upon old Regan. So while I certainly don't have an issue with you having a beef with the folks who linked "States Rights" with "Racial Integrity", an important question thus remains: To what degree does the primacy of the grand narrative in our politics put a damper on the actual political pragmatics of which Obama is a representative? Postmodernism is the rejection of grand meta narratives, and Obama is a postmodern candidate who dares to advance a pragmatic and alternative narrative to the folk wisdom. For his troubles, he was met with much wailing and pompous finger wagging from that wing of the Democratic party which so readily engages in cheap rhetoric and who are given to so much drama-making at the mere mention of Regan's name—that wing of which Clinton is a clear representative. So in terms of addressing the pragmatic political narrative, I'm not willing to set aside the importance of the influence of the grand meta narrative on our politics just yet—as Obama has made clear, we're just getting started.

No, it is not an ideal worth having, and I doubt that you think it is, either.

You wouldn't do away with the defense department and the U.S. military, would you? You wouldn't leave America's defense to state militias, would you?

I'd bet not.

Now, if you would, I'll stand corrected, and salute you for being true to the principle that limited government is indeed an ideal. I will also ask you why you think it is that nixing the federal military hasn't seemed to sweep the nation. And I'll give you the answer: a working majority of Americans do not think of limited government as an ideal; they think big and powerful government is fine for doing the things they think it needs to do.

Which dumps most of them right smack into the pragmatic political world (arguing about which things go on the "needs to do" list), and gives the lie to the claims that a majority of Republicans think that limited government should be an end in itself.

You've set up a rather ridiculous litmus test to determine whether or not one is a "pure" advocate of limited government. The idea that the "purity" of adherence to the principal of limited government should be evaluated on the basis of whether or not one believes we should have a defense department or a national military strikes me as an absurd prospect. It's like basing the criteria upon which we evaluate the "purity" of a belief in limited government on the basis of whether or not one believes if the Supreme Court should exist or not. The adherence to the principal should be evaluated in terms of one's adherence to the framework of the Constitution. At the end of the day, the ideal litmus test to determine the pureness of the belief in limited government should be based upon one's opinions of which governmental institutions are unconstitutional or not. Providing for the common defense is not unconstitutional. The existence of the Supreme Court is not unconstitutional. An advocate of limited government should consult the Constitution to see if it expressly forbids the creation of a defense department or a national military. To say that it isn't an ideal worth having is also ridiculous, because the basic precepts of a limited government are inherent in the language of the Constitution. Otherwise, we wouldn't have a series of checks and balances on the three major branches of government: judicial, legislative, and executive. The fact that the language is expressly written to divide power among the three branches is evidence of the utility of the belief in a limited government. Judicial Review exists. The executive branch is granted veto power to check any ridiculousness coming out of the legislative branch. The courts allows individuals to challenge ridiculous laws that exist at the state level; and so on. My definition of American exceptionalism is predicated upon the view that the Founders of this country were extremely cynical about the potential abuses of a heavy-handed central government and extremely suspicions of the machinations of central banking, and that fact that you stated that limited government is not a principal worth having is painful evidence to me that we've succeeded in conditioning the average American to rely on the government to the detriment of individual and communal responsibility to ourselves and our fellow man.

If you hold limited government as an ideal, you ought to be just as concerned about the threats it faces from right-wing statists, too, right? The Medicare drug bill, the Bear Stearns bailout and warantless wiretapping all ought to be just as troublesome to you as anything coming from the left, if you're being principled rather than partisan, shouldn't they?

No objections to any of this. Right-wing statists exist the same way that left-wing statists do and I'm just as concerned about the right ones as I am with the left ones. The candidate I supported was concerned with both of them as well.

Again, putting aside the Grand Narrative, practical reality tells us that those who cheered Reagan's genuflection to states' rights weren't so beholden to the principle when the question was whether the state of Michigan had the right to have affirmative action programs in admitting students to its university. Us political pragmatists see the same people thinking that states' rights was a great principle when it was wielded against integration, but not so great when it was wielded in favor of affirmative action, and we think that the Republicans are the party of states rights when they like the result the principle produces, but not when it doesn't.

You'll have to excuse me while I point out the politically pragmatic cherry-picking that's going on here. If you're going to implicate Republicans as being these rabid lovers of states' rights when it benefits white people while suggesting that they hate states' rights when it works in favor of black folks, then you'll have to explain why it was Republican majorities that over-ruled so many race-based states' rights in the numerous Civil Rights victories that took place in the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court. All the Democratic filibustering in the world wasn't enough to stop the Republicans from putting the official and legalistic kibosh on the racist voting and segregation laws that were plainly upheld as "legal" in those southern states. Republicans are the party of states' rights, but not when those states' rights are blatantly unconstitutional. Republicans went to bat for black folks while Al Gore Sr. filibustered on the Senate floor in favor of states' rights—apparently that part of the grand narrative requires a secret decoder ring.

If Libertarianism always presumes to strike the order/liberty balance in favor of less government instead of doing what a majority of Americans think government should do, it fails analysis from the left and the right. Libertarianism is the presumed "Mikey" from the old Life cereal commercial: "He won't eat it, he hates everything." If I want to get together a "let's not spend government funds on them" coalition, I can count on the libertarians to sign up. If they don't want to notice that the coalitions they are a part of keep changing based on who's the denied of the day, that's their own blindness.

But even if they don't want to acknowledge who their bedfellows are and why, it doesn't make sense for them to act like the rest of us can't see.

I'll be the first to admit that many of the ideas of libertarianism are very appealing to white