It’s no surprise, in today’s race obsessed political environment, to find yet another instance in which race is being used to deflect from troubling behavior or bad news.  This time, the entire idea of ethics is being challenged as racist.  You see, there are just too many black members of Congress being investigated for corruption.

Politico reports complaining, and cries of racism, coming from the Congressional Black Caucus regarding the number of their members currently in the spotlight for ethics violations.

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues

…The question of whether black lawmakers are now being singled out for scrutiny has been simmering throughout the 111th Congress, with the Office of Congressional Ethics a focal point of the concerns. At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats. All those investigations originated with the OCE, which can make recommendations — but take no final actions — on such cases.

There’s a “dual standard, one for most members and one for African-Americans,” said one member of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The article continues on without the authors ever once considering the most obvious explanation.  Maybe CBC members are being “disproportionally” investigated because they are disproportionally unethical.

This explanation is not to say that blacks are more likely to be unethical than whites. Rather, I think there are other forces at work.

Politicians, as a general rule, are scum.  It doesn’t matter what race they belong to.  They would almost all commit the worst of crimes if they thought they could get away with them (and many do think this quite often, usually to be proven right).  The question is, in so far as they do hold back from unethical behavior, what is the cause and why might it impact some politicians more than others?

The answer to the first question is easy.  Politicians are interested in getting elected.  If they think something will harm their electoral chances, they will usually refrain.

The next question, then, is whether there is any reason to believe that black politicians are less likely to be punished by their voters for ethical violations than white politicians.

Black politicians tend to be elected in overwhelmingly black districts, often gerrymandered for the purpose of ensuring “minority” representation.  Their voters, having been inundated with destructive identity politics propaganda for generations, have come to believe that they can only be fairly represented by someone who looks like them.  Race becomes the dominant qualifying criteria in these districts, much more so than other electorates.  White politicians are hardly ever voted for simply for being white (it wouldn’t make sense to do so even if some voters were so inclined, as they are usually running against white opponents).  The same is not true of black politicians. A corrupt black politician is still preferable to a white representative under this racial representation paradigm.

Black politicians are thus taught by their electorates that they are entitled to their positions.  Nothing they do can justify removing them from office, for the simple reason that they can never lose their color, the defining characteristic in the world of  identity politics.

While career politicians who routinely commit ethics violations are ultimately to blame for their actions, the voters who avert their eyes from such behavior have to take their share of the responsibility for creating politicians, like Charlie Rangel, who think that they are above the law.  If the Congressional Black Caucus really wants to know why so many of their members are running afoul of what little ethics enforcement politicians can muster to bring upon themselves, maybe they should start by asking their voters to care more about the character of their representatives, instead of their color.

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This is an excellent video, directed toward and about black Americans, but carrying a message of liberty applicable to all.

This is actually just a teaser for a documentary coming out in 2011. Follow the project here.

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Professor Henry Gates (yes, that Professor Gates) has penned an insightful op-ed regarding slavery, blame and reparations.  In it he spends significant time discussing the role of black Africans in promoting the slave trade, a topic all too often ignored in both history texts and popular discussion:

While we are all familiar with the role played by the United States and the European colonial powers like Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain, there is very little discussion of the role Africans themselves played. And that role, it turns out, was a considerable one, especially for the slave-trading kingdoms of western and central Africa. These included the Akan of the kingdom of Asante in what is now Ghana, the Fon of Dahomey (now Benin), the Mbundu of Ndongo in modern Angola and the Kongo of today’s Congo, among several others.

…Advocates of reparations for the descendants of those slaves generally ignore this untidy problem of the significant role that Africans played in the trade, choosing to believe the romanticized version that our ancestors were all kidnapped unawares by evil white men, like Kunta Kinte was in “Roots.” The truth, however, is much more complex: slavery was a business, highly organized and lucrative for European buyers and African sellers alike.

The African role in the slave trade was fully understood and openly acknowledged by many African-Americans even before the Civil War. For Frederick Douglass, it was an argument against repatriation schemes for the freed slaves. “The savage chiefs of the western coasts of Africa, who for ages have been accustomed to selling their captives into bondage and pocketing the ready cash for them, will not more readily accept our moral and economical ideas than the slave traders of Maryland and Virginia,” he warned. “We are, therefore, less inclined to go to Africa to work against the slave trade than to stay here to work against it.”

Although I enjoyed his historical account and thoughtful approach to the issue, I fundamentally differ with Professor Gates on whether reparations ought to be paid at all.  While he acknowledges that, “Given this remarkably messy history, the problem with reparations may not be so much whether they are a good idea or deciding who would get them; the larger question just might be from whom they would be extracted,” he misses an important point.

The issue of extraction is not merely complicated by the role of Africans in the slave trade.  The fundamental obstacle to reparations is the fact that no one responsible for slavery is alive today.  While we can, in some crude fashion, measure  the negative impact on those who are alive today, we cannot place any blame on people for the actions of their ancestors.  Nor can we condemn whole groups (American whites, particular African tribes, etc.) for their histories.  Reparations should never happen because extracting the payments from anyone would be fundamentally unjust.

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In my recent post on Bill Gate’s exclusion of whites from his scholarship, I insinuated that Bill Gates might be racist by saying that people are free not to purchase the products of such a person. What I didn’t do was explain my terminology, which lead to James Joyner of Outside the Beltway asking the question, “Does Bill Gates Hate White People?”

Brian Garst observes, “Now, he is free to direct that his money be spent however he pleases.  The rest of us, likewise, are free not to purchase the products of a racist.” He’s right on both counts.   But is Gates really a racist?

First, to state the obvious, Gates looks, um, white.  I mean, he could be the archetype of whiteness.  Granted, there’s such a thing as self-loathing.  But charges of racism against your own kind do tend to require a higher burden of proof.

Second, the stated purpose of the Gates Millennium Scholars program is “is to promote academic excellence and to provide an opportunity for outstanding minority students with significant financial need to reach their highest potential.”   Given that whites remain the majority (if not for long), we’re excluded by definition.

Both of these points are valid.  I don’t think Gates hates white people, or has anything against white people at all.  One possibility that Joyner missed, however, is that Gates might see non-whites as less capable, and therefore in need of special advantages.  That kind of paternalistic racism is hardly uncommon these days.  I don’t actually know that Gates sees non-whites in that way.  I give him the benefit of the doubt and just assume that he has been sucked into the popular culture that has come to treat minorities in such a fashion without second thought.   But one thing I hammer over and over again on this blog is the idea that something doesn’t have to be hateful to be racist.  Identity politics is, by its very nature, a form of racism.

Whites are not a minority, but men are (a fact often obscured since the word “minorities” is often preceded by the words “women and.”)  Why is race a pertinent characteristic and not gender?  Left-handed people are a minority, too.  What makes race more worthy of singling out than any other such characteristics?  Nothing, other than the fact that so many people cannot look at another human being and see anything other than their race.  That’s a kind of racism.

Is Bill Gates doing good with his scholarship? Absolutely.  But his decision to bring in a characteristic absolutely irrelevant to education as a qualifier is a hallmark of the kind of racism that I despise, precisely because so few realize how destructive it is.  After all, it isn’t hateful.  Yet no matter how well meaning, this kind of identity politics perpetuates and exacerbates tensions between races for no good reason.  It is just this kind of paternalistic racism that prevents us from ever reaching the day when we look at our neighbors and just see Americans, without any hyphens.

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This is not a new story, but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.  Apparently Bill Gates has explicitly barred whites from applying for scholarships from his foundation.  In order to qualify, an applicant must check the box for either African American, American Indian / Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander / American, or Hispanic American.

Now, he is free to direct that his money be spent however he pleases.  The rest of us, likewise, are free not to purchase the products of a racist.

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Another video challenging leftwing racism:

My favorite line: “I’m afraid of the President because he’s a white man. What does Keith Olbermann have to say about that?”

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Charles M. Blow, a regular columnist for the New York Times, has taken the already despicable race narrative on the Tea Parties to another level.  He begins with a bit of “diversity” hunting:

I had specifically come to this rally because it was supposed to be especially diverse. And, on the stage at least, it was. The speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea Party leader was God. It felt like a bizarre spoof of a 1980s Benetton ad.

The juxtaposition was striking: an abundance of diversity on the stage and a dearth of it in the crowd, with the exception of a few minorities like the young black man who carried a sign that read “Quit calling me a racist.”

…It was a farce. This Tea Party wanted to project a mainstream image of a group that is anything but. A New York Times/CBS News poll released on Wednesday found that only 1 percent of Tea Party supporters are black and only 1 percent are Hispanic. It’s almost all white.

The implication: a lack of the kind of diversity Mr. Blow deems important (because there are other kinds, which he apparently doesn’t care about) is somehow condemning.  Notice he never actually explains the logic for how this matters.  But don’t hold your breath waiting for Mr. Blow to similarly investigate an NAACP event, or the next Million Man March.

But that’s hardly the worst.  Things really get ugly when he begins using his own racist attacks:

And even when compared to other whites, their views are extreme and marginal. For instance, white Tea Party supporters are twice as likely as white independents and eight times as likely as white Democrats to believe that Barack Obama was born in another country.

Furthermore, they were more than eight times as likely as white independents and six times as likely as white Democrats to think that the Obama administration favors blacks over whites.

Thursday night I saw a political minstrel show devised for the entertainment of those on the rim of obliviousness and for those engaged in the subterfuge of intolerance. I was not amused.

Because, you know, white views are just naturally extreme and marginal, so even by that standard the tea parties are on the fringe!  What a racist.  Can you imagine the New York Times running an op-ed that says “even compared to other blacks, their views are [insert negative attribute]?” The author of such a statement would be crucified.

He then doubles down with a racist attack on the black speakers, who he dubs a “minstrel show.”  Apparently no black person is capable of the free thinking that might lead them to be there because they believe in the cause. Oh no.  They must be getting used or duped.  I wonder if Mr. Blow has ever applied the same logic to his employment at the upper-class, white New York Times.  Probably not, because if he did his head might just explode.

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Not only has AP suddenly noticed that there are blacks in the Tea Party movement, but they’ve also taken note of the racist vitriol hurled at them by the left:

They’ve been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement — and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation’s first black president.

“I’ve been told I hate myself. I’ve been called an Uncle Tom. I’ve been told I’m a spook at the door,” said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.

“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,” he said.

But don’t be fooled. The article was full of backhanded insults and unsubstantiated attacks on the Tea Party.

For instance:

Opponents have branded the tea party as a group of racists hiding behind economic concerns — and reports that some tea partyers were lobbing racist slurs at black congressmen during last month’s heated health care vote give them ammunition.

Who are these opponents? While they are identified as opponents, avoiding actually naming them makes it harder to recognize the people saying this as the partisan Democrat hacks that they are.   And what about these “reports?”  Oh, that’s right. The only proof of such slurs comes from accounts of Democratic Congressman who have every reason to lie and make themselves look like victims.  Meanwhile, all available evidence suggests that they never actually happened.

We then get irrelevant non-statistics about Tea Party demographics:

Still, she’s in the minority. As a nascent grassroots movement with no registration or formal structure, there are no racial demographics available for the tea party movement; it’s believed to include only a small number of blacks and Hispanics.

“It’s believed” by whom?  Oh, that’s right. Answering that hidden question would expose this particular claim for the political smear that it is.

Or here’s one that’s particularly laughable:

McGlowan believes the tea party movement has been unfairly portrayed as monolithically white, male and middle-aged, though she acknowledged blacks and Hispanics are a minority at most events.

Hey, you know where else blacks and hispanics are a minority? In the entire freaking United States.  Definitive proof that the U.S. is racist!

The article then ends with the classic fake concern from a leftwinger:

Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, suggested a bit of caution.

“I’m sure the reason that (black conservatives) are involved is that from an ideological perspective, they agree,” said Shelton. “But when those kinds of things happen, it is very important to be careful of the company that you keep.”

But don’t you worry about keeping company with the party of Robert “There are white niggers, too” Byrd.

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I’m assuming he’s confused, since he’s apparently wandered off the liberal/Democratic reservation.

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ABC smells racism behind Walmart’s price cutting of black barbie dolls.

Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll’s white counterpart at one store and possibly others.

…”To prepare for (s)pring inventory, a number of items are marked for clearance, ” spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien said in an e-mail. “… Both are great dolls. The red price sticker indicates that this particular doll was on clearance when the photo was taken, and though both dolls were priced the same to start, one was marked down due to its lower sales to hopefully increase purchase from customers.”

“Pricing like items differently is a part of inventory management in retailing,” O’Brien said.

But critics say Walmart should have been more sensitive in its pricing choice.

“The implication of the lowering of the price is that’s devaluing the black doll,” said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.

This is so dumb.  Goods are priced based on sales.  The price of the doll with the lower number of sales was cut so that sales would pick up.

ABC is scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  It isn’t necessarily surprising that they were able to find so many race-obsessed “critics” to spout such nonsense.  The race mongering industry is thriving, after all.

But this is a clear case of starting from a conclusion (raaaaaacism), and finding a story to fit it.  Just imagine, for instance, if the price differential had been reversed.  What is black barbie cost more?

Why, that would be racist against black barbie, too.  Rather than being “devauled,” ABC would find “critics” to argue that Walmart was trying to hurt sales of black barbie and keep it out of the hands of poorer black customers.

This is agenda journalism, plain and simple.

Hat-tip: Right Wing News

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