Conservatives, Race, and Racism
Over at The Reaction, Heraclitus has a post up responding to a column at Townhall, a prominent conservative website, by Burt Prelutsky, who addresses race in America today and determines that blacks (and liberals) are to blame, not whites. Indeed, Prelutsky makes this utterly unfounded and irresponsible remark: “There is such a thing as white prejudice. No doubt about it. But it has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with character, culture and values.” Huh? There’s no white racism?
Anyway, Prelutsky’s argument is all quite racist itself, and this is what it comes down to:
Burt puts up the necessary initial pretence of being concerned about the conditions of black people in America. But all of his criticisms are directed at the ways in which they don’t conform to the arbitrary norms of mainstream white America — he doesn’t like the music they listen to, the way they dress, the way they talk.
Does Prelutsky represent all conservatives? Surely not. But there are surely some who do think like he does, who do blame blacks for the ills of society. How else does he have a forum like Townhall?
You can read the full post here.
2 Responses to “Conservatives, Race, and Racism”
I think he’s talking about an interesting point, if in an inept way. I’d even go so far as to say it hits the same core ideas as Dave Chapel’s Racial Draft. The same sort of stigma attached to a young black man from the inner city is not attachedk to Collen Powel or Condi Rice. The difference between the two cannot be seen in genetics, but rather in culture. This may represent a newer form of racism than the older form which thought that being born in a race predisposes you to certain abilities. However this also starts to blur the line between racism and related issues such as beliefs that people from rural areas are “backwards”, etc.
Many social conservatives are in a ‘tizzy’ since we gave up on the Cleaver-family-values of the 1950′s. Anything cultural that deviates from this (Elvis) is a threat to their WASPish ways. While Prelutsky stated the WASP family values with the subtlety(sp) of a hammer swinging Leatherface, the likes of Bill Donohue, Terry Jeffrey and Pat Buchanan say the same things with a little more tact.