How the racism charge harms our ability to deal with national issues

David Frum makes a true and sad point. With the left using the hurricane disaster to create a fake attack on Bush and Republicans and whites, and with the right busy responding to these outrageous statements, the true national crisis revealed by the hurricane is being ignored:

On present showing, a catastrophe that ought to stir long over-due discussion of the readiness of the US government for disaster and terrorist attack—and to prod the government out of the strange lethargy that has gripped it despite 9/11—will instead be seized on as a grand opportunity for a grand airing of racial recrimination between black and white Americans. Paranoid charges of white racism encounter bitter counter-charges of black criminality. Great, just great.

Unfortunately, Frum appears to blame left and right equally for this miserable state of affairs, rather than indicting the left for spreading the evil charges of racism, which inevitably called forth a response. No one set out to talk about black criminality and incompetence in the midst of all this human suffering. But when a fictional white racism is blamed for a social breakdown that was caused in large part by black incompetence and criminality, whites (or at least those whites who are not potted plants) must speak the truth. As Michael Levin once argued, no one wants to say that a lame man is lame. But if the lame man says that I’m responsible for his slowness in walking, I have no choice but to indicate the true cause.

And here’s a further sad truth. The public-spirited plea to cease making false charges of racism that distract America from the urgent challenges of national security is not going to hold much sway with the left and the black “leaders,” for the same reason that they raised the fake racism charges in the first place. They don’t care about the good of the nation. The left lives for one thing and one thing only: to divide and destroy society, so that that they can take over the remains.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 06, 2005 11:25 AM | Send