A Conservative Blogger Makes My Point For Me

Over the weekend I tried to explain why making a big deal out of incidents like the comments of Cliven Bundy or Donald Sterling without carefully putting them in context, in a perverse way actually reinforces racial inequality. Conservative blogger John Hinderaker shows us the dark underbelly of this thought process more clearly than I could have hoped:

A billionaire asks his African-American mistress not to post certain pictures on Instagram: is that what the “legacy of race and slavery and segregation” has come down to? Are the “vestiges of discrimination” so slight that this lovers’ spat is the subject of a presidential news conference? ... 

Which is another way of saying, we don’t have much in the way of actual racism or discrimination to talk about (not against African-Americans, anyway), so we have to make do with this kind of petty, personal revelation... 

This sad domestic drama has become the best evidence the Left can come up with of the ongoing legacy of slavery and discrimination. It merits denunciation by the President of the United States, who locates the old man’s sad story in the grand sweep of history.

Now, it is easy enough to say that Mr. Hinderaker is a bad guy. But we don't know him and it is quite possible that he is just ignorant. And the point is, we are making it very easy for him to be ignorant! Yesterday the president of the Center for American Progress was on Meet the Press and when asked about racism in contemporary America she babbled incoherently about how "there is still racism in America." She said literally nothing of substance. It makes me think that many liberals are just as ignorant as conservatives but know the party line is to say "racism," so they say it. Any fair-minded person watching Meet the Press yesterday would reasonably conclude that when the person claiming there is racism can't actually think of any racism, then it must not be real.