A Difference of Unification
We’ve been having this conversation hereabouts, and Jonathan Zimmerman puts it well:
Beneath all of this talk, of course, lies the fallacy of race itself. Although America is a richly diverse place, we’re told, people in any given race are the same — or should be. That’s why you still hear whispers in the African-American community about whether Obama is “really” black.
He isn’t. And you’re not “really” white, or Hispanic, or Asian, or whatever it is you say you are. We’re all mongrels, each and every one of us. But the concept of race masks the diversity inside of each group, even as it exaggerates the differences outside of them.
Somewhere along the way (probably during the radical ’60s), balkanization by race became too useful for the American Left, keeping minorities in line in tandem with a package of social allowances that have undermined their collective advancement.
So racial balkanization is a solely a product of the left? The right had nothing whatsoever to do with it? You are becoming a cartoon character if you really believe that.
Boy, Pragmatist, reading clearly isn’t among your priorities, is it? I don’t see where I made any reference to the origin of racial divisions.
Right-wing racism is a near-universal enemy in the United States (and properly so). To the Right, in general, its existence is a hindrance and a moral embarrassment.
The Left, by contrast “celebrates diversity” and parades identity politics.
Like anyone who watched the Republican Convention, I had difficulty observing more than an occasional African American face among delegates attending. According to a roster of black delegates compiled by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, there are only 36 black delegates attending this week’s convention, a 78.4 percent decline from the 167 black delegates at the 2004 Republican convention. At 1.5 percent of the delegation, this is the lowest black representation at a GOP convention in 40 years. By contrast, the recently concluded Democratic National Convention in Denver drew a record 1,079 African American delegates, representing 24.3 percent of the total count. It’s easy to dismiss the different participation rates by noting that the overwhelming majority of African Americans vote Democratic. That is true. But to stop the analysis there ignores some important history and, more important, today’s political reality. For years, blacks were solid Republicans. Even as late as 1960, when John F. Kennedy barely defeated Richard M. Nixon, the GOP received 32 percent of the black vote. But when Republicans selected ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater as their presidential candidate in 1964, black support for the party dropped to 6 percent and has never exceeded 15 percent since that time. This is a self inflicted loss of black support and definitely not due to, as many who write to this blog apparently believe, “leftist divisive practices”. What are you trying to say say, that black voters are helpless sheep easily cajoled into being blinded to their own interests? Bullsh-t, not only did the Republican party change, but so did the type of African Americans they pushed to the forefront. Former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Brooke, former Assistant Secretary of Labor Arthur Fletcher, and former Secretary of Transportation William Coleman were Republicans, but they retained credibility in the black… Read more »