“Institutional Racial Insensitivity”: John Derbyshire, National Review And Conservatives’ Race Problem
It has been a rough couple of days for our friends over at National Review. On Thursday their longtime contributor John Derbyshire published a racist screed on a Web site called Taki’s Magazine that has caused NRsome serious embarrassment. Ultimately enough of Derbyshire’s colleagues called for his head that he was fired. Conservatives may hope that by cutting Derbyshire loose they can avoid being associated with views such as his. But the truth is that their relationship with the racist right wing fringe is far deeper and more complex than any one writer.
Derbyshire’s piece referenced the widespread discussion, in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder, of how black parents must tell their children that when they go out into the world they will face suspicions solely because of their race. “There is a talk that nonblack Americans have with their kids, too. My own kids, now 19 and 16, have had it in bits and pieces as subtopics have arisen. If I were to assemble it into a single talk, it would look something like the following.”
Derbyshire went on to list a series of assertions about African-Americans. The least offensive were technically factual statements presented in a hostile manner and totally lacking in relevant context. For example, he wrote, “Of most importance to your personal safety are the very [emphasis his] different means for antisocial behavior [between whites and blacks], which you will see reflected in, for instance, school disciplinary measures, political corruption, and criminal convictions.” Of course, the fact that blacks might be over-represented in criminal convictions and school disciplinary measures because of racist assumptions and practices among the authorities, fed by pseudo-scientific claptrap such as Derbyshire’s column itself, does not occur to him. Derbyshire’s column also makes no mention of the historical and contemporary framework for modern race relations in the U.S. such as slavery, segregation and persistent structural economic inequality. And it only got worse from there.
If Derbyshire had stuck to merely implied rather than overt racism he would not have lost his job. As Elspeth Reeve noted in The Atlantic Wire, publications such as National Review have long relied upon writers like Derbyshire to cater to their readers’ baser instincts by putting an intellectually refined gloss on bigotry.
But Derbyshire went much further. He descended into purely imagined assertions of racial animosity. “A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us,” wrote Derbyshire. “A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.” He offers no basis for this except for a link to a decidedly non-viral short YouTube video of an obscure author expressing a desire to kill white people.
Derbyshire then went on to offer his children horrifyingly racist advice on how to avoid black people so as not to be a victim of violent crime. “Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks,” Derbyshire urges. “If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.” He also advocates racist voter behavior. “Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians. Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.” He continued on with sections on affirmative action and advice to make a few black friends to burnish your public image. The piece was odious, but so over the top that it was almost funny as a kind of self-parody.
Fellow writers at National Review who weighed in did so with appropriate chagrin. On Friday Josh Barro wrote a Web column for Forbes urging NR to dump Derbyshire so as to prevent their other writings on race from being tainted by guilt through association. Jonah Goldberg and Ramesh Ponnuru tweeted that they disapproved of his piece.
On Saturday NR editor Rich Lowry posted on their blog saying that Derbyshire had been relieved of his duties.
“Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer…. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.”
Noticeably absent from Lowry’s statement was any mention of the word race, racism, or what exactly they found so distasteful about Derbyshire’s article. By calling Derbyshire “cranky and provocative” Lowry seems to imply that Derbyshire’s racism is merely an extreme manifestation of his avuncular crankiness. And he doesn’t venture to explain why Derbyshire was allowed to dance “around the line on these issues” until now.
Clearly, National Review and other conservatives hope that by cutting Derbyshire loose they can avoid accusations of institutional racial insensitivity and go back to whining that they are unfairly accused of racism. As political blogger Ben Smith tweeted, “Twitter [is] just overflowing with relief from conservatives eager to shrug off a kind of generational legacy on issues of race.”
Their eagerness is understandable. The conservative movement, and National Review, has a long history of accepting, and then occasionally expurgating, racist elements. NR itself famously editorialized against civil rights. The fathers of the modern conservative movement–Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan–opposed the Civil Rights Act.
Conservatives would like you to think that is all in the past and that today they stand for racial equality while liberals endorse preferences for racial minorities. In fact, conservatives have never fully accepted the civil rights revolution. Right now, for instance, they are attacking the Voting Rights Act in court and in National Review. According to a 1989 article in Spy magazine casual racism was frequently tossed around in NR’s office.
And it’s not as if Derbyshire has never endorsed bigotry before. Back in 2001 he wrote in National Review Online in favor of stereotyping: “the racial stereotypes that white Americans hold of black Americans are generally accurate; and where they are inaccurate, they always under-estimate [emphasis his] a negative characteristic.” He said it would be better if women did not vote. In 2003 he said in an interview, “I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one.” This is not the first time National Review has carried an offensive writer and only dumped him or her after an especially embarrassing episode. Ann Coulter spewed hateful invective for years, and she only left National Review after she wrote a column in 2001 calling for America to “we should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” And, it’s worth noting, she wasn’t even fired for that. Rather she got into an argument with her editors about whether they would publish a self-defense she wrote, and they let her go after she publicly complained they were “censoring” her.
Nor is Derbyshire the only person in the conservative media sphere holding views such as his. Taki Theodoracopulos, the editor of the magazine that published his rant, is the co-founder, with Pat Buchanan, of The American Conservative. Taki himself has written for National Review. Taki’s Magazine also features the work of Steve Sailer, whom Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting refers to as “a well-known promoter of racist and anti-immigrant theories.”
The conservative media has generally responded to Martin’s death by unfairly assaulting his character. Rush Limbaugh, the most popular conservative talk radio host, regularly makes racially inflammatory and insensitive remarks. Fox News also has a long history of what Media Matters terms “racially divisive coverage.”
In February I saw Derbyshire speak on a panel on “the failure of multiculturalism” at the massive Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. His co-panelists included Peter Brimelow, editor of the notoriously xenophobic Web site VDARE and author of Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, a book devoted to lamenting the influx of non-white immigrants. Issues of Chronicles magazine, a far right publication, were handed out at the panel and they featured a back page column by Taki filled with racist, homophobic fear mongering.
At the CPAC panel Brimelow, who has written for National Review, mentioned that NR had “purged” people like him. Derbyshire’s firing isn’t the first time NR has had to distance itself from an embarrassing bigot. Unless they, and the conservative movement, change their substantive views on civil rights and racial equality, it probably won’t be the last.
By: Ben Adler, The Nation, April 7, 2012
“No Strangers To Racism”: National Review Cans Racist Writer John Derbyshire
On Friday, National Review writer and conservative crazy person John Derbyshire wrote an unambiguously racist piece for a conservative web site that was, well, unambiguously racist. Not a close call, that one.
In response, National Review has fired him. You can read editor Rich Lowry’s statement here, or I’ll save you a link and just provide the probably-more-accurate version:
“My friends, we at National Review are no strangers to racism. I mean, holy crap, have you seen some of the stuff we’ve published?Let’s not forget that this entire magazine was founded so that segregationists would have somewhere to go to feel intellectually superior about their racism, and I think we’ve tried to maintain that philosophy ever since.The one and only essential rule we require of our authors, however, is that they maintain a small bit of plausible deniability. You don’t come right out and say white supremacist things, you simply suggest them, then act outraged when someone picks up on the obvious implications. All of conservatism relies on this distancing between our “suggested” policies and their obviously ridiculous or racist real world results. By breaking that implicit rule, however, Mr. Derbyshire has damaged our future abilities to claim we don’t actually mean it when we suggest obviously racist things.
We are therefore letting Mr. Derbyshire go, so that we can maintain the genteel, did-we-really-mean-that-or-not veneer of our crazy racist founders. We wish him well, and hope to see him say he is sorry, be quickly forgiven and then nobly redeemed in the eyes of the movement, hopefully by next Tuesday or Wednesday, and are at least satisfied that for the rest of his life he will be able to wear this episode as a badge of how very downtrodden racist assholes are in this nation, probably because ethnic people and liberals are meanies and/or fascists. Thank you.”
Did I get it right? Meh, who cares.
By: Hunter for Daily Kos, April 7, 2012
“Right Wing Opportunists”: Anti-Mormon Attacks Aren’t Coming From the Left
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch made headlines yesterday when he claimed that Democrats will “smear” Mitt Romney for his Mormon faith during the general election.
Hatch’s claim is ridiculous. In fact, it is right-wing politicians and pundits who keep on “warning” us that Democrats will attack Romney’s faith — and then use those “warnings” as opportunities to slam Mormonism themselves.
The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, like others on the Religious Right, has continually attacked Mormons, even going so far as to say their faith shouldn’t be protected by the First Amendment and claiming that a Mormon president would threaten the “spiritual health” of the nation. But Fischer warned in a column yesterday that the “the out-of-the-mainstream media” will attack “every unusual thing Mormons have ever believed or done” — helpfully listing a litany of things he deems “unusual” about Mormonism.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land has likewise claimed that progressives will make Romney’s faith a campaign issue — while he himself insists that Mormonism is “technically… a cult.”
The Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody used the same tactic this week when he posted a video of a Ron Paul supporter grilling Romney on quotes from Mormon scripture — and then claiming that Democrats and liberals will be the ones to attack Romney’s faith.
The Values Voter Summit, the Religious Right’s marquee event, fell apart last year after the pastor who introduced Gov. Rick Perry repeated his claims that Mormonism is a “cult” that worships a “false god.”
Meanwhile, one of the most powerful Democrats in the country, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, hasn’t been held back by any progressive backlash to his Mormon faith.
Romney is receiving attacks on his faith. But, as much as the right-wing media is trying to spin it otherwise, those attacks are not coming from progressives.
By: Michael B. Keegan, The Huffington Post, April 5, 2012
“Fear Is Good”: Romney’s Pivot To The Center Postponed Indefinitely
In a new tactic that TPM appropriately called the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” strategy, Mitt Romney has decided to accuse President Obama of being too vague in his plans for a second term. Once you get past the absurdity, there’s something meaningful going on. But first, to Mitt’s charges: “Nancy Pelosi famously said that we would have to pass Obamacare to find out what was in it. President Obama has turned that advice into a campaign strategy: He wants us to re-elect him so we can find out what he will actually do. With all the challenges the nation faces, this is not the time for President Obama’s hide and seek campaign.” Riiiiight.
This probably seems to you like a weird accusation to make. After all, Obama’s plans for a second term seem pretty clear: more of the same! You may think that’d be great, or you may think that’d be a hellish nightmare, but either way it’s not like it’s some big mystery. It isn’t as though he’s going to come out and really shock us with some new policy turn that is totally different from the kind of things he’s been doing for the past three years. But that’s what you think only if you don’t reside deep in the heart of the Republican base, which is where the key to this appeal lies.
You see, as far as base Republicans are concerned, there are two kinds of Obama policies. The first kind is the freedom-destroying, Constitution-desecrating, pulling-us-toward-socialist-dystopia awfulness. Like health care reform, or repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The second kind is the long con, the things he has done to lull the American people into a false sense of security before the second term comes and he unveils the horror of his true agenda. Like the way he has done nothing to restrict gun purchases, which only proves just how diabolical his plan to take away every American’s guns really is.
When Romney says that Obama is hiding his true intentions from us, he knows that your average voter isn’t going to be persuaded. And that’s what’s so notable about this. At a moment when he’s got the nomination pretty well locked up, Romney is still trying to assure conservatives that he’s one of them, that he hates who they hate and fears what they fear. That “pivot to the center” could be a while in coming.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, April 5, 2012
Republicans “Marvelously Looking Forward To Tampa”: Godfathers, Caterpillars And Golf
Republican to-do checklist:
1) Pooh-pooh all the talk about a war on women.
“If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we’d have problems with caterpillars,” said the Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, during a week when a USA Today/Gallup poll found Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney among women in key swing states by 18 points.
This comment was extremely unsettling. What was it that made Priebus think about caterpillars? At least if you mess with women, women can fight back. We’re already losing all the bees, and the bats are in trouble. We do not want these people picking on caterpillars at all.
2) Seek out news about the mood of the womenfolk.
“My wife has the occasion, as you know, to campaign on her own and also with me, and she reports to me regularly that the issue women care about most is the economy,” Mitt told a meeting of editors in Washington this week.
It sounded as if Ann Romney was, say, a native of Turkmenistan who had occasion to return to her native people and bring her husband back word of their hopes and concerns.
3) Make Rick Santorum get out of the race.
This is becoming a Republican obsession, and I am sure it will be a hot topic of conversation at Easter and Passover dinners, when American families will get together and express their amazement at the news that Rick Santorum is still running for something.
4) Keep Mitt on script.
The other day Romney reacted spontaneously to a comment by David Plouffe, an Obama adviser, that Mitt was the “godfather” of the individual mandate in health care reform.
“If I’m the godfather of this thing, then it gives me the right to kill it,” Romney said.
Think about that for a minute. What do you think he was going for there? A Mafia metaphor? Romney also tossed in a mention of Rumpelstiltskin, so maybe either a Mafia metaphor or some sort of weird fairy-tale image? (“I am your evil fairy godfather, and I am putting you into a coma from which you will never awake. Especially since your health insurance expired.”)
5) Watch the Masters golf tournament.
But not with approval! “Don’t you think it’s time Augusta National joined the 21st century — or the 20th — and allowed women members?” tweeted John McCain. (O.K., possibly not personally. Possibly tweeted by a minion on behalf of John McCain.)
“If I could run Augusta, which isn’t likely to happen, of course, I’d have women,” said Romney.
There are two ways to look at this. One is that this is another sign of an increased gender consciousness in the Republican ranks, albeit a teensy-weensy, poll-driven one. Another is that it is heartening that the whole men-only-golf-club thing now seems so pathetic, even the Republican high command wants to steer away from it.
Although, in that case, somebody had better tell John Boehner to ditch his.
6) Prepare for the next big primaries.
“On April 24 — is that — what day is April 24? Is that a Tuesday?” Mitt asked the crowd at a rally this week. “It’s a Tuesday! I need you to — it’s not that coming Tuesday. It’s the one after that, or is it the one after that? It’s the one after that!”
As Mario Cuomo said, we campaign in poetry, govern in prose.
7) Prepare for the convention.
Which will be held in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 27. Where, in the name of safety, the City Council is attempting to ban water guns from the area around the coliseum but is prohibited by Florida state law from banning handguns. Sure looking forward to Tampa.
8) Try to figure out what to do for the four months in between. That’s enough time to run an entire season of a TV series.
Star Trek, the Mitt Generation — A time machine takes Romney 100 years into the future, where Newt Gingrich is plotting his next political comeback.
Romney Top Chef — Ann impresses the judges with Mitt’s favorite meal of meatloaf cakes with catsup and brown sugar.
Undercover Boss Reunion Show — Mitt goes back to visit workers who were laid off after Bain Capital bought their factories and discovers that every one of them is doing great.
The Amazing Race: Michigan — Team Romney overcomes a Roadblock in which Tagg is challenged to measure the height of the trees.
Republican Swamp People — The Romneys move to the Everglades in an effort to woo the swing state of Florida. Excitement ensues when Mitt tries to drive to a rally with an alligator strapped to the roof of the car.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 6, 2012
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