Daniel Pipes, who has written widely and well about the Islamic world, has posted an interesting article on his web site discussing what he regards as the somewhat odd accusation that his criticism of Islamic terrorists makes him a “racist.”
Noting that “[r]acism is now increasingly used to mean something far beyond its dictionary definition,” Pipes quotes A. Sivanandan, director of the influential Institute of Race Relations in London discussing what he calls a “new racism”:
It is a racism that is not just directed at those with darker skins, from the former colonial territories, but at the newer categories of the displaced, the dispossessed, and the uprooted, who are beating at Western Europe’s doors, the Europe that helped displace them in the first place. It is a racism, that is, that cannot be color-coded, directed as it is at poor whites as well, and is therefore passed off as xenophobia, a “natural” fear of strangers.
Pipes goes on to note a number of examples of political positions having nothing to do with race being labeled racist, and he concludes:
This attempt to delegitimize political differences must be rejected. Racism refers only to racial issues, not to views on immigration, culture, religion, ideology, law enforcement, or military strategy.
What are we to make of this? A friend just forwarded to me an email query about the Pipes article that is worth quoting:
I would have thought that “people of color” would want to cabin “racism” to its original meaning, not expand it to include anything even remotely anti-Leftist, for the same reason the traditional black leadership in the US railed against a multiracial census classification. If you water it down, blacks lose a unique position. Jews guard the Holocaust and anti-Semitism very carefully. What am I missing here?
This is a shrewd question, and I doubt that this correspondent is missing anything. But if he is, it is the fact that ideology has been trumping race/color/ethnicity at least since insufficiently militant blacks have been dismissed as “Uncle Toms.” The whole notion of “race treason” (which is a necessary concept in order to attack someone as a “race traitor”), after all, is based on the notion that some beliefs are so “un-black” (or un-whatever) that anyone who espouses them is effectively not black (or, again, whatever).
Examples abound. Here are a few representative comments I gathered a couple of years ago from people arguing that Miguel Estrada was not “Hispanic enough” to be supported by Hispanics for the Court of Appeals:
Rep. Menendez
Being Hispanic for us means much more than having a surname…. It means having some relationship with the reality of what it is to live in this country as a Hispanic American.
Angelo Falcon, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund
As the Latino community becomes larger and larger in the country, as we gain more political influence, as we become more diverse, the issue of what is a Hispanic becomes more problematic…. It’s not good enough to simply say that because of someone’s genetics or surname that they should be considered Hispanic.
Mariso Demeo, Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Not only is Estrada not authentically Hispanic, Demeo argued, but his elevation to the federal bench would “crush” the American dream for millions of genuine Hispanics in the United States.
Contra Ward Connerly’s unsuccessful attempt to prevent the state from collecting racial data, maybe the response to the above sort of politically correct definitions of race and ethnicity is to require census takers and others to ask political as well as race/ethnicity questions, and, for example, to count as “Hispanic” only those whom people like Menendez, Falcon, and Demeo would regard as “genuine Hispanics.”
Once you define a group by a set of political positions, it’s easy both to banish any ostensible group member who doesn’t share them and to regard all outsiders who reject them as people who hate the group.
UPDATE: From “What’s Good For the Jews?” To “Who Are The Jews?” [22 Nov.]
Judging by the proposals passed at the recent biennial convention in Houston of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest branch of American Judaism, Reform Judaism sounds more like a political than a religious movement:
Union for Reform Judaism Opposes Alito Nomination as Threat to Fundamental Rights
xenophobia, a “natural” fear of strangers.
Really. Natural. Right. (pun intended)
“It’s not good enough to simply say that because of someone’s genetics or surname that they should be considered Hispanic.”
Passive-voice weasel words. Who gets to define who is and who is not Hispanic? And what about that someone himself – does what he consider Hispanic not count?
Unfortunately Reform Judaism has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Left wing of the Democrat Party. The only thing that surprises me about the proposals they passed is that they bothered to include opposition to economic sanctions on Israel.