The approach of a new year sometimes, as now, brings thoughts of what we have lost. What I miss most in our civil discourse is that it has become almost exclusively uncivil discourse, discourse without comity, resulting in large part from the disappearance of the now old-fashioned notion that people who disagree with you do so in good faith — they may (or, of course, may not) be wrong, but they are not for that reason necessarily evil or stupid.
And nowhere is our current discourse more uncivil than in debates about civil rights. There is little recognition that reasonable, decent people can disagree. I, and virtually (perhaps literally) all of the people I know or read who agree with me, have no trouble recognizing that those who support racial preferences do so out of a belief that a decent society requires them. By contrast, those who believe that it is right and good to distribute burdens and benefits based on race with depressing frequency describe those of us who believe in colorblind racial neutrality as either conscious or unconscious racists.
On this view — the official view of all of the “civil rights” groups with which I am familiar — Judge Alito, for example, does not simply have a view of civil rights that differs from theirs. No, he is hostile to civil rights, takes every opportunity (and then some) to oppose civil rights.
Sometimes it is not even civil rights that Alito is said to oppose, but those who have anointed themselves as the only arbiters of its definition. Thus, in responding yesterday to the release of an old memo where Alito, then a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, actually supported the argument of black plaintiffs (Black Panthers, no less), Wade Henderson, head of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights,
said one memo in a case that the Supreme Court dismissed doesn’t change Alito’s overall record of hostility to the civil rights movement.
Never mind that the “civil rights movement” for which Henderson speaks has rejected root and branch the organizing, animating principle of the “civil rights movement” that existed in one form or another from the 1830s to the mid-1960s.
There is little recognition that reasonable, decent people can disagree. Well, that’s the easy way to “win” an argument: the people who disagree with you are wrong, and maybe even wicked, by definition.
John writes:
>>>”And nowhere is our current discourse more uncivil than in debates about civil rights. There is little recognition that reasonable, decent people can disagree. I, and virtually (perhaps literally) all of the people I know or read who agree with me, have no trouble recognizing that those who support racial preferences do so out of a belief that a decent society requires them. By contrast, those who believe that it is right and good to distribute burdens and benefits based on race with depressing frequency describe those of us who believe in colorblind racial neutrality as either conscious or unconscious racists.”
That’s primarily based upon the history of America in regards to race and civil rights, and the current conditions in society.
The problem being, there are many people in this nation who will take your side of the argument with a different agenda and or mindset.
–Cobra
My claim:
I, and virtually (perhaps literally) all of the people I know or read who agree with me, have no trouble recognizing that those who support racial preferences do so out of a belief that a decent society requires them. By contrast, those who believe that it is right and good to distribute burdens and benefits based on race with depressing frequency describe those of us who believe in colorblind racial neutrality as either conscious or unconscious racists.
actus’s response:
That’s primarily based upon the history of America in regards to race and civil rights, and the current conditions in society.
I’m pleased to see that actus agrees with me here.
In a further attempt to justify accusing those who believe in colorblind non-discrimination as racists, actus adds:
The problem being, there are many people in this nation who will take your side of the argument with a different agenda and or mindset.
Without evidence, this is simply another empty accusation of racism against people who oppose “taking race into account” in distributing benefits. It makes sense only if what you mean by racist is someone who opposes preferences for minorities.