Ross Douthat: Too Optimistic Even When He’s Pessimistic

One of the few remaining reasons to read the New York Times — indeed, perhaps the only one — is Ross Douthat’s Op-Ed column. Today’s “Retreat To Identity” is no exception, although it is not as pessimistic as Douthat thinks … or as it should be.

He cites a column from last summer that “gingerly” voiced optimism about the state of American race relations, but now, “after watching as Ferguson, Mo., seethed and smoldered, it’s worth offering a case for greater pessimism.” His case rests on a rather rigid — too rigid and exclusive, I believe — dualism:

Ultimately, being optimistic about race requires being optimistic about the ability of our political coalitions to offer colorblind visions of the American dream — the left’s vision stressing economics more heavily, the right leaning more on family and community, but both promising gains and goods and benefits that can be shared by Americans of every racial background.

In the Obama era, though, neither coalition has done a very good job selling such a vision, because neither knows how to deliver on it. (The left doesn’t know how to get wages rising again; the right doesn’t know how to shore up the two-parent family, etc.) Which has left both parties increasingly dependent on identity-politics appeals, with the left mobilizing along lines of race, ethnicity and gender and the right mobilizing around white-Christian-heartland cultural anxieties.

This policy-based dualism omits a crucial, defining difference between left and right on race: the left has rejected root and branch even the principle (leave aside the policies) of colorblindness while the right embraces it.

 

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