The Use of Race to De-legitimate Conservatives: Are Predominantly White Events and Institutions Per se Illegitimate?

I have often been uncomfortable with the way in which liberals and the media use race as a de-legitimating tool in disputes with conservatives.  Clive Crook nicely points this out here with respect to the recent Glenn Beck rally.

Are predominantly-white events and institutions per se illegitimate or does the criticism apply only to conservatives?  It strikes me that when liberals use race in this way, they are simply using race cynically and politically.

I am willing to explore the claim that predominantly white events and institutions are not representative of America and therefore have less claim to legitimacy.  But if this is a serious inquiry, it should not be directed selectively against conservatives.  Otherwise, the inquiry is betrayed by its cynical manner in which it is selectively deployed and it is the cause of racial equality that suffers.

New Elections Might Cause Number of Women in Congress to Decline

The L.A. Times reports that the prospect of Republican successes in this fall's Congressional races will likely reduce the number of women in Congress:

With this fall's midterm elections, the number of women serving in Congress could drop for the first time in a generation — a twist on a political season many had dubbed "the year of the woman."

If large numbers of Democratic incumbents lose in November, as expected, many women could be replaced by men. Female candidates tend to do better in Democratic years, and 2010 is shaping up as a successful year for Republicans.

Women now hold 90 seats in Congress: 69 are Democrats and 21 are Republicans. After the November election, Congress could end up with as many as 10 fewer female members, prognosticators now say, the first backslide in the uninterrupted march of women to Washington since 1978.

...In fact, just four women are among the GOP's 46 "Young Guns," as the party calls its frontline challengers who are considered future leaders.

According to the Wikipedia , only 17 percent of our current Senate is female; remarkably, only 17 percent of our current House is female as well.

Back to Class . . . and Race

The debate over the use of race in public policy is in full swing, at least as far as elite opinion is concerned. I can’t really figure out why. Michael Lind issued the latest salvo yesterday, writing in salon. Unfortunately, as it is often the case with this issue, his essay does little to persuade. The reasons become obvious after reading the first few paragraphs: those who assail racial preferences and those who defend them cannot even agree on a set of basic premises. This is a debate where people are talking past one another.

More on Muslim Cultural Center near Ground Zero

Michael Kinsley has a very nice response to Charles Krauthammer on Krauthammer's opposition the Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero.  I thought Kinsley's analogy to blacks and Jews being asked not to move into a neighborhood because their presence might cause anger among the neighbors is pretty apt.  Another example might be nine black students who enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 following the Supreme Court's desegregation decision in Brown v. Board.  Should they have encouraged to attend an all-black school because integration was upsetting to the white folks in Arkansas?

This is why I think President Obama was right and courageous to speak out on this issue.  The principle at stake is basic and central to our democracy: heckler's do not have a right to veto the exercise of a person's constitutional right in the public square.  We are not a society where we allow the mob to determine whether individuals' can exercise their constitutional rights in the public square.  That was the issue at stake in the Little Rock Nine case and it is the issue at stake here.  If the President of the United States is unable to stand-up for that principle because he is afraid of the political repercussions, then he is not a person of courage.  But this President demonstrated courage in this case and I applaud him.

The End of Judicial Activism?

I have been thinking a lot lately about Judge Walker’s ruling in California striking down Proposition 8, and Judge Bolton’s ruling on Arizona’s immigration law.  The most obvious response is that these rulings, and the reactions of those who oppose them, lay bare the silliness of the modern debate over judicial activism.  According to their critics, these rulings are exercises in judicial activism by liberal judges hell-bent on destroying everything we hold dear; yet recent rulings on gun rights, campaign finance, and race, to name a few glaring examples, are exercises in judicial restraint and the faithful exercise of judicial responsibilities in enforcing our beloved Constitution. 

This is bunk, obviously; Justice Scalia is no less an activist judge than Justice Marshall.  They just happened to care about different things.  This is true under any definition of activism you can think of, from the invalidation of statutes to the creative and dynamic interpretation of federal laws to the active use of the avoidance canon.  If you need support for this, take a look at the Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncement about the Voting Rights Act, Namudno v. Holder.  Rather than rule on the constitutionality of the Act, as most observers expected, the Court, in an opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, “avoided” the constitutional question.  It did so by essentially rewriting the statute to say something the text clearly did not say.  In the coming years, the Court is similarly poised to strike down the special provisions of the Act.  As I have written elsewhere, this is “activism on steroids.”

To focus on the concept of activism is thus to focus on the wrong target.  This is to focus on politics, not law, and to render criticisms of judicial rulings as questions of whose ox is being gored.  No shame in that, of course, but hopelessly unhelpful.

Instead, we should focus on the fact that judges are strategic actors, particularly those who sit at the top of the judicial hierarchy.  This is to say, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have policy preferences, which are reflected as best as possible in their rulings and votes from the bench.  This is true of all the justices, not only the liberal ones.  The moment we come to accept this truism, the better off we will be. 

Right off the bat, I can think of one big improvement on our politics: we won’t have to listen to Senator Sesssions pontificate about the dangers of judicial activism. 

Enough already.

Dr. Laura Needs Therapy

Cord Jefferson at The Root.com argues that Dr. Laura's use of N---- was not racist.  Ordinarily I would agree with Cord.  Here, I'm more ambivalent.  Dr. Laura was responding to a question by a black caller who wanted advice about getting her white husband to be more sensitive to racial jokes and stereotypes expressed by his friends and family in her presence.  The irony is that this black woman, who is clearly comfortable reaching across the racial divide, instead of getting advice was treated to repeated uses of N---- and got a lecture about black people being to hypersensitive about race. 

I think Dr. Laura thought she could cure us of our hypersensitivity by saying N---- as many times as she could get away with it.  In this context it is not the repeated use of N---- that was troubling, there were other problems.  There was the "my bodyguard is black and he is my dear friend" trope to justify an underlying argument that one can employ racial stereotypes without being racist.  This is reminiscent of the "my best friend is black so I can say whatever I want about black people and you can't say I'm racist" reasoning.  And Dr. Laura's coup de grace is her argument that over 90% of black people voted for President Obama, which I think was offered to show that black stereotypes and generalizations are legitimate because they're true facts.  Of course she forgot that over 90% of black people supported President Clinton.  I wouldn't say that Dr. Laura's a racist, but she clearly has issues with race.

I think Cord is clearly right that black folks need to stop going ballistic everytime someone says N-----.  But, in this context, if a few black people went ballistic against Dr. Laura's repeated use of the word, I can understand why.

The President We've Been Waiting For

President Obama speaks out in favor of the Islam Center near ground zero.  While many of us have criticized this White House for being too cautious, this is a counter-example.  I hope that this is not like the Henry Louis Gates incident where the President spoke out and then had to backtrack.  The President is right to remind us of our values as a country.  If a Democrat cannot defend religious freedom and anti-religious bigotry, then we are really in trouble as a country.