slate | When I started the book, after eight miserable years of George W.
Bush and the euphoria of the Yes We Can crusade, I’d been driven pretty
far left on the political spectrum. Taking on the issue of race, you’d
think I’d have kept heading in that direction. But the more I read and
researched, the more I went out and talked to people, I found that a
funny thing was happening: I was becoming more conservative.
Which is not to say I was becoming a Republican. Because how could I?
At this point, the GOP’s rap sheet of racial offenses is almost too
long to recount. Pushing undemocratic voter ID laws, trotting out
candidates like Herman Cain, calling Barack Obama the “food stamp president” … if it has to do with race, you can count on Republicans being wrong early and often.
The pernicious effects of Republican attitude on race are plain to
see. But one of the more subtle consequences of the right’s willful
incompetence is that there is rarely any thoughtful critique of the left
when it comes to race. Affirmative action is unfair to white people and the Democratic Party is a plantation—that’s
about as incisive as the rhetoric usually gets. Even when Republicans
have a legitimate point to make about the shortcomings of some
government program, it’s almost as if they can’t help blowing their own
argument. They’ll start off talking sensibly enough about educational
outcome disparities and within seconds they’re rambling incoherently
about how black men don’t take care of their babies. It’s really
astonishing to watch.
But the fact is that a lot of liberals hold on to some really bad
ideas about race too. Some of the arguments they keep trotting out
amount to little more than unexamined platitudes, riddled with holes.
Fifty years after the March on Washington, America’s high school
cafeterias are as racially divided as ever, income inequality is
growing, and mass incarceration has hobbled an entire generation of
young black men. Do we really think this is entirely due to
Republican obstruction? Or is it also possible that the party charged
with taking black Americans to the Promised Land has been running around
in circles?
The left has been ceded a monopoly on caring about black people, and
monopolies are dangerous. They create ossified institutions, paralyzed
by groupthink and incapable of self-reflection. To the extent that
liberals are willing to be self-critical, it’s generally to flagellate
themselves for not being liberal enough, for failing to stand
fast with the old, accepted orthodoxies. Monopolies also lead to
arrogance and entitlement, and the left is nothing if not arrogant when
it comes to constantly and loudly asserting its place as the One True
Friend of Black America. And yet, as good as liberal policies on race
sound in speeches, many of them don’t hold up in the real world.
There is no shortage of people ready to pounce on every instance of
Republican racial insanity, but there is also no expectation that those
Republicans will reform any time soon. It is therefore imperative that
at least some Democrats begin to shift the discussion to what is wrong
with themselves. With the right being derelict, the left assumes
stewardship of our new multiracial America by default. So there is an
added responsibility to get it right, to purge outdated orthodoxies,
admit past mistakes, and find real solutions that work.
