The New Republic

Is it a Zen saying that you become what you oppose? Isn't that what's happening here? We've largely moved past the full-frontal racism of the past. In its place we're seeing a less virulent racism: the tendency to see everything through a prism of race. That was once exclusively the habit of the anti-racist left, but it has now been adopted by the right. It's why Rush Limbaugh, in his brief career as an NFL announcer, couldn't discuss a black quarterback as anything but a black quarterback. It's why many whites assume black juries won't convict black criminals -- because the jurors are seen as being only black, rather than as being middle class members of society who are just as affected by crime as anyone else. Perhaps naively, I really see this as a sign of progress. It's not admirable, but imagine what would have happened if we'd elected a black President in, say, 1965. The south would have seceded and even in the liberal north there would have been open expressions of outrage. The elimination of racism, if it's possible at all, is a multi-generational project. We're going to go through stages, and this is just one of those.

- Johnson172

September 2, 2010 at 9:20am

Actually this is a direct attack on Martin Luther King's philosophy of nonviolent social change and his view that America was, in a number of important ways, an "unjust society". King's philosophy, strategy and perspective actually did influence virtually all subsequent liberal and progressive movements and the outlook of the Democratic Party in general so it is not surprising that Beck should percieve King's philosophy as presenting the central moral challenge to the fusion of theocracy and economic Ayn Randianism that he champions. This actually fits quite perfectly with Beck's attempt to redefine Dr. King himself as having actually been a Black social religious conservative and to thus separate the man from his actual philosophy. Ed Kilgore has an excellent piece on the covert theocratic agenda Beck is advancing elsewhere in TNR and this veiled strategy of attacking the philosophy and strategy of Martin Luther King's nonviolent social change is an entirely complementary element of his cultural and political offensive. Caviat liberals.

- lev

September 2, 2010 at 9:38am

In a way, a black president in the White House feels as wrong to the Beck followers, teabaggers etc as Beck does to liberals standing on the spot that, historically, belongs to Martin Luther King, Jr. They are trying to foster a kind of mirror-image politics that invades the equivalent space they feel has been invaded.

- ironyroad

September 2, 2010 at 11:23am

Right. Race rose Barack Obama to the top. Not eloquence, not extremely hard work, not perseverance, not coolness under fire, not great intelligence, not mastering policy. Nope. Just race.

- liberal reformer

September 2, 2010 at 12:27pm