Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Racism in the Conservative Movement-Part 2

In October of 2005, I posted Racism in the Conservative Movement, asking why mainstream Conservatives, such as Patrick Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, and Larry Pratt, allow their columns to be printed in the blatantly racist Citizens's Informer, the newsletter of the Council of Conservative Citizens. I cited several example of such racism in that publication, one of which was a quote from Jared Taylor:

I will tell you, for aesthetic reasons alone, I think we have every justifiable reason to want our society, our country, our communities, to be white--I like the way my people look!
Jared Taylor is the editor of American Renaissance, a racist publication and website, which sells a publication titled The Color of Crime put out by the New Century Foundation. They also sell such racist classics as Race and Reason. Jared Taylor highly recommends Race and Reason, which was authored by Carlton Putnam:

“No one did more to combat the racial folly of the 1960s than Carlton Putnam. Although he has been written out of the history books, history has nevertheless proven him right on all counts.”
Now, as it happens, I read Race and Reason a few years back. The author argues in favor of the segregation of the races on the grounds that black people are intellectually inferior. This is the author who is "right on all counts."

Now why am I going into all this? Because the title of Patrick Buchanan's latest column is "The Color of Crime", and in it he quotes approvingly from The Color of Crime. He admits that the group behind it is "right-leaning," but does not address its racism.

There is no excuse for this. Patrick Buchanan should repudiate Jared Taylor, American Renaissance and The New Century Foundation or be found guilty of racism by association--associations of which he must be presumed to be aware. I think that I have been more than fair to Patrick Buchanan, a writer of often shrewd insight whom I have quoted approvingly in the past.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with you. Buchanan writes well and is capable of meaningful analysis, but...

For some reason this reminds me of other "odd bedfellows" such as The Nation and other "liberal" publications/Web sites that receive money from the Ford Foundation. You are who you associate with...

7:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

also, gary, "the color of crime" appears to be written by someone who has a very tenous grasp on basic statistical concepts.

there appear to be several instances where the author proves correlation but assumes he's proven causation.

the most blatant example is his racist assumption that the disparity in crime rates between races is *because* of race. the znet article you linked to from your comment on the aurora refutes it quite succinctly.

so the problem is not just that pundits like buchanan--who occasionally says some very intelligent things--ignore the racism of people like taylor, but they (like our friends donkey and rhino) quite willingly avoid any critical analysis of data they are presented that supports their preconceived opinions about policy issues.

and this isn't an oversight on their part. they just don't consider the actual facts to be important. the far right in this country has not only stigmatized intellectualism and intelligence through its inflammatory rhetoric, they question whether evidence is important at all in supporting an argument.

hence support for "intelligent design," skepticism for global warming ("too many scientists! i'm suspicious!"), and the war in iraq.

evidence is simply irrelevant for these people.

2:13 PM  

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