Bill Kristol Becomes the Latest White Bigot to Lecture Us on Race

Posted by Jeff Fecke, Shakesville at 5:16 AM on March 25, 2008.

Bill Kristol, as usual, is wrong about something.

What he's wrong about today is race in America. Now, you, being a sentient human with eyes and/or ears that function to bring information to your brain, may have thought that racism was still a problem in our country. Au contraire! Bill Kristol, you see, thinks that racism isn't a problem at all. At least not one we should talk about:

Racial progress has in fact continued in America. A new national conversation about race isn't necessary to end what Obama calls the "racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years" -- because we're not stuck in such a stalemate. In fact, as Obama himself suggests in the same speech, younger Americans aren't stalemated. They come far closer than their grandparents and parents to routinely obeying Martin Luther King's injunction to judge one another by the content of our character, not the color of our skin.

Over the last several decades, we've done pretty well in overcoming racial barriers and prejudice. Problems remain. But we won't make progress if we now have to endure a din of race talk that will do more to divide us than to unite us, and more to confuse than to clarify.

Never has a quote by a socialist equalitarian been so often misused by plutocraits. Kristol wants to pat everyone on the back for the fact that I am not as overtly racist as my grandparents. Well, I should hope that my generation is more tolerant than a generation of people who were adults during Jim Crow, and didn't move immediately to stop it. Yay us.

But to argue that racism doesn't need to be discussed, despite the fact that "problems remain" -- that's unusually wrong, even for Kristol.

It's easy for Kristol to choose to avoid a discussion of race. How, after all, is Kristol affected by racism? It's not a problem for him! And it can only become a problem if we actually talk about things. Then we might have to hear that racism is a problem for people who are not, in fact, rich and white.

I, for one, think that it's okay to talk about race; indeed, it's important to do so. If we are to solve the remaining problems of race in our country, we must honestly address those problems. Sweeping them under the rug will only ensure that they fester and mutate and grow.

Besides, I truly am interested in Bill Kristol's opinion on affirmative action. As a clear beneficiary of the program -- how else to explain his position on the Times' editorial page than that he was a conservative quota hire? -- he should be all for expanding it to give non-white, non-conservative, non-wrong people a chance. Something tells me, though, that he won't be.

Jeff Fecke is a regular blogger for Shakesville.