Hate at the LA TimesThis is a
disgusting op-ed piece from last week that has caused some dustups in the blogosphere.
I WAS SHOCKED by the news about Claude A. Allen, the black former White House staffer whose rising star officially flamed out after he was arrested on charges of felony theft last week.
Not shocked that he got arrested — so many Republicans are being handcuffed these days for scams of one kind or another that it's hard to keep the names and charges straight. What shocked me was how penny ante his alleged scam was, how unbefitting a man of Allen's stature and lofty ideals rooted in the requisite conservative principles of God, fiscal prudence and anti-affirmative action activism above all else.I thought I had the piece pegged at this point. The columnist would go on to point out how much some retired Republican had made (while carefully ignoring Tom Daschle's income), or some pro-forma comparison to Bush's Texas Rangers deal or Cheney's compensation at Halliburton.
But I didn't imagine the depths the LA Times was ready to plumb.
Loyalty has been the price of admission to this administration, and black conservatives have proved to be more loyal than most.
That has unfortunately, but not always unfairly, invited comparisons to slave times, when the most loyal blacks were those who worked in closest proximity to their white masters — house Negroes, as they were derisively known. Such Negroes gained privilege but lost standing in their own community, a price that might have been reasonable if they were eventually granted the same status as the whites they so assiduously served. They weren't, of course; race has always mattered. And it matters now, though the dynamic is more subtle and devious.Simply disgusting. As
Eugene Volokh points out, this is the vile "race traitor" canard that we all recognize as hate when a white man talks about it.
