How liberals and conservatives look at race
Betsy's Page
Noemie Emery outlines differences in how liberals and conservatives view race.
<<< It’s diverse meanings of the same words given to them by different people that creates the confusion. To some, “diversity,” “rights,” “civil rights” and “social justice” mean something different, and mean something wholly opposed.
To conservatives, “civil rights” mean bypassing race and bestowing rights to individual people. To liberals, they mean stressing race more than ever, and giving rights largely to groups.
To social conservatives, only people have rights and you cannot atone for a wrong done to a person of one race in the past by giving favors today to someone quite different who fits the description.
To social liberals, a race (or sex) is an organic unit, and a wrong done to one person in it can be avenged by favor done to another, even if they are generations apart, and the favor comes at the expense of a third person, who is an aggrieved and an innocent party.
To liberals, affirmative action erases a wrong, as the race is avenged, if not the original victim. To a conservative, it compounds the damage, as injustice is now done to two individuals, while the wrongs of the past stay unchanged.
Liberals think civil rights should be measured by outcomes, which sometimes are rigged, as the intent supplies the morality. Conservatives think that this tampers with justice and thus is immoral, and that civil rights consist of removing obstructions and then letting people find their own way.
Racialists and minority racists find this too slow and too spotty, and tinker with rules to get a quick — and fixed — outcome. Conservatives say this is unfair to the people who are hurt by the state in the process, and point to the unforced integration of Catholics, Jews and white ethnic minorities as proof this works out in time. >>>
What strikes me is that, if you polled Americans, the conservative position would substantially outweigh the liberal position. This is why Sonia Sotomayor's "wise Latina" speech struck such a chord. Conservatives shouldn't hesitate in raising these issues in her hearings. They won't win or block her confirmation, but it would raise important questions that deserve discussion in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
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