Racism: A Conservative Team Sport

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

The conservative movement doesn’t understand anti-racism as a value, only as a rhetorical pose. This is how you end up tarring the oldest integrationist group in the country (the NAACP) as racist. The slur has no real moral content to them. It’s all a game of who can embarrass who. If you don’t think racism is an actual force in the country, then you can only understand it’s invocation as a tactic.

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That tradition of viewing racism, not as an actual thing of import, but merely as rhetoric continues today. To abandon that tradition, I suspect, would be cause for an existential crisis.

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1 thought on “Racism: A Conservative Team Sport

  1. William F. Buckley is Milton’s Satan through and through: One is drawn by the eloquence of his speech, his falsehoods aren’t necessarily built upon untruths, but the actuality of his words is toxic and damning.

    Ironic that an elitist such as Buckley could inspire the anti-elitism seen in conservatives today.

    Baldwin – well, I’m speechless. I’ve never before seen this debate. Thanks for posting!

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