Much of the recent race debate has focused on the anger of both blacks and whites. This is new; I know white people talk to white people about feeling ripped off by Affirmative Action, and I’m told black people talk to black people about past and present inequities. But, of course, we don’t talk to each other about such things, knowing one another irrational (a excuse, perhaps, for ignorance so vast that the other seems irrational).
I read today a post on TPM by Glenn Loury (a world-renowned social science scholar in residence at Brown University) that was critical of some parts of the Obama speech on race. In a comment to that post, a thoughtful reader (AJM) added this:
| On a more serious level Obama explains to whites the anger of blacks in terms of the massive wrongs done to them in this society and then turns around and equates this to the anger of whites — immigrants in particular – to whom no such helping hand has been extended. It is as though he were equating the wrongs of growing up in slum areas with slum challenges in slum schools with facing the trauma of having your child compete for college slots with black competitors who have been granted a few extra points. . . . this may be the only option if we insist on being racially blind rather than racially just. |
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