Throw-a-way bits

So still on my self-imposed health care hiatus I cam across a comment on social bias and how difficult it is to diagnose.

Basically it speaks to an issue I have tried futilely to write about.

Race and bias are just difficult subjects to broach. There are many reasons why that it is, which
could be debated. But that it is a difficult subject is not debatable.

Adam Serwer of the American Prospect wrote a piece on the Limbaugh-Rams story that had one passage that resonated with me:

On the one hand, there's the general anxiety on the right that comes from the recognition that one can't actually treat black people this way and expect there not to be social consequences. On the other, there's actual bewilderment about the very concept of racism -- conservatives understand in the abstract that racism is bad, but they seem incapable of identifying actual racist behavior. Instead, because (a) racism is bad and (b) liberals are bad (c) racism is a quality possessed by liberals. By definition, conservatives cannot be racist, because they are good, unlike liberals, and therefore nothing Rush Limbaugh says is racist. Moreover, while liberals have sometimes intimated racial motivation for conservative criticism where there isn't any, conservatives have refused to recognize when attacks on the president become attacks on black people. Calling the president "an angry black guy" is one of those times.

This blanket refusal to evaluate their own behavior is what continues to make the GOP seem completely tone deaf when it comes to minorities -- the GOP can list as many black Republicans from the 1800s as they like, as long as they continue to adhere to the Bender Theory of Discrimination and refuse to acknowledge even flagrant racism within their ranks, and even imply that minorities are so stupid they're "fooled" into believing racism exists, they will remain a party minorities do not feel welcome in.

Now I do tend to agree that conservatives are more prone to this sort of thinking then their progressive brethren, but it could be generalized to virtually any sort of intellectual coterie. Those who agree with you are somehow more virtuous then those who do not. But I digress. This is something that is become extremely virulent. People toss around racist, and Nazis like hand grenades.

What I mean with this whole post is this. I am not surprised when some says something racially insensitive. What I find shocking is the absolute inability to engage in any sort of self-examination. Someone else is always the "race-baiter". There is always a rationalization. Whether it is Rush's comments on Donovan McNabb, the commentary of two South Carolinian republican chairmen or well just about anything Pat Buchanan says.

There are not racists, they aren't biased! They are just telling it like it is.

No I think Mr. Serwer has the right of it.

-Cheer