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Good Advice, Incredibly Dumb Argument

First, let me say that everything written by Peter Beinart, an Editor-at-Large of The New Republic and currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is not dumb. Second, the advice he gives Obama in a Washington Post OpEd today to abandon race-based for class-based affirmative action is good ? good for Obama, good for the country. But third, his argument supporting this sound conclusion ranks among the most egregiously dumb things I?ve ever read.

Beinart begins by arguing that even though Obama ?really, really doesn't want this campaign to be about race? (?He wants it to be about change...?), it will be. Why? Because there are so many racists who won?t vote for a black and, perhaps more importantly, he says, ?[r]ace will be central to this campaign because McCain needs it to be.?

That?s the lesson of recent weeks, when the McCain campaign brought up race (on the pretext that Obama had brought it up first). The Obama campaign tried desperately to change the subject but couldn?t. Once the chum was in the water, the media sharks went wild.

So, Obama bringing up his looks over and over again and warning that the mean, evil Republicans were going to try to make voters afraid of him because he?s black does not count, for Beinart, as bringing up race.

Moving on:

Already, there is reason to believe that race is weighing Obama down. A survey this year by CBS and the New York Times found that 94 percent of respondents would vote for a black presidential candidate. But when asked if ?most people? would, the number dropped to 71 percent. Notre Dame political scientist David Leege estimates that 17 to 19 percent of white Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents will resist voting for Obama because he is black. That?s far more than the percentage of Republicans who may vote for Obama because he is black. And it?s a major reason that this election ? despite Obama?s myriad advantages ? remains close.

Here Beinart seems to assume that what people say ?most people? would do is more accurate than what they say they would do. He ignores Republican-leaning independents who might vote for Obama because of his race, black conservatives who wlll vote for Obama because of his race, and he also ignores what will almost certainly be a larger than normal turnout of black voters who will vote for Obama because of his race (see Ward Connerly?s discussion of them here). Still, Beinart, seer that he is, is able to look into the collective hearts, minds, and souls of American voters and conclude that the only reason the race ?remains close? is the racism of white voters.

Now it really gets good. Despite the pervasive racism of the electorate Beinart remains an optimist, ?because even racists can be wooed.?

Think about it this way: Many of the voters who right now won?t vote for Obama because he?s black would probably vote for Colin Powell even though he?s black. That?s because they don?t see Powell as a racial redistributionist, a guy who would favor his community at their expense.

What Beinart is really saying here is that Powell is not really black, because he?s not a ?racial redistributionist.? [The following sentence was added and the one after that modified after initial posting.] It never seems to occur to Beinart that if voters will vote for black candidate P, who does not support racial redistribution, but will not vote for black candidate O, who does (or who they think does) support racial redistribution, the reason they don?t support O in greater numbers is not at all because they?re racist and he?s black but because they disagree with his position on an issue (actually, probably many issues) that are important to them.

If I cared what Beinart thought I would wonder if he believes the inevitable corollary of his almost silly attempt to explain differing white responses to Powell and Obama while continuing to maintain that large numbers of white voters are racist ? if Powell is not really black because he doesn?t believe in racial redistribution, then people who look white but do believe in racial redistribution are really black. Beinart, thus, is not only a seer but also the arbiter of blackness in our society.

You?d think that Beinart, already in way over his head, would stop digging (especially because what he?s digging in is not dirt), but no, the hole he?s standing in just keeps getting bigger.

There?s no rational reason to believe Obama would [favor his community at their expense], either. But because, unlike Powell, Obama is a liberal Democrat who enjoys overwhelming black support, that?s what many racially hostile white voters assume.

At this point one can only wonder how someone like Beinart, who apparently can neither read nor hear, has managed to scale the heights of intellectual influence in this country. Does not the facts that Obama supported extreme racial preferences, even quotas, in his legislative career in Illinois (see article mentioned here) and that he has steadfastly maintained his support for racial preferences in the current campaign provide quite a bit more than a ?rational reason to believe? that a President Obama would continue to support racial preferences? Can Beinart, seemingly unaware of these facts, point to even one example of a racial preference policy that Obama has ever opposed?

Can Beinart really believe that a black president supporting preferential treatment for blacks is somehow not ?favor[ing] his community? at the expense of those who are denied preferential treatment because of their race? On second thought, after reading this OpEd I?m prepared to believe that Beinart can, and does, believe whatever he wants.

If a peanut-growing president favored federal subsidies to peanut growers but not to others, some liberals and mainstream media mavens (but I repeat myself) might grouse about conflict of interest. But race, we keep being told, is different.

Full post as published by Discriminations on August 13, 2008 (boomark / email).