| Paul's Position
Of course it doesn't do to take a candidate's supporter as representative. So here's what Paul himself has said, from a statement on his House website:
Government and Racism
April 16, 2007
The controversy surrounding remarks by talk show host Don Imus shows that the nation remains incredibly sensitive about matters of race, despite the outward progress of the last 40 years. A nation that once prided itself on a sense of rugged individualism has become uncomfortably obsessed with racial group identities.
Of course, no one was concerned with racial group identities when the rugged individualists landed a Plymouth Rock and began the long, bloody process of riding 99% of America of its original owners, who just happened to be Native American. No obsession with racial group identity there.
Oh, wait...
Well, uh, how about the African Slave trade? American nativism? Japanese-American Internment?
What is it with Ron Paul and his followers? White men can't use Google?
Skipping down a bit:
The young women on the basketball team Mr. Imus insulted are over 18 and can speak for themselves. It's disconcerting to see third parties become involved and presume to speak collectively for minority groups. It is precisely this collectivist mindset that is at the heart of racism.
It's also disconcerting to hear the subtle or not-so-subtle threats against free speech. Since the FCC regulates airwaves and grants broadcast licenses, we're told it's proper for government to forbid certain kinds of insulting or offensive speech in the name of racial and social tolerance. Never mind the 1st Amendment, which states unequivocally that, "Congress shall make NO law."
Here it's interesting to note that Mr. Straight-Shooter (no namby-pamby "Straight Talk" from the likes of Dr. Paul!) was himself the author of a would-be law restricting free speech ten years ago. In fact, two of them. Except, that, "Constiutionalist" that he is, his bills were to introduce a Constitional Amendment to criminalize flag-burning. He got no co-sponsors. That's quite a feat, really. No co-sponsors for one the conservatives' favorite red meat red herrings. But I digress....
Let's be perfectly clear: the federal government has no business regulating speech in any way. Furthermore, government as an institution is particularly ill suited to combating bigotry in our society. Bigotry at its essence is a sin of the heart, and we can't change people's hearts by passing more laws and regulations.
As a kid, I heard a lot of such talk back in 1964 from the Goldwater campaign, and California's Prop 14, which repealed California's fair housing law. Back then, the catch-phrase was, "You can't legislate morality!" Can you believe that? These were some of the same folks who would soon be bringing us the religious right, telling us in 1964, "You can't legislate morality!" Priceless...
In fact it is the federal government more than anything else that divides us along race, class, religion, and gender lines. Government, through its taxes, restrictive regulations, corporate subsidies, racial set-asides, and welfare programs, plays far too large a role in determining who succeeds and who fails in our society.
That's right, folks, taxes! Government taxes are the cause of racism!
This government "benevolence" crowds out genuine goodwill between men by institutionalizing group thinking, thus making each group suspicious that others are receiving more of the government loot. This leads to resentment and hostility between us.
Ah, for the low-tax days of slavery, when all was harmonious between us!
The political left argues that stringent federal laws are needed to combat racism, even as they advocate incredibly divisive collectivist policies.
Social Security caused slavery! You could look it up! (On Google, not so much.)
Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.
There you have it, folks! The liberals who brought us the New Deal were the real racists. Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, who resigned from the DAR in 1937, when they refused to let Marian Anderson sing at Constitution Hall, and arranged for her to sing on the Washington Mall, insteadm where 75,000 people came to hear her. Yeah, that Eleanor Roosevelt was a stone cold racist! Not to mention Lyndon Johnson, not only a New Deal congressman, but the Great Society President, who also signed the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act-another stone cold racist.
The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
Except, of course, for the mountaint of studies showing that whites do better than blacks in the marketplace, every single time that anyone takes a look. Details, details...
More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.
This is really the same old racist crap of yesteryear-the problem with blacks is a lack of personal responsibility, looking for the federal government to help them out, rather than buckling down and working 24 hour days picking cotton, rather than a measly old 14 hour day.
So, there you have it, really. Ron Paul isn't anti-racism. He's anti-"collectivism." And in the course of laying out that argument, there are clear traces of the racist argiments of yesteryear. But let's not just dismiss him on that basis without taking a look at the some cold hard numbers as well.
Running The Numbers
In my response in Salon Letters, I wrote
That's not an argument against racism. That's an argument against "collectivism" and a form of denial that he and his kind could possibly be racists.
Furthermore, it's an easily refuted view.
The National Election Survey asks a number of relevant questions, most notably, it asks people about their feelings towards different groups, including Blacks, using a temperature scale from 1-100, as well as asking about their policy views. There is a consistent correlation between more negative views of blacks and opposition to "collectivist" positions. For example (each of the three categories is about 1/3 of the population +/- 4%):
Strongly favoring a government insurance health plan: 0-50% Temp: 16.9
51-75% Temp: 16.3
76-100% Temp: 24.2
Strongly favoring Government seeing to job and good standard of living: 0-50% Temp: 7.2
51-75% Temp: 6.8
76-100% Temp: 18.2
Increase Federal Spending On Poor/Poor People: 0-50% Temp: 43.2
51-75% Temp: 53.1
76-100% Temp: 63.5
Increase Federal Spending On Child Care: 0-50% Temp: 50.0
51-75% Temp: 53.4
76-100% Temp: 65.4
In short, the less you like blacks, the less "collectivist" you are. The exact opposite of how Paul characterizes racism--thus proving conclusively that it's "collectivism" he opposes, not racism.
Here are the full tables those figures are drawn from:
Position On Government Health Insurance
By Feelings Toward Blacks | | Favor/Oppose | Negative
To Nuetral
(Temp=0-50) | Moderately
Positive
(Temp=51-75) | Strongly
Positive
Temp=76-100 | All | | 1: Gov't insurance plan | 16.4 | 15.6 | 24.0 | 18.5 | | 2 | 12.9 | 13.0 | 12.1 | 12.7 | | 3 | 13.3 | 15.2 | 13.4 | 14.0 | | 4 | 20.8 | 20.3 | 19.0 | 20.0 | | 5 | 15.5 | 15.3 | 12.2 | 14.4 | | 6 | 12.1 | 12 | 8.1 | 10.8 | | 7: Private insurance plan | 9.1 | 8.6 | 11.3 | 9.6 |
Position On Government Seeing to
"Job and Good Standard of Living"
By Feelings Toward Blacks | | Favor/Oppose | Negative
To Nuetral
(Temp=0-50) | Moderately
Positive
(Temp=51-75) | Strongly
Positive
Temp=76-100 | All | | 1: Government see to job and good standard of living | 6.0 | 6.5 | 16.6 | 9.5 | | 2 | 6.8 | 8.8 | 8.6 | 8.1 | | 3 | 9.9 | 11.4 | 12.8 | 11.3 | | 4 | 20.9 | 21.3 | 19.4 | 20.6 | | 5 | 20.5 | 22.2 | 16.6 | 19.8 | | 6 | 19.7 | 17.7 | 13.6 | 17.1 | | 7: Government let each person get ahead on his own | 16.2 | 12.0 | 12.4 | 13.5 |
Position On Federal Spending For Poor People
By Feelings Toward Blacks | | Favor/Oppose | Negative
To Nuetral
(Temp=0-50) | Moderately
Positive
(Temp=51-75) | Strongly
Positive
Temp=76-100 | All | | 1: Increased | 39.2 | 51.6 | 63.7 | 51.3 | | 2: Same | 47.3 | 41.1 | 29.6 | 39.6 | | 3: Decreased or cut out entirely | 13.6 | 7.2 | 6.7 | 9.2 |
Position On Federal Spending For Child Care
By Feelings Toward Blacks | | Favor/Oppose | Negative
To Nuetral
(Temp=0-50) | Moderately
Positive
(Temp=51-75) | Strongly
Positive
Temp=76-100 | All | | 1: Increased | 47.4 | 51.8 | 64.4 | 54.3 | | 2: Same | 39.1 | 40.2 | 27.6 | 35.9 | | 3: Decreased or cut out entirely | 13.5 | 8.0 | 8.1 | 9.8 |
Finally, here is a combined measure of all four of the above. Due to the extreme popularity of federal support for child care (commonplace in Europe, but virtually non-existent in the US) and for poor people (despite the widespread hostility to "welfare"), a whopping 97% of the population turns up on the social liberal side of the scale (with 2% moderate and 1% conservative), but the most liberal are clearly the least racist, and vice verse:
Position On Federal Social Welfare Policies
By Feelings Toward Blacks | | Favor/Oppose | Negative
To Nuetral
(Temp=0-50) | Moderately
Positive
(Temp=51-75) | Strongly
Positive
Temp=76-100 | All | | 1: Social Welfare LIberal | 23.4 | 28.2 | 40.6 | 30.4 | | 2 | 48.9 | 50.4 | 41.4 | 47.1 | | 3 | 23.7 | 18.8 | 15.7 | 19.5 | | 4: Social Welfare Moderate | 2.6 | 1.7 | 1.9 | 2.0 | | 5 | .7 | .6 | .2 | .5 | | 6 | .2 | .2 | .1 | .2 | | 7: Social Welfare Conservative | .3 | .2 | .2 | .3 |
Ron Paul, of course, would be opposed to all the above, and thus would be on the extreme of Social Welfare Conservatives on this scale-along with a whopping 0.2% of the American people. Anything less than that shows at least some support for "collectivism"-and thus, in Ron Paul's mind, racism.
Is up down, or what?
More Examples
Very late in the letters thread for Glenn's post kwais7 wrote :
Ron Paul is not a racist
I just watched the PBS debate.
He pretty much stated what I believe, proving to me that he is not a racist:
http://firstread.msn...
http://www.youtube.c...
I would go further and say that if you disagree with this you are a racist.
If you really think it through, and you think that individual freedom and an end of the drug war, is not the cure for racism, then you might be a racist yourself.
Another commentator-not generally held in high regard- ripped this comment to shreds :
kwais7, did you actually *look* at the urls?
or did you just paste them in in accordance with the email you received? the reason i question it is that the first said NOTHING about ron paul except that he won the straw poll. in the second, the only thing Ron Paul said about race was in reference to a question by cynthia tucker of the atlanta journal-constitution. "in 2006 black high school *graduates* had a 33% *higher* unemployment rate than white high school *dropouts*. how do you account for the disparity?" he accused the Mininum Wage Law. (am i to assume meant that if we still had slavery, there'd be no unemployment problem?). by the way, i *do* have an answer for that question. over twenty years ago i saw some statistics that showed that AT ALL LEVELS the black unemployment rate was twice as high as the white. (in other words, the levels of unemployment for black PhD's were of course lower than for white high school graduates, but compared to white PhD's it was twice as high) In this case the blacks had only a 33% higher unemployment rate (not 100%) but they were in a higher category (graduates vs dropouts). there's another reason for this - one which relies on the truth of folk wisdom - if you're black you have to work twice as hard to be in the same place as the whites.
-- david sugarman
In fact, the Ron Paul YouTube clip is quite instructive. Every question about racial issues gets twisted to fit into his anti-government good-old-days fantasy box:
Disproportionate unemployment? Paul attacks the minimum wage law, citing a "free market economist" who supposedly proves there were no racial wage disparities before 1935!
Immigration? He blames the immigration problem on the welfare state. If not for the welfare state, we'd have a booming economy, and immigrants would come here to work, not for welfare, and there would be so many jobs that no one would mind.
In the "even a broken clock is right twice a day" category, he responds to a questin about doing something for minorities (this is a Republican debate, remember) he says to repeal war on drugs.
On the question of minority voting rights, he says that (black majority) DC can't get representtion without a constitutional Amendment-a minority opinion, given the language of the Article 1, but is opposed to a national ID card.
On the question of minorities being disproportionately underserved with health care, he blames managed care since 70s, and goes on to say, "socialized medicine is not the answer." But he's not only opposed to the only medical system that actually works to provide universal coverage, he also attacks the FDA.
Yes, right. The FDA, established in response to Sinclair Lewis's classic The Jungle, is a terrible oppressor of minorities' health.
The Bigger Picture
Ron Paul is part of a much larger pattern. A key figure in rolling back civil rights on the American right is Ward Connerly, a black Republican who has personally benefitted enormously from affirmative action, but has build a later career-benefitting even more-based on trying to destroy it. Connerly was successful in getting California to outlaw state affirmative action programs with Propositon 209 in 1996-helped out in part by the OJ Simpson trial, which helped split blacks and women-(white women actually have benefited more from affirmative aciton than blacks have). However, Connerly went on to propose another amendment to eliminate virtually all tracking of racial data by the state, which was defeated in the October 2003 special election.
Erwin Chemerinsky wrote:
Why California's Proposed Racial Privacy Initiative Is Not Only Unwise, But Also Unconstitutional And Potentially Fiscally Damaging for the State
By ERWIN CHEMERINSKY
----
Thursday, Aug. 21, 2003
On October 7, California citizens are scheduled to vote on an initiative that would prevent government entities in the state from gathering, compiling, or publishing data concerning race and ethnicity. While the initiative includes a laundry list of exceptions, it nevertheless is an extraordinarily broad prohibition on collection of an important type of information. The proposed initiative is based on the assumption that ignorance is better than knowledge.
The so-called Racial Privacy Initiative is a disaster from a policy standpoint - interfering with the government's ability to track race and ethnicity-based hate crimes, and to gather data about the numerous medical conditions that disproportionately effect particular racial or ethnic groups. (The Initiative has an exemption for "medical research subjects and patients," but not for epidemiological studies.) If the Initiative were to pass, data on race discrimination by private entities could not longer be collected. Nor could the educational achievement of students of a given race or ethnicity be studied to see if it was improving or regressing.
These, and other, policy problems with the Initiative have been well explained elsewhere. In this column, I will consider a few of the less often remarked aspects of the so-called Racial Privacy Initiative: The way that it intersects with the democratic process, and with the law.
I will argue that the Initiative is designed in part to prevent studies showing the damaging effects of eliminating affirmative action - and thus to keep voters from reinstituting affirmative action in California. That is undemocratic: Voters have the right to cast informed votes.
In short, what we have here is yet another case of rightwing lipstick on a pig. Racists are still racists, even when they insist that anti-racists are the real racists.
|
STATE BLOGS
