9/21/00 4:45 p.m.
“Race-Baiting” in Kansas City
A smear campaign works.

By Ramesh Ponnuru, NR senior editor

wo days ago, I wrote a somewhat heated defense of an ad running in Kansas City which was being labeled racist. As I noted, the man behind the ad, Richard Nadler, is an old friend of mine. Since then, the story has gotten a lot more coverage: Good Morning America and the CBS Evening News have both done segments on it. A spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee has called Richard Nadler's ad "Willie Hortonesque" (does that mean she's accusing Nadler of being like Al Gore?). The DNC's chairman, Joe Andrew, has sent his Republican counterpart, Jim Nicholson, a letter demanding that he "repudiate [the] racist, fear-mongering ad," which he described as "repugnant to all Americans" (except, presumably, the racists).

A Bush campaign spokesman has said the ad "should be pulled" because it sent "an inappropriate message" and "is just wrong-headed." Nicholson has released a statement saying that the ad "seems to me to be racist or race-baiting in intent" and saying that he condemns it "forcefully and without equivocation," just as he has denounced David Duke. Jim Talent, who's in a tight race for Governor of Missouri, took to the floor of the House to say that although he had not seen the ad, he had read a quote from it that "comes perilously close to bigotry"; Talent's press release noted the ad's "demeaning message and undertones." And a member of the Kansas City school board suggested that similar sentiments led to the Holocaust.

Well.

I understand that Nadler's critics will consider it irrelevant that he has written extensively on how to improve educational achievement among minority students; that he has worked hard to build multiracial coalitions, going so far as to endorse the most prominent black radical in Kansas City for the school board a few years ago; that he is even now attending a conference on how to help the poor accumulate assets; etc. So, like the critics, I will just examine the ad.

The charge against the ad takes two forms. The first is that its subtext — the real message of the ad — is that whites should like school choice because it would let them flee public schools, and that they should flee public schools because they have too many minorities. If so, the message was so subtextual that nobody who watched it got it: The ad ran in Kansas City with no complaints until the national media started making the accusation of racism, at which point local politicians started to denounce it. Also, the ad starts with its narrator saying that her daughter had done fine in the same public school; it was only when her son started "hanging with the wrong crowd" — which is explicitly depicted as white — that she took him out of the school. Different kids have different needs, in other words, and school choice can help those different needs be met. (I might even say that kids have "diverse" needs, but we'll get to that in a bit.)

The ad could just as well have been about a black family in the same situation, and obviously, in retrospect, should have been. The ad is part of a series of ads in which various people — a union member, a black man about to vote Republican for the first time in his life, a married couple reviewing their investments — explain how pro-investment policies have made it easier for them to meet their goals. That fact ought to have some bearing on the question of Nadler's "intent" or "subtext."

None of the foregoing, however, clears him of the second charge: that the ad's reference to "diversity" is racist in itself. The relevant lines from the ad: "But when Jason started hanging with the wrong crowd, we had to act fast. We didn't want him where drugs and violence were fashionable. That was a bit more diversity than he could handle. So we sent him to a private school run by our church. There, he gets more attention, and the moral expectations are higher." Most of the coverage has noted that the narrator puts stress on the word diversity (although not as much as on the word "him" in the next sentence).

The diversity to which the ad refers is moral, not racial: Discipline has eroded in the school to the point where unhealthy subcultures are flourishing and some kids are drawn into them. (Again: The only kids causing any trouble in the ad are white.) It is true that liberals over the last decade have used the word "diversity" exclusively to refer to race and, to a lesser extent, to gender, sexual orientation, and religion. It is also true that Nadler's use of the word is meant to mock this liberal tic. This was, to note the painfully obvious, a bad decision on his part. But not a racist one.

As I mentioned, there was no adverse reaction to the ad in Kansas City, from anyone of any race, party, or ideology, until the national media piled on it. Now, of course, local politicians have condemned it, as have the area's middle-of-the-road talk-show hosts. (Talk-show callers, however, have been strongly for the ad in Kansas City and, Nadler tells me, even in New York.) The Kansas City Star ran a pretty balanced story on the controversy.

About the Republicans who have denounced him, Nadler says, "That's probably what they should be doing. This isn't their problem. They don't need this media barrage." (He adds, "I would just caution them, though, that making a practice of letting the Washington Post vet their ad scripts is not a good idea.") This seems to me a display of an almost superhuman forbearance. I must confess that I cannot match it.

Republicans such as Nicholson complain about a double standard: The media didn't hold the Democrats to account for running ads in Missouri strongly implying that Republicans were for burning black churches. When Republicans allow themselves to be so easily intimidated by the flimsiest accusation of racism, however, they acquiesce in that standard. Of course the Democrats get away with race-baiting all the time. They're getting away with it right now in Missouri.

Poll Update
Voter.com's Battleground poll, taken by Republican Ed Goeas and Democrat Celinda Lake, has Bush running three points ahead of Gore (42-39) — a lead within the poll's margin of error. Women are going for Gore by 5 points, men for Bush by 11. Among white women, Bush actually has a 4-point lead. But today's poll results contain some bad news for Bush, too: In a poll by the liberal group Emily's List, he's running 18 points behind among white Catholic women.