More fallout from recent posts & columns.
Raza Studies. A dissent from my May Diary remarks.
Mr. Derbyshire: In Spain years ago Columbus Day was not called El Día de Colón but El Día de la Raza. The word “raza” was understood as a cultural description rather than a racial one. I am an American born of Mexican immigrant parents to the US and have no sympathy whatever for the ethnic groups that owe allegiance to the Democrat Party. But I do believe that the constant emphasis conservatives give the word “raza” is a sheer waste of time.
[Me] With all respect to this reader, I don’t agree. Grievance politics and the bogus college courses it has generated, like Raza Studies, are obnoxious and un-American. From the point of view of high civility and semantic precision, I guess there is a case for being as scrupulously fair as my reader would like conservatives to be. I say the hell with it, though. Why be so scrupulously, punctiliously fair with people who have no scruples about playing on race loyalty and race guilt to squeeze money out of the public fisc? The common interpretation of “La Raza” as “The Race” drives conservatives into a rage, and that is where they ought to be.