Racial Politics, As Ever

ON issues involving race, Republicans are cowards. That’s nothing new, but the cost is escalating as the gap between rhetoric and racial reality grows. Racial demagogues on the left set the terms of national debate. Republicans sometimes run for cover, remaining silent in the face of pernicious nonsense; but on other occasions they do much harm, joining forces with those on the left who speak and act as if white racism were still the unconquered enemy.

Here’s a taste of the disconnect from reality in the mainstream Democratic camp that evokes not a peep of protest from Republicans. Deval Patrick was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s first black governor on January 4. Soon afterward, on Martin Luther King Day, he said: “I wonder how many of us know that in this term, right now, the Supreme Court is seriously considering overruling the Brown v. Board of Education decision.”

About the Author

Abigail Thernstrom

Abigail Thernstrom, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is the author of Voting Rights — and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, which has just been published by the AEI Press. She is also the co-author, with Stephan Thernstrom, of America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible.

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ON issues involving race, Republicans are cowards. That’s nothing new, but the cost is escalating as the gap between rhetoric and racial reality grows. Racial demagogues on the left set the terms of national debate. Republicans sometimes run for cover, remaining silent in the face of pernicious nonsense; but on other occasions they do much harm, joining forces with those on the left who speak and act as if white racism were still the unconquered enemy.

Here’s a taste of the disconnect from reality in the mainstream Democratic camp that evokes not a peep of protest from Republicans. Deval Patrick was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s first black governor on January 4. Soon afterward, on Martin Luther King Day, he said: “I wonder how many of us know that in this term, right now, the Supreme Court is seriously considering overruling the Brown v. Board of Education decision.”

About the Author

Abigail Thernstrom

Abigail Thernstrom, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is the author of Voting Rights — and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections, which has just been published by the AEI Press. She is also the co-author, with Stephan Thernstrom, of America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible.