There is a New York Times op-ed this morning that is somewhere beyond appalling. It is by Adolph L. Reed Jr., a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Reed writes about the appointment of Rep. Tim Scott to replace the retiring Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Scott, in Reed’s view, is essentially an Uncle Tom because he does not agree with the politics of most black Americans:
. . . his politics, like those of the archconservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, are utterly at odds with the preferences of most black Americans. Mr. Scott has been staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion.
Of course, Tim Scott will not be representing black Americans in the Senate, he will be representing South Carolinians, who are, overwhelmingly, staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion. So it would seem that while white people can be liberals or conservatives according to the dictates of their thinking, blacks cannot. If you’re black but not liberal, in Professor Reed’s worldview, then you’re not really black.
He notes that, “All four black Republicans who have served in the House since the Reagan era — Gary A. Franks in Connecticut, J. C. Watts in Oklahoma, Allen B. West in Florida and Mr. Scott — were elected from majority-white districts.” So? All that proves is that the voters of these districts elected people according to their political positions and not the color of their skins, which is all Professor Reed seems to care about.
He can’t even get skin color right, however. He writes:
Mrs. Haley — a daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India — is the first female and first nonwhite governor of South Carolina, the home to white supremacists like John C. Calhoun, Preston S. Brooks, Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond.
Whites don’t all come from northwestern Europe, Professor Reed. Sikhs are overwhelmingly Punjabi. Punjabi is an Indo-European language and its speakers are, to use a 19th century term, Caucasians, i.e., white. It might be pointed out that Calhoun died in 1850, Brooks in 1857, and Tillman in 1918. Strom Thurmond died in 2003 at the age of 100 and had long since abandoned his racist ideas, just as Justice Hugo Black and Senator Robert Byrd, two other Southern politicians of his generation, had abandoned their memberships in the KKK. Of course Black and Byrd were liberals in their later careers, so … Oh, look, a squirrel.
Professor Brooks writes, “Redistricting and gerrymandering have produced ‘safe’ seats for black politicians across the South but have also concentrated black votes in black districts, giving white Republicans a lock.” Well, whose idea was that? It’s a liberal one and not a very bright one at that, as concentrating black votes in certain districts necessarily drains them away from the other districts, making those districts more conservative. And it is based on the thoroughly racist idea that only black districts will elect blacks to Congress. Frank, Watts, West, and Scott prove that idea wrong.
Professor Reed calls his piece “The Puzzle of Black Republicans.” But the puzzle is easily solved. Tim Scott is not a black Republican. He’s a Republican who happens to be black. Professor Reed sees racism in everything. But if he’d like to see a real racist, he needs only to look in a mirror.
As I said in an earlier post, liberals think all blacks, and apparently all Asians and Hispanics, who vote Republican are traitors to their race. This is what constitutes "intellectualism" at today's elite umiversities.
To be fair, they think that anyone who isn't a rich, fatcat, moustache-twirling villain who happens to vote Republican hs been duped into voting against their own interests. So, at least they are consistent in their apalling condescension.
Most liberals are educated beyond their intelligence.
Most liberals may or may not be intelligent but that is only 1/2 of being intelligent. The other 1/2 is common sense in order to know how to use that intelligence. Having very little or no common sense,makes you liberals not so intelligent as you think you are. It's pure psychology ! The common sense factor is what I call the reason liberals have been doing downright stupid things for the last 60 yrs. I will hold that opinion untill I see a real intelligent liberal, Thank You !!!
"professors" like this hack, the culture at many universities, all well known. reed is a joke, a pompous fool with a big mouth, who has now outed himself to everyone. only his ilk will defend him this morning. to most of us, he looks like what he is: an arrogant, narcissistic j-off, who sees fit to proscribe what others "should" think and do. n nmore disturbing is the complicity of the nyt. the times is a rag in political terms, but it is still taken seriously in many quarters; seriousness will default onto the words of this racist dirtbag posing as an "educator." whoever is running the times is lurching so quickly towards loonyism it's scary, and pointing that out is as important as lambasting a racist like reed.
Not sure what you mean by bork dead, const alive. Bork would not have harmed the constitution.
Proves that republicans are color blind, whereas liberals are not and very racist. n nI am proud to be a conservative republican, and I love the diversity of the GOP party.
Excellent post. This is a classic example of "The Liberal Plantation" that the Wall Street Journal explained yera ago when Justice Thomas was nominated to the Court (with an excellent cartoon, if I recall, of a Plantation Slavemaster in the image of Teddy Kennedy trying to keep blacks, like Thomas, on the "liberal plantation"). What a heinous example of racism by Professor Reed and other liberals (probably nearly all) of his ilk.
Alan Kors, a professor at Penn, has been a brave and outspoken critic of such academic hate. He successfully challenged the university's president years ago and won. One should try to get him to respond.
John Dilulio, former Bush 43 faith-based initiative leader and supposedly a man of conscience, is a member of the same department as Reed at Penn. n nPerhaps the man who complained about the "Mayberry Machiavellis" of the Bush Administration when he resigned could say something about the Racial Identity crowd within his own organization. n nNot likely. Like most morally preening professors, he's probably afraid of being ostrasized for taking a dissenting position from the mainstream of his ruling clique. Never criticize a black man who fights the bosses' battles. n nSlap a conservative; kiss a liberal bigot. n nIt's their world, friend. We just play in it when they let us.
Freesmith, I forgot about DiLulio. I didn't realize he left the administration with a hissy fit. Kors, though, is the real deal. In fact, BushW awarded him one of those national medals which I can't keep straight and he accepted with graciousness and modesty.Your last two lines are, regrettably, right on the mark.
John is being charitable. If you actually read the whole op-ed piece, it is even much more appalling in its racism than what John indicates in this column. A small sample: "Even if Republicans managed to distance themselves from the thinly veiled racism of the Tea party". there we go again…..the Tea party is a racist party! (presumably for trying to bring sanity to the nation's finances ). Or: "for Mr.Scott, the true test will come in 2014………I suspect black Carolinians will not be drawn to MR.Scott". but they surely will be drawn to elect left-wing black democrats because….they are black? Pure racism….And he ends the column with this gem: "Republicans will not gain siginificant black support unless they take policy positions that advance black interests." Like 70% out-of-wedlock births, widespread unemployment (50% in black youth), high crime.. those are 'black interests" but work, independence, fiscal sanity is not a black interest.This column is disgraceful. but what can you expect from the NY Times….
Adolph L. Reed, Jr., a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, should be dismissed as a professor of political science since he is an ignoramus. He seems not to know that it was the Republican Party which abolished slavery under Abraham Lincoln, that it was the Republican Party which passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. It was the Democratic Party – the southern Democrats – which supported racial segregation.
And more Republicans than Democrats voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ah, but you see, the parties magically switched via some form of political alchemy, according to "progressives", so today's Republicans are really the old Democrats and vice versa. See how it works?
In fact, if you read Robert Caro's latest volume of his Johnson biography, most if not all of the Midwestern Republicans sided with the Southern Democrats or Dixiecrats in opposing the Civil Rights legislation in the 60s. One of the ways Johnson persuaded them (the Republicans) to vote for civil rights was to remind them that they were the party of Lincoln, and that they had an obligation to uphold Lincoln's principles.
Four words: political correctness as racism.
This is Strom Thurmond's seat so the irony of the NYT comment is delicious.
Well said.No one is as hung up on race as the so called progressives, both black and white.According to them the GOP is comprised of white men unless they happen to see Sarah Palin or Michele Backmann or Herman Cain or Allen West in which case these are not actually women or black so the logic is unassailable if your intellectual standards are low enough.Theirs are more than low enough
For the record Roland Burris who was black was a Senator from 2008 to 2010.The Democratic party hates to know that a black Republican is a Senator and their are no Democratic party black Senators.What do they tell all the black Democrats.
Well what did you expect from the Left…reason, logic, analysis, tobjectivity, truth? nYeah, right!! nWelcome to the world of of loose thinking, superficiality and outrageous bias. No need for the scientific method. Just be superficial! Cherry-pick any evidence as long as it agrees with you and ignore the rest. Academia and politics today.
My they do get upset when one escapes from their plantation!
Oh yea CincinnatiRick. They get POd…. Have you watched the new Lincoln movie? Love how it shows that it was the REPUBICANS that freed the slaves, while the Liberals tried to stop it.. n nDecent movie.
Yes. I've seen the movie and found it to be both reasonably true to history and also quite moving. But let's not confuse our modern day political parties with the American political landscape of the 1860s. Arguably, it was the Republicans who were the radicals (change agents) at the time and the Democrats were the conservatives (wanting to keep things as they were). It was the Republicans who wanted to expand and flex the muscles of the Federal government while the Democrats were for reining it in and for states rights. We've rather flip-flopped today, eh? At that time, the Republicans were the statists and the Democrats the liberals. Today it is the Democrats who are the propressives/statists and the Republicans the liberals…at least the libertarian (Goldwater) wing. n nLincoln was an extra-constitutional dictator…doing what he had to do to preserve the union. In times of crisis, our Presidemts morph into Dictators. We tend to forget the honorable Roman institution of the Dictator, including my hero, Cincinnatus, and confuse dictatorship with tyranny. Boothe was replicating the fate of Caesar…sic temper tyrannus. He thought Lincoln a tyrant. But the victors write history and Lincoln is the hero.
Saying all black Americans have to think and vote the same way is as stupid as saying everyone called Adolph is a Nazi.
Any ethnic group which routinely votes in the high 90's for a particular political party can not be said to be a collection of individuals so much as a plantation. It's part of the Democrat Party's business model, so expecting any rationality from the likes of the professor or this moron Patrick right above me would be silly.
What an irony we have here! If a Senatorial appointment by a Democratic governor were a nJewish man or woman who showed any leanings toward or support of the Palestinian cause, Commentary would be the first to call him or her a traitor to Judaism and/or a self-hating Jew. n nClarence Thomas, by the way, was the most cynical appointment ever made to the Supreme Court. He was termed by Bush 41 the best available candidate at the time (are you kidding?) when everyone knew that Bush was using Thomas' race to assure the confirmation of a far Right justice. If it hadn't been for the accusations (very likely true) of Thomas' inappropriate sexual behavior, Thomas would have been confirmed easily, because no one wanted another nominee to be Borked. (Yes, I know, Bork just died.) n n n n
are you seriously comparing the two? how Vapid, Did it slip by you that palestinians are open in their hatred of Jews sort of like how liberals hate Americans. hehehe.
Adolph L. Reed is black. n nSince to Reed, it's very important what skin color a Senatorial appointment has, we might as well get it all out in the open. n nHe's not just a black professor of poli-sci; his specialty is race and American politics. The universities have a surfeit of these affirmative action professors who teach race politics and do nothing to actually promote equality and colorblindness. In fact, quite the opposite. They promote racism, because that's their bread and butter. Who would hire an under-achieving academic hack in the field of "race politics" if there were no race politics?
Should have known he was part of the civil rights industry. My bad…too lazy to google him.
The Left can never get straight whether it is fighting a race war or a class war. Their marxism operates at a imbecilic kindergarten level. When it comes to working class whites, they insist on class warfare against the rich, irrespective of race. But when it comes to blacks, they insist upon race war against the whites, irrespective of class. Whites must be class conscious while blacks must be race conscious. Thomas Frank bemoans the fact that the white working class is race-conscious instead of class-conscious, while the NYT bemoans the fact that not all blacks identify as oppressed proletarians. The Left seeks to assign proletarian class consciousness to all blacks, which treats them as pawns who may not think for themselves on pain of race treason. Some blacks may indeed choose to identify with the ruling capitalist class to which many of them belong. Why can't a black guy drive a Mercedes and vote Republican? Because that is race treason? Then isn't it race treason for a white man to vote Democrat? I think that Dr King's vision was that, over time, being black would not assign you to a particular class, and I think that a lot of what he imagined has come true. I see well-to-do blacks in NYC and DC all the time; are they class traitors if they vote Democrat, or race traitors if they vote Republican?
Liberal projection
u201cAll four black Republicans who have served in the House since the Reagan era u2014 Gary A. Franks in Connecticut, J. C. Watts in Oklahoma, Allen B. West in Florida and Mr. Scott u2014 were elected from majority-white districts.u201d r n________________________________r nr nAnd the President was elected from a majority-white nation.r nr nSee what I did there?
In his op-ed, Reed accused the Tea Party of racism. I've never seen one shred of evidence that this is so.
Did Reed try to collect $100,000 from Andrew Brietbart? Libs are liars as well as racists and hypocrites.
Professor Reed is the embodiment of the mindless liberal propaganda and insanity which dominates our schools from elementary to graduate. They have closed, prejudiced, unthinking minds which repeat the same mantra ad nauseaum. The liberals and progressives all sound alike, no exceptions, no deviations, no digressions. They all repeat the same talking points endlessly but somehow believe their comments are unique and original. There's a lot more diversity, disagreement, originality and thoughtfulness on the conservative side of the spectrum.
conservatives tend to be grownups, liberals are spoiled, hissy fit throwing children. We are the parents of the country.
I am a liberal Democrat, and proud of it. And I agree with almost everything in this commentary. Just as all blacks are not liberals, all liberals do not hold the worldview espoused by Prof. Reed.
As a liberal, I have to agree: I'm proud that SC is putting up a black Senate nominee, regardless of whatever philosophy he may have or who benefits politically. I also found that NYT column extremely odd, brazenly provocative, and yes, arguably racist. n nYour making a point of defining Punjabis as "white" here, however, is equally bizarre…do you extend that classification to all Indians, or just the northern ones? They indeed might see themselves that way, compared to their darker, more southern, or more lower-caste brethren (we see the same dynamic in Latin America, among other places), but most of the occupying Brits certainly didn't. Even more dubious is the premise that everyone who speaks an Indo-European language is white…I dunno, pretty meaningless at that point. Though that's fine by me in a way. Let's just declare everyone an honorary white. Just goes to show you how stupid these categories are and how they break down under the lightest (no pun intended) scrutiny.
honorary white? I believe another "Adolph" termed the Japanese to be "honorary aryans." Brilliant minds must think alike!
I just cannot understand why ANYONE ever votes for a Democrat??!! n nI also cannot understand why anyone reads the NY Times anymore!
But it makes excellent cat box liner!
Thanks Adolph L. Reed for proving once again that "progressives/liberals" are the biggest, most hypocritical racists in the world. Nice name, "Adolph" BTW. Seems to fit.