09/26/2005
James Taranto and John Brimelow, that is.While James Taranto rarely agrees with John Brimelow, or the rest of us at VDARE.com, on immigration, race relations, profiling and so-on, based on three recent columns, Taranto seems to be agreeing with John Brimelow’s theory that "the biggest casualty from Hurricane Katrina is going to be race relations."
Taranto’s columns don’t emphasize the looting, raping, shooting at helicopters and general chaos, but rather the pointless whining of black spokesmen, and the general divorce from reality of the black electorate. Here’s what Taranto had to say three days in a row, shortly after Katrina:
The Truth About Race in America
The truth about race that Katrina illuminates, then, is that, at least when it comes to matters involving race, black Americans are extreme political outliers. This is why attempts to play the race card are politically futile: They have to appeal not just to blacks, but to a substantial minority of whites. The Gallup poll results makes clear that the current racial appeals are not resonating with whites.
Of course it is human nature to empathize with people who are "like us," which is why people care more when a disaster strikes their country than a foreign land. Thus it’s perfectly understandable that black Americans would respond with a heightened fervor to the sufferings of fellow blacks after Hurricane Katrina.
But it makes no sense to expect nonblacks to empathize with blacks because they are black. Transracial empathy must be based on what people of different races have in common: that we are fellow Americans, or fellow human beings. The use of a natural disaster as an occasion for racial grievance is a hindrance, not an aid, to national solidarity and empathy.
It’s hard to make people feel guilty when they personally have done nothing wrong. It’s hard to argue that racial disparities are the product of extant racism when there is no direct evidence that such racism is anything but extremely rare, and when public policy actually favors blacks over whites.
On Tuesday we noted that black Americans have sharply different views on racial matters than do white Americans and, therefore, than do Americans as a whole. What we are arguing today is that the views of whites are likely to move even further away from those that blacks now hold.
So it seems that John Brimelow was right about the fallout from the storm, if it’s even afflicting the Wall Street Journal. In fact, Taranto later linked to this Minneapolis story about a white telephone repairman being shot by black man, [A shooting with disturbing implications Tom Ford, Star Tribune September 16, 2005 ]
Under the heading There Oughta Be a Law Taranto wrote
An unwritten rule against harming people whose work brings them into different parts of the city was broken when the telephone repairman was shot as he did his job, Assistant Minneapolis Chief Tim Dolan said Thursday."If that line starts to be crossed, the quality of life here is going to be seriously affected," he said.
Shooting a telephone repairman in Minnesota breaks "an unwritten rule"? In some states it would actually be against the law.
If Taranto keeps this up, the WSJ may start looking like American Renaissance. [Congratulate Taranto.]
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