The Left Must Stop Conflating Conservatism With Racism. The Right Must Not Defend Something Just Because The Left Attacks It. | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This informational nugget was sent to me by Ben Shapiro, who represents the Daily Wire, and since this is one of the most topical news events, it should be published on BCN.

    On Sunday, Adam Serwer of The Atlantic wrote a piece about Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who recently did an interview with The New York Times in which he suggested that there was nothing wrong with the phrases "white supremacy" and "white nationalism." Serwer attempts to smear broad swaths of conservative policy with King's racism. Here's what he writes:

    The most devastating consequences of the Trump presidency have been policy decisions: his attempts to expel undocumented immigrants who pose no threat to public safety, and their American family members; his elevation of an ostentatious partisan to the Supreme Court; his implementation of a policy of child abuse as a deterrent to illegal immigration; his abandonment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria; his Justice Department’s green-lighting of police abuses; his attempts to weaken the political power of minorities targeted by his policies; and other acts of state violence and disapproval against religious and ethnic minorities too numerous to name. But all of them follow the underlying logic of Trump’s response to Charlottesville…that extremism in pursuit of white power is no vice, and defending the rights of those who threaten that power is no virtue.

    This is nuts. Serwer here links illegal immigration policy, Trumpian mishandling of the Puerto Rican hurricane (much of the mishandling was due to Puerto Rican governmental failures), and most absurdly, the appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court with white supremacy.

    Herein lies the problem: the Right and the Left have different definitions of racism. Many thoughtleaders on the Left obviously believe that racism is coincident with conservative policy - that conservative takes on illegal immigration and judicial interpretation must be spurred by white supremacy.

    Thoughtleaders on the Right believe that racism is about judging people solely based on race. This, by the way, is the actual definition of racism. The Left does not embrace this definition - they are happy to judge people on the basis of race, from the ideology of intersectionality to policies like affirmative action. The traditional definition of racism means that we must judge policies and statements on the basis of those policies and statements: a policy or statement may be driven by racism, or it may not be. A statement may rationally be indicative of racism, or it may not be. You can't default to a policy or statement being racist just because you disagree with it.

    This means that those on the Right are often skeptical about Leftist claims of racism - after all, the Left has a nasty habit of conflating charges of racism with simple conservatism. Those on the Right aren't generally willing to credit those on the Left with good faith anti-racism - nor, in many cases, should they.

    Here's the problem for the Left, then: the Left tends to smear conservatives with charges of racism because they don't like conservatism.

    Here's the problem for the Right: the Right sometimes overreacts to these attacks by granting statements open to differential interpretation the benefit of the doubt until clear evidence of racism rears its ugly head. I've been as guilty of this as anyone; Steve King is a prime example.

    So, here's what we can do better: the Left can stop maligning everyone it doesn't like as racist, and the Right can be more willing to listen to the Left's good faith charges of racism. But that's simply not going to happen so long as the Left continues to smear conservatism itself as racism - particularly when the Right has shown itself significantly more willing to excise racism from its midst than the Left has.