The National Review: Always Was and Still Is Wildly Racist

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/media/154926/the_national_review%3A_always_was_and_still_is_wildly_racist/

National Review editor Rich Lowry finally did the right thing and fired John Derbyshire for an unbelievably racist and deeply stupid column (printed elsewhere) about the “advice” he gives his son about avoiding black people. Maybe it represents a ratcheting back of right-wing ugliness about the Trayvon Martin case. But if you want to understand how that tragedy went from being an occasion for bipartisan sorrow to another ugly battle in the culture wars, the National Review is a good place to start.

Although founder William F. Buckley is widely credited with driving John Birch Society extremists out of the conservative movement, he made his own contributions to the ugly coarsening of American politics on the issue of race. He and his magazine defended segregation and white supremacy in the South (though he later apologized), while in the North, he played a leading role in making the issue of rising crime both racial and political – with arguments and tactics still being used in the Trayvon Martin case today.

I just finished “The Cause,” Eric Alterman and Kevin Mattson’s history of modern American liberalism, and I was particularly fascinated by their account of the lasting impact the 1965 New York mayor’s race had not only on the city but on liberalism. Buckley ran against liberal Republican John Lindsay and Democrat Abe Beame, and of course lost. But for a while the elite conservative Buckley became a hero to some working class New York Democrats, for his ability to channel their anger about the city’s rising crime rate, often in racial terms. He mocked liberals for pointing to racism and poverty to explain crime, arguing that those social forces didn’t “make Negro crime any less criminal.” He declared flatly: ”I believe that young thugs are young thugs, irrespective of race, color or creed.” Before there were Reagan Democrats, there were Buckley Democrats.

[marmar]

1. Yep. Buckley was a premier race-baiter.

nt

[Jefferson23]

2. Derbyshire wrote one of the creepiest OP's I have seen in some time from the right.

I thought it made Limbaugh seem moderate by comparison. Buckley was a slick schmuck, period.

[AlbertCat]

3. This is a good read.

The rest of the article is right on. Like this observation:

Rich Lowry himself, though he has now distanced himself and his magazine from “Derb’s” crude racism, continued Buckley’s tradition last week, with a tendentious column accusing black leaders of “politicizing” Martin’s death while “ignoring” the problem of black teens murdered by other black teens. (This has become a big fake issue on the right.) Lowry ignores years of hard work to combat “black on black crime” by national and local black leaders. The murders Lowry writes about indeed deserve more attention and more outrage than they inspire, but it’s preposterous to claim black leaders haven’t demanded society pay attention. They have and sadly, they will again; it’s the larger society that refuses to listen.


A bunch of well-to-do-whites telling the black community (and everyone else) what's wrong with the black community.... they ignore (unless it "encroaches" on their lawn.)

[xchrom]

4. it's like what we do with the poor..... the status quo tells them what they need...

what they should do...how they should behave...etc.

america has become ridiculous for listening to these people -- it's ruining or has ruined us.

[Quantess]

6. Yes. You said a lot of truth right there.

[bongbong]

5. The Daily Show

Stewart had a piece a few days ago addressing the "why don't they worry about black-on-black" diversion/lie.

He listed, in a scroll, the marches held by African-Americans to protest black-on-black violence. Lots, just in the last year. But for repigs, ignorance is a virtue so if one of their cheerleaders says an event didn't happen, it didn't.