The other day, Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC’s “The Ed Show,” had a bit of fun at the expense of Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and newly minted Republican presidential candidate. He played a carefully edited clip from a recent speech in which the governor spoke of “a big black cloud that hangs over America,” referring to the burden of public debt. But Schultz rather creatively suggested that Perry was really referring to President Obama, a statement so obviously and pathetically false that it prompted a stinging rebuke from Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”
Even so, the notion that Perry is a racist won’t go away anytime soon. One of the ironies of this stance is that Texas under Rick Perry’s leadership has been a magnet for African-American professionals. The Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas have seen a huge influx of black families from big cities in the north and west, due in part to the low cost of living and strong employment prospects. This spring, the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute observed that African Americans and Latinos in Texas had average unemployment rates of 13.6 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, since the start of the recession, far higher than the 6 percent unemployment rate for non-Hispanic whites. These unemployment levels are quite high. But they’re also considerably lower than for the same groups nationally.
The EPI report also found that Texas is tied with Mississippi in having the highest proportion of minimum-wage workers. It’s worth observing, however, that black and Latino hourly workers are more likely to earn the minimum wage, and Texas has a population that is 37.6 percent Latino and 11.8 percent black. The United States as a whole is 16.3 percent Latino and 12.6 percent black.
The relative health of Texas’s job market doesn’t prove in itself that Rick Perry isn’t a racist. By virtue of being a white Southerner of a certain age who is critical of social welfare spending, racial preferences, the centralization of power in Washington, D.C., and many other policies dear to liberals, many on the left are convinced that Perry must in his heart of hearts be a racist, and indeed that conservatism is itself rooted in racist sentiments.
Conservatives, myself included, resist and resent this conclusion. One reason is that conservative criticisms of many programs aimed at bettering the lives of members of minority groups are rooted in the belief that these programs are actually counterproductive.
Richard Sander, a liberal professor at UCLA Law School, set off a firestorm of controversy when he first argued that racial preferences in law school admissions had led to what he called a mismatch effect. Black students given a leg up in the law school admissions process were more likely to wind up in the bottom of their graduating class, to drop out, and to fail the bar exam. Black students who hadn’t been given a leg up, and who were thus better matched with their fellow students, were, according to Sander, far more likely to succeed.
Sander’s hypothesis hasn’t been proven to the satisfaction of all scholars, and chances are it never will be. But it is the kind of hypothesis that resonates with core conservative beliefs, including the belief that efforts to find a shortcut around the organic process through which individuals and communities abandon old habits and practices and adopt new ones usually backfire.
This bias against efforts to speed up social change has led to a number of horrible misjudgments, including the opposition of conservatives like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, more recently, the almost universal opposition among national conservative politicians to letting the states decide whether or not to grant same-sex couples the right to marry.
As the political theorist Peter Berkowitz argued in 2005, “the American constitutional order speaks the language of freedom,” and causes that run counter to the spirit of freedom are, in the long run, doomed to defeat. That could explain why the idea of economic freedom retains such a powerful appeal for Americans, and it also explains why a certain kind of cultural conservatism — the kind that fuels opposition to same-sex marriage — is dying out among the young.
One thing that is undeniably true is that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white in a country that is increasingly less so. As the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans has increased in coastal states like California, New York and New Jersey, many white Americans from these regions have moved inland or to the South. For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide.
Even so, the notion that Perry is a racist won’t go away anytime soon. One of the ironies of this stance is that Texas under Rick Perry’s leadership has been a magnet for African-American professionals. The Dallas and Houston metropolitan areas have seen a huge influx of black families from big cities in the north and west, due in part to the low cost of living and strong employment prospects. This spring, the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute observed that African Americans and Latinos in Texas had average unemployment rates of 13.6 percent and 9.6 percent, respectively, since the start of the recession, far higher than the 6 percent unemployment rate for non-Hispanic whites. These unemployment levels are quite high. But they’re also considerably lower than for the same groups nationally.
The EPI report also found that Texas is tied with Mississippi in having the highest proportion of minimum-wage workers. It’s worth observing, however, that black and Latino hourly workers are more likely to earn the minimum wage, and Texas has a population that is 37.6 percent Latino and 11.8 percent black. The United States as a whole is 16.3 percent Latino and 12.6 percent black.
The relative health of Texas’s job market doesn’t prove in itself that Rick Perry isn’t a racist. By virtue of being a white Southerner of a certain age who is critical of social welfare spending, racial preferences, the centralization of power in Washington, D.C., and many other policies dear to liberals, many on the left are convinced that Perry must in his heart of hearts be a racist, and indeed that conservatism is itself rooted in racist sentiments.
Conservatives, myself included, resist and resent this conclusion. One reason is that conservative criticisms of many programs aimed at bettering the lives of members of minority groups are rooted in the belief that these programs are actually counterproductive.
Richard Sander, a liberal professor at UCLA Law School, set off a firestorm of controversy when he first argued that racial preferences in law school admissions had led to what he called a mismatch effect. Black students given a leg up in the law school admissions process were more likely to wind up in the bottom of their graduating class, to drop out, and to fail the bar exam. Black students who hadn’t been given a leg up, and who were thus better matched with their fellow students, were, according to Sander, far more likely to succeed.
Sander’s hypothesis hasn’t been proven to the satisfaction of all scholars, and chances are it never will be. But it is the kind of hypothesis that resonates with core conservative beliefs, including the belief that efforts to find a shortcut around the organic process through which individuals and communities abandon old habits and practices and adopt new ones usually backfire.
This bias against efforts to speed up social change has led to a number of horrible misjudgments, including the opposition of conservatives like Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and, more recently, the almost universal opposition among national conservative politicians to letting the states decide whether or not to grant same-sex couples the right to marry.
As the political theorist Peter Berkowitz argued in 2005, “the American constitutional order speaks the language of freedom,” and causes that run counter to the spirit of freedom are, in the long run, doomed to defeat. That could explain why the idea of economic freedom retains such a powerful appeal for Americans, and it also explains why a certain kind of cultural conservatism — the kind that fuels opposition to same-sex marriage — is dying out among the young.
One thing that is undeniably true is that American conservatives are overwhelmingly white in a country that is increasingly less so. As the number of Latinos and Asian-Americans has increased in coastal states like California, New York and New Jersey, many white Americans from these regions have moved inland or to the South. For at least some whites, particularly those over the age of 50, there is a sense that the country they grew up in is fading away, and that Americans with ancestors from Mexico or, as in my case, Bangladesh don’t share their religious, cultural and economic values. These white voters are looking for champions, for people who are unafraid to fight for the America they remember and love. It’s unfair to call this sentiment racist. But it does help explain at least some of our political divide.
