Last week, conservative columnist John Derbyshire was fired from the National Review for publishing an article in Taki’s Magazine in which he warned white people to stay away from blacks. Among other points of advice, the self-professed racist wrote, “If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks. If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.” Within 24 hours of his article going live, Derbyshire had been canned, and liberal bloggers who’d called for his head rested, thinking it would be at least a few months before a semi-well-known conservative said outrageously racist things about black people. Well, you know what they say: There’s no rest for the weary, especially when it comes to online bigotry.
On Monday, Daily Caller writer Mark Judge penned an article called “The end of my white guilt” for the right-leaning site. In the essay, Judge explains how a black person stealing his bicycle on Good Friday led him to decide he would no longer feel sheepish about having animosity toward blacks. An excerpt:
I had been carefully educated by liberal parents that we are all, black and white, the same. My favorite movie growing up was “In the Heat of the Night.” Yet that often meant not treating everyone the same. It meant treating blacks with a mixture of patronizing condescension and obsequious genuflecting to their Absolute Moral Authority gained from centuries of suffering. It meant not treating everyone the same.
Judge’s full piece, and its grand conclusion, “black pain is no different than white pain,” are off base and silly for a whole host of reasons. But the article is outright useless due to one very important oversight: Judge actually admits that he has no idea who took his bike; he just assumes it’s probably a black guy.
You really can’t make this stuff up: A man attempting to explain why it’s rational to be angry at black people by concocting a conspiracy theory in which a black man robbed him. As my colleague and friend Tim Fernholz put it, “It’s the Möbius strip of racism.”
Now that he’s shed it, he may not care, but Judge should know that people of color never asked for his “white guilt” in the first place. As someone who’s had more than one bike stolen himself, I would be totally fine with Judge pressing charges against whomever made off with his goods, regardless of that person’s race or life story. What people of color are asking for is a fair shake, and it is almost laughably unfair to presume that you’ve been victimized by a black person when there is not a single shred of evidence to support that notion. What’s worse, this kind of reflexive mistrust of blacks is the same thing that hinders many of them from getting jobs and skews the criminal justice system against people of color. And then people like Judge read the newspapers and complain that “lazy” blacks just aren’t pulling their weight around these here United States.
Judge would have us believe that a black kid running off with his bike was the final bit of affirmation he needed to not trust blacks. In reality, I’d guess he hasn’t trusted blacks for some time now, and his missing bike just gave him reason to tell the world. Well, Judge, we get it: You’re here, you’re white, you’re suspicious of every black person. Unfortunately, we’re used to it.
