Racist until proven guilty

Okay, this just has to stop. James Taranto is at it again in Friday's Opinion Journal, beginning by quoting Zev Chafets:

Reid's overt disrespect for Thomas is, at first glance, surprising. Reid is, after all, the conservative leader of a liberal Senate faction. He belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a denomination that banned blacks from the priesthood until 1978. And he represents Nevada, a state with a less than sparkling record on civil rights. In other words, Reid is vulnerable to the charge of racial insensitivity. And in this case, guilty.

So Zev basicaly incriminates all conservative leaders, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and all residents of Nevada as having great potential for racism. How does everyone who falls into one of those categories feel about being pigeonholed by Chafets? I think that shows a certain amount of discrimination on his part as well.

Of course, in the quoted material, Chafets gives no reason to think that Reid's comments were motivated by racism, but proof is unnecessary when the right attacks the left. Kerry was a complainer when he said our troops did not have adequate armor to battle in Iraq and his argument was generally dismissed by the right. Now it turns out that Kerry was correct. No one on the right has apologized yet. Instead, them now try and blame him for voting against a bill that passed anyway.

Chafets continues:

Reid never would have had the brass to attack Thomas as an incompetent dummy without the encouragement of his party's black establishment. Black Democrats dislike Thomas not because of his intellect or performance--which fall well within the norm for Supreme Court justices--but because he is 1) a Republican, 2) a conservative, 3) an opponent of affirmative action.

Let me see if I have this straight. Black Democrats dislike Thomas because they don't agree with his ideology, much like the right pillories Hillary and Kerry because they do not agree with them. However, because Reid is a white Senator and Thomas is black, suddenly these disagreements happen because of race.

Taranto before claimed it was impossible for someone to agree with Anton Scalia and disagree with Thomas. A striking argument, since most on the right have been fighting against that characterizations from the beginning:

Justice Thomas's isolation from the rest of the Court on these issues shows that he is not - despite the common caricature - Justice Scalia's clone. Indeed, in some respects, his disagreement with the Court's vision of representative democracy is as fundamental as the more familiar 5-4 divisions over states' rights, abortion, affirmative action, and the other hot-button issues that the Court confronts.

Now on to Taranto:

The underlying assumption seems to be that black people cannot be racist--that "racism" refers only to one's attitudes toward or beliefs about other races. But this is nonsense. Suppose you're a white liberal Democrat who supports affirmative action. If another white person calls you a "traitor to your race" for holding these views, there isn't much doubt you would regard this characterization as racist. Likewise, those who call Clarence Thomas an "Uncle Tom" or, as Marable puts it, "the whitest man in America" for not thinking the way black people are "supposed" to think are acting racist toward blacks, notwithstanding that they may be black themselves.

This is a little difficult for me to parse. Part of the problem is that no one would accuse Harry Reid of being racist if a) he were black and agreed with Thomas or b) Thomas was white and Reid had made these claims.

Certainly one race can be racist to one of it's own. I agree with Taranto's claim there. But the examples he provides are better argued as racist-style attacks. Claiming a man puts forth poorly written opinions does not make one instantly think of race; calling someone the "whitest man in America" does.

In fact, the argument that came to mind last night was the same one that Taranto brings up himself; The so called "outing" of Mary Cheney. One of the arguments that came out of the discussion is that many of the ones who screamed so loudly on the right against the incident where not appalled at John Kerry, but rather that lesbians exist at all. The problem was that the right still looked down upon homosexuality, so they looked at being called homosexual as an insult to be outraged at.

It is, in essence, the same stretch they try to make here, I think. A number of Republicans are still outraged that black people are in positions of power regardless of who put them there. Note it was those on the right that shouted the loudest that "poorly written opinion" equaled stupidity, which in turn was a stereotype of black people. It was not the left who made this connection, they rather went on based on the merits of what Reid said, and not the color of the skin of who he spoke about.

Another of Taranto's arguments is that no one has pointed out any of Thomas' decisions that qualify as "poorly written." As I said earlier, this is a matter of opinion, and it is hard to prove opinion to anyone who disagrees with you. Also after the unjustified savaging that Reid has taken since the interview, I would think anyone who agreed with Reid would be afraid to speak up. You can read some of Thomas' justifications for certain rulings here. Some of them do seem a little illogical to me, but I don't want to be called a racist, so I'll let you be a judge on your own. Also I'd like to point out that Justice Harry A. Blackmun must be racist, as he held a less that favorable view of some of Thomas' arguments as well.

Much has been written about [Blackmun's] papers, yet hardly anything about the portions dealing with Thomas. He and Blackmun, who retired in 1994 after 24 years on the court, served together for only three years. The papers suggest that Thomas was less than highly regarded by Blackmun, who made snide comments about his junior colleague's drafts -- "pretty bad," he noted on his copy of one.