WHY SO RACIST AT VIRGINIA TECH? Jason Riley and the Left’s conservative minority problem.

Jason Riley must be suffering from whiplash. This spring, the Wall Street Journal columnist and scholar with the prestigious Manhattan Institute was invited, then disinvited, and now finally re-invited to give a lecture at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business as part of its Distinguished Lecture series.

The controversy stems from the fact that Riley is a conservative in an era when conservative viewpoints are unwelcome on many college campuses. Riley, thus, joins a long list of right-leaning analysts and policymakers – including George Will, Greta Van Susteren, Ann Coulter, and Scott Brown to name just a few — whom activists have sought (with mixed results) to “disinvite” from campus speaking engagements around the country.

But Riley’s politics are only partially to blame for his “disinvitation.” If politics alone were to the issue Virginia Tech would not have hosted a lecture by earlier this year by conservative scholar Charles Murray.

To be sure, student protests of Murray’s lecture made administrators skittish about bringing Riley to campus — one conservative is more than enough! But Riley’s real offense is not that he is a conservative, it is that he is a black conservative who not only expresses conservative viewpoints on economics and foreign affairs, but who dares to challenge the prevailing liberal orthodoxy on race.

Yep.