Let's Talk About Race, Baby

Ruben Navarette:

Americans are told we need to have a national conversation in which we talk about race.

And yet, when we have horrific crimes with white victims where the alleged perpetrators are African-American or Latino, we’re told that we can’t talk about race.

This isn’t true when the roles are reversed. If the victims are African-American or Latino, and the alleged perpetrator is white, we talk about race until our throats go dry.

Confused? Join the club.

Ruben of course is playing coy here — there’s no need for confusion. Playing up white-on-black violence (even if you have to invent a whole new category of white to do it) advances an agenda of making today’s white conservatives feel guilty for the racial oppression of yesterday’s white progressives (and today’s, too). Or at least it might make today’s white conservatives shut up — and it certainly drums up Obama’s base.

Playing up black-on-white violence achieves none of these things, and therefore must be ruthlessly ignored. You can’t even imagine Obama saying, “If my white grandfather were still alive today, he’d look like Delbert Belton.”

And if we treated all violence by all colors against any color, equally, then we’d be on course to have the kind of national conversation on race the progressives could never win.