December 03, 2004

Race and Leftist mental "flexibility"

An email from a reader in which he discovers that race exists only when Leftists say so

I'm sure you're aware of the leftist claim that racial categories are nothing but social constructs with no basis in fact. Well, over a year ago I posted an essay at work that argued that race *does* exist ("Race Is a Myth?"). The next day I came to work and found that the essay had been literally torn off the wall. The minute my butt hit the seat, my boss, who is ultra-leftist, walked over to my cube and said in a quavering voice, "You want to step into my office for a minute?" He then proceeded to tell me that he'd taken down my essay because it was *racist* and violated company policy prohibiting "racial harassment"! I pointed out that merely arguing that race exists is not racist.

He countered: "Yes, but it's the first step to arguing racial superiority. First you claim that people are different and put them in separate categories. From there it's just a short step to saying this category is better or smarter than this other one, and so on..." He also claimed that the source of the essay, a Web site called *American Renaissance*, was registered as a "hate" Web site and edited by an admitted white supremacist.

I said, "But without race, how can you have 'diversity' and multiculturalism and all the other goals cherished by the left that actually *require* the existence of racial differences?" To my astonishment, he said, "Well, it's obviously situational." Situational! He continued: "For example, in the case of the California proposition that would ban recording racial information on government job applications, which we would want to oppose, clearly we would not want to say that race doesn't exist. But in other cases..." In other words, he was trying to take his *logical inconsistency* and turn it into a virtue. Basically he was saying, "When it suits our ends, we argue that race doesn't exist. Otherwise, we admit that race exists." Usually leftists are more crafty about blowing hot and cold, but in this case my boss apparently was feeling no shame.






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