Content and Character

From an editorial in today's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

"In losing a woman, the court with Alito would feature seven white men, one white woman and a black man, who deserves an asterisk because he arguably does not represent the views of mainstream black America.”

Forget for a moment that the Supreme Court has nothing to do with representation (that's what we have a Congress for) and concentrate on what the Journal-Sentinal is really saying. The editors are saying that black Americans are, as a race, monolithically associated with a readily identifiable set of opinions and any black who deviates from that set of opinions can't be considered authentically black. They are saying -- and saying it in so many words -- that Clarence Thomas does not count as a black man. This is stupifying on many levels. Stupifying but, alas, not altogether surprising.

I'm also very troubled by the word "deserves," as though Thomas's deviation from the views of this so-called mainstream black America is something that warrants punishment. The editors certainly don't mean deserves in the sense that one deserves a reward.

(via Newsmax).

See also: Greetings from God's Country, GOP3.com, Generation Why and Jeff Goldstein at the ineffably interesting Protein Wisdom who calls this "the apotheosis of progressive identity politics played out in a major newspaper editorial in the most baldfaced way I have ever seen." Agreed.