tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13589532.post1646055664414282273..comments2023-10-09T04:11:47.358-07:00Comments on Not A Potted Plant: Two Points About Effective Political SpeechBurt Likkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16060980744675990412noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13589532.post-6103966441671632542009-04-16T11:28:00.000-07:002009-04-16T11:28:00.000-07:00There are two types of questions in here, which I ...There are two types of questions in here, which I think it is important to distinguish between but which are often conflated: "Tancredo is a racist" vs. "Tancredo's policy proposals are racist". They aren't the same thing, and they are in fact independent of each other (though a racist is more likely to propose racist things, one can propose racist things without being racist).<br /><br />"Tancredo is a racist", I agree, doesn't do that much, but that's because most left-wing commentators on racial issues don't care <I>all</I> that much about an individual commentator's mindset. The important question and argument would be "Tancredo's policies are racist", which can be true regardless of whether he intends them to be or not. And that question (or more broadly, what immigration policies comport with a proper conception of racial egalitarianism) is a really important one in the immigration debate.<br /><br />Yet we both know that even in more formal debate concepts, a speaker who opens with "I think Tom's proposal is racist" will still be accused of having a silencing effect. In general, my experience has been that it is <I>more</I> common that legitimately raised questions of racism (in policy or in person) are silenced as "card playing" than illegitimately raised questions are given too much credence -- primarily because there is a developing norm in American political discourse that <A HREF="http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2007/02/race-talk-race-card.html" REL="nofollow">it is virtually never proper to talk about racism in any context whatsoever.</A>David Schraubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13589532.post-69503413227929565242009-04-16T10:52:00.000-07:002009-04-16T10:52:00.000-07:00I understand your point. But it seems to me that t...I understand your point. But it seems to me that the issue here was immigration policy, not racism. To simply say "Tancredo is a racist" shuts down further discusion on any issue other than racism and more specifically Tancredo's racism. <br /><br />So I'd agree with you that the racism card is not and should not be off-limits, forever, on everything. But that card needs to be played with discretion and only when there is truly good cause -- which sounds a lot like your call to discuss racism in a rational-fair minded way.<br /><br />And in this case, I think the racism card was played clumsily, poorly, and to the long-term disadvantage of those who played it.Burt Likkohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16060980744675990412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13589532.post-59703894742239152002009-04-16T10:42:00.000-07:002009-04-16T10:42:00.000-07:00I definitely think the actions of the UNC students...I definitely think the actions of the UNC students was thuggish and worthy of condemnation. But I do have to take issue with at least an element of your analysis here. Whether Tancredo's cluster of immigration policies (or indeed, any cluster of immigration policies) is racist is a legitimate topic of discussion. But the implication of your argument is that raising this specter is <I>automatically</I> opposed to rational discussion.<br /><br />This is an extremely pernicious standard. It would mean we could <I>never</I> have a serious, deliberative examination as to whether policy X is racist, because the question itself gets derailed as <I>per se</I> silencing. This is a bad thing: I think it is really important to have serious conversations as to the meaning and effect of racism, and discursive conventions which block those efforts are to my mind extremely harmful.<br /><br />Certainly, this is a two way street: if I'm saying that we need to rationally discuss racism, then we have to agree to discuss it in a rational, fair-minded way. But the flip side holds true too: a lot of people do try and deflect the charge of racism even when it is brought up in a way that facially meets normal standards of political discourse by invoking the rule that mentioning racism is always an illegitimate discursive power play. That's really abusive and really bad behavior, and needs to be challenged.David Schraubhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04946653376744012423noreply@blogger.com