Will America ever find a healthy equilibrium on the issue of race? For nearly the first two centuries of our country’s existence, the treatment of racial minorities was appalling — first in the unconscionable era of slavery, then in the repressive, inhumane period of Jim Crow. Considered in the long history of what came before it, the progress that was made beginning with the civil rights movement represented a remarkable — and overdue — evolution in race relations.
In the years since, we’ve perhaps overcorrected for our previous neglect of racial issues. Today, at a time when America is more racially tolerant than ever before, it’s become a national fixation. Rarely does a day pass that we’re not chided by some member of the political or cultural elite to have “an honest conversation about race.”
Unfortunately, however, recent developments in the political world indicate that honesty is the last thing many people want to hear on this sensitive topic. And this trend is bipartisan. The two most recent victims of excessive political correctness were on opposite sides of the 2012 presidential election: President Barack Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan.
Late last month, the Obama administration launched “My Brother’s Keeper,” a laudable initiative that works with businesses and foundations to increase opportunities for young men of color. As a result of that program’s focus on minorities, some conservative critics savaged Mr. Obama for reverse racism.
Rep. Ryan came in for similar criticism when he recently told conservative radio talk show host Bill Bennett that there’s an urgent need to address the problem of inner-city cultures where the work ethic is insufficiently valued. Denunciations of Ryan from the left were every bit as vicious as those directed at President Obama from the right, with critics alleging that this was a thinly veiled accusation that minorities are shiftless.
Neither of these men deserved this criticism — and those who tarnished their reputations ought to be ashamed of themselves. It is empirically true, as both President Obama and Rep. Ryan have noted in speeches, that there is a constellation of problems facing inner-city America — weak family formation, a lack of social capital, chronic joblessness — meriting special attention.
Those who focus on the race of those involved (and, for the record, there are plenty of downscale whites plagued by precisely the same pathologies) manifest a particularly contemptible inhumanity. We’ll never be adequately able to address the problems of these troubled segments of society if they’re used primarily as pawns in games of partisan politics.
President Obama and Rep. Ryan are both to be praised for engaging in what others only pay lip service to: an honest conversation about race. We advise both men to ignore the critics and instead continue to focus on creating an America where opportunity is both widespread and color-blind.
— Copley News Service
