What Comes Around, Goes Around

Over at Eunomia, Dan Larison makes one of those Good Points I keep mentioning in passing, this on Sotomayor (emphasis mine)

It is questionable whether “color-blind justice” is actually in danger here, or at least it is questionable whether it is in danger because of a judge such as Sotomayor. More to the point, it is much less likely that Americans will be able to “celebrate their rootedness in unique, decentralized communities,” if they are going to be able to do this at all, if Americans of all backgrounds are confronted with social stigma and ostracism for expressing pride in their roots and communities. The question, then, is why those conservatives who presumably could see some virtue in “rootedness in unique, decentralized communities” should be so scandalized by statements that reflect positively on particularity and diversity. Indeed, one of the main things that is so deeply troubling about official celebrations of diversity is that they are so very often wedded to programs of political centralization and uniformity.

As for the other point, it is true that refraining from making baseless charges of racism against Sotomayor will not stop other baseless attacks against conservatives from being made. However, it does seem all but certain that making such baseless charges one of the main lines of attack against Sotomayor will make it far more likely that even those conservative arguments that were once given the benefit of the doubt will be willfully misread in just the same way that critics seem to have been misreading Sotomayor’s statements. If there are already some conservative arguments on immigration, affirmative action or other policy questions that are frequently dismissed and ridiculed as racist, how many more will be tarred with this label as a result of conservatives’ having dramatically lowered the standards of what counts as a racist statement? How many conservative pundits and radio talk show hosts will wind up on the wrong side of the sweeping, unreasonably broad defintion of racism that conservatives are now employing to try to trip up Sotomayor? Perhaps most telling of all, this smear on Sotomayor will not advance conservative causes one inch, but will boomerang and harm them significantly, and those who recklessly flung these charges should not be surprised if they come back to haunt them later on.

And he's got a point: there are legitimate arguments for example that affirmative action is not an optimal solution to institutionalized racism, and it is flawed (but necessary) solution to a pervasive problem. I think everyone realized affirmative action is flawed, the argument is "do these flaws render the good that affirmative action tries to accomplish moot or not?" As an African-American, I can see both sides of that argument.

But if you're willing to lower the bar on what qualifies as racism to include people expressing pride in their culture or race, then yes, it's going to bite you in the ass.

I'm going to argue in fact that it already has bitten conservatives in the ass.