Last Call For The Necessity Of Denial

The key component to being a conservative think tank pundit is denial, particularly when it comes to denial of bigotry.  It's the fundamental principle, the foundation, of conservative intellectualism.  America must be an absolutely equally fair and equitable society in every way, where there are no structural barriers of any kind to success and happiness.  The only problems in America come when government interferes in the glorious free markets, and that a perfect society would be free of these fetters.  Modern conservatism absolutely depends on this structure.

The millisecond a conservative admits there's any sort of structural problem in society:  racism, misogyny, bigotry based on sexual orientation or religious creed, or anything endemic to the American system, the game ends, and all their logic crumbles to "conservatism cannot be failed, this isn't real conservatism!"

So when presented with evidence that Atlanta's recent crippling by two inches of snow may have been exacerbated by the city's long and uncomfortable history with the city's black population, or that Minneapolis's low percentage of black home ownership meant there were additional structural problems educating black people about the dangers of radon poisoning, the conservative pundit must find a way to bring up another possible cause -- no matter how outlandish -- in order to prove that racism is dead in America.

Case in point:  John Hinderaker.

These are just two examples plucked from the constant stream of news stories that allege racism where none exists. Why is this effort so insistent? Why are we constantly bombarded with allegations of racism, at the very time when actual racism has dwindled to insignificance? The motive, it seems obvious, is political. The Democratic Party desperately needs to keep African-American voters on its plantation if it is to have any hope of maintaining power. (Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 20 points among white voters in 2012, according to some estimates.) Because Americans in their daily lives rarely see evidence of racism, but are often reminded of the ubiquity of affirmative action, liberals in the news media must keep up a constant stream of tales about purported racism in order to create an alternative reality. Sowing racial division is a core strategy of the Democratic Party, and newspapers and magazines are its agents in executing that strategy.

In just one paragraph, Hinderaker encapsulates the seething rage conservatism has towards the minority experience (and not just the black one), erasing the personal experiences of millions of Americans of color, and simply believes any instances of racism to be a political plot orchestrated by Democrats in order to keep minorities ignorant and trapped voting for them.

In Hinderaker's world, minority voters, especially black ones like myself, are simply too stupid to see the the truth.  We're easily bamboozled by the liberal media and trapped like sheep anyway, so why would anyone want to give our experiences with racism any credence whatsoever?  Hinderaker hasn't experienced it, so it can't have any validity.  We're allllllll just making it up.

Bonus points for the real racism is his world being affirmative action, which actually is dwindling in American society thanks to a number of conservative lawsuits and court decisions.

If you're a minority and experience structural racism, you're in an alternate world, not America.  But I guess the incarceration and education and salary and home ownership numbers are all made up too.