Is Barbour A “Racist?” That’s Not the Issue.

Like Matt, I think Cotes’s point here is very important:

I guess I can agree that merely displaying the flag of a white supremacist Army, praising a group which opposed integration in the 1960s, and–at this very moment–is boycotting a Hollywood movie because for casting a black person as a Norse diety, does not make one a racist. I guess I’d also agree that dressing in Nazi regalia, and praising Pat Buchanan’s writings on Jews doesn’t, in itself, make you an anti-Semite. No one can know the contents of person’s heart. But it does make you, as Matt charged,  “dangerously ignorant,” among many other things. Of course Jacobson never quotes Matt–or frankly anyone–charging that Barbour is a racist.

That of course leads us to the second point–that there is an outbreak of liberal bloggers claiming Barbour is a racist. A google search of “Barbour is a racist” is instructive. It does not reveal a single liberal blog of real note making that case. On the contrary it reveals a raft of sites either arguing that Barbour isn’t a racist, or arguing why it’s not relevant. Unable to deal with the actual arguments made by Matt here, for instance, and evidently generally ignorant of the basic facts of American history, Jacobson simply strawmans and changes the subject.

I have no idea whether Barbour, personally, is a racist. Let’s stipulate that he’s not. It’s beside the point. Praising the White Citzens Councils because they weren’t as violent as the Klan may not be evidence of racism — but it is evidence of indifference about racial justice, and general an excellent illustration of the kind of silly formalism that leads to Republicans touting their own “color-blindness” while they make it illegal for schools to voluntarily desegregate.