You would think that the
National Review, the magazine famous for presenting the "serious conservative" defense of segregation and which has had to ditch several writers in recent years after their connections to white supremacy became too overt or their columns too openly racist, would at some point decide that perhaps they should stop talking about black people for a while. As opposed to, say, penning yet another explanation of
which Americans are properly black and which are not.
But what’s remarkable is that at no point in this conversation did anyone call attention to the fact that Carson is an African-American. Indeed, most analysis of Carson’s popularity from pundits focuses on his likable personality and his sincere Christian faith. But it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black.
You can probably hear the warning bells starting up as our author approaches the road crossing. The lights are flashing. The train's headlight can be seen in the distance, brightening with each passing word as our
National Review author pulls up onto the tracks, gets out of his car, and sets a lawn chair down between the rails.
One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama, given that Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents. In his autobiography, Obama writes at length about how he grew up outside the traditional African-American experience — in Hawaii and Indonesia — and how he consciously chose to adopt a black identity when he was in college.
Black people are not from Hawaii, or have relatives who are white. They may be black, but they are not
authentically black. To be
authentically black, you have to have to, well ...
Meanwhile, Carson grew up in Detroit, the son of a very poor, very hard-working single mother. His tale of rising from poverty to become the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital is one of the most inspiring rags-to-riches stories of the last half-century. (Cuba Gooding Jr. played Carson in the movie about his life.) He was a towering figure in the black community in Baltimore and nationally — at least, until he became a Republican politician.
Head below the fold for more on the
National Review's questionable views.
Of course, if you asked one hundred black Americans to name a "towering" national figure in the black community it is likely that considerably more of them will pipe up with the name of the sitting president of the United States than with Baltimore surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, but the National Review does not know one hundred black Americans so our author's interpretation will have to do. Barack Obama's rise from a divided, mixed-race family to become president of the United States: not inspiring. Ben Carson's rise from being poor in Detroit to becoming a famous doctor: inspiring.
Today's efforts in explaining authentic black America to Americans are brought to us by Jonah Goldberg, a writer who has carved out his own small niche in that wide expanse of conservatism between respectable and should be touched only if you have a ready supply of moist towelettes handy with deep thoughts such as declaring Hitler "liberal" because he liked vegetables, and so on. And the authentically black bit was probably considered similarly clever, needing only a quick wiping down after it was plucked from the usual places on the internets We Do Not Link To for its day out in the electronic pages of National Review.
It goes like this, and has for many years: President Obama is a scary black man who is so black that he is probably Muslim and from Kenya and despises American colonialism because that is what happens to you when you are so uncontrollably black. But President Obama is simultaneously not really black, not compared to a true black person, one who grew up in poverty like real black people do and who now believes conservative things like a proper black person naturally always would, once they are able to successfully rise above their blackness.
It is so ... not hard ... to avoid commenting as a conservative on which Americans are "authentically African-American" and which are not. It merely requires not opining on the relative states of blackness as you, a white conservative pundit from a magazine that bitterly fought against people with any measure of blackness sitting at the same lunch counters as Authentically White People," write your usual columns about society's various moral failings and which of your enemies are directly responsible for them. And yet week after week, the National Review writes column after column explaining what black Americans are like, and why black Americans are forever Doing It Wrong, in their families, and music, and political beliefs, and which black Americans are more authentic than others.
No rational set of people would still do this, after being hammered time and time and time again for racist writings and racist writers and creepy, creepy theories on why this or that thing done to black Americans from the 1950s until yesterday afternoon were all not nearly as big a deal as black people have been going on about. We can only presume they can't help themselves.