Politically the American Negro is nothing but a football and the white liberals control this mentally dead ball through tricks of tokenism: false promises of integration and civil rights.
-Malcolm X
"America has rarely been our ally. Very often it has been our nemesis.", Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote last year. This was line with which Jonathan Chait disagreed. Indeed, in his piecetoday attacking the left wing, Chait wrote, "The historical record of American liberalism, which has extended social freedoms to blacks, Jews, gays, and women, is glorious. And that glory rests in its confidence in the ultimate power of reason, not coercion, to triumph."
American liberalism did not extend freedoms to those groups. Black people, and others, fought and died for the limited freedoms they now have. The Civil War was a bloody and brutal event based on violent coercion. We kill you; we win; we set the policy terms. The dismantlement of Jim Crow, again, did not happen because of some dopey, white liberal, fantasy of reason (as if the Socratic technique helped end this shit). That institution was brought down (though some will argue it still exists) with blood and bombings. What is Chait talking about?
But we all know what this is about. Chait and many other white, liberal, mostly males, are afraid and angry that their voices are now no longer the only voices out there. The internet has provided many, myself included, a platform that we may otherwise not have had. Chait et al aren't driving the debate as much as they used to; and this pisses them off.
The old boys club is alive and well? Don't believe me? Go look at Chait's Twitter feed and read who he chooses to engage with on this issue.
Oh yes, I'm enjoying these CIS, white, male, liberal, tears.