The Tim Scott appointment to the U.S. Senate is causing internal logical overload and fried circuity at the New York Times. The paper today has an op-ed exposing the damage. The editorial descends to outright racialism of the sort you’d find in some of the creepy corners of the racially paranoid groups on the fringe. Some samples:
“But this “first black” rhetoric tends to interpret African-American political successes — including that of President Obama — as part of a morality play that dramatizes “how far we have come.” It obscures the fact that modern black Republicans have been more tokens than signs of progress.
The cheerleading over racial symbolism plays to the Republicans’ desperate need to woo (or at least appear to woo) minority voters, who favored Mr. Obama over Mitt Romney by huge margins.”
Modern black Republicans have been mere tokens.
“Just as white Southern Democrats once used cynical manipulations — poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy tests — to get around the 15th Amendment, so modern-day Republicans have deployed blacks to undermine black interests.”
Modern-day Republicans have deployed blacks to undermine black interests.
“There is little that connects these men to mainstream black politics or to the country’s first two black senators Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce.”
Mainstream black politics.
I’d suspect the views of Revels and Bruce are far closer to the views of Tim Scott and Alan West, whether dealing with human liberty, the right to self defense, or the right to live free from government imposed racial classifications than are any other member of the CBC. The New York Tiimes should have never printed such a disgustingly racialist op-ed, but then again, the New York Times isn’t to be taken seriously anymore as a moral or enlightened source of information. You can read more about Adolph L. Reed Jr, the crackpot academic who wrote the piece here.
Hat tip to Michael Graham for this one.