It’s hardly a new observation that conservatives lack credibility on race. It’s not as if they deserve it. But I’m not with Matthew Yglesias here, either:
Dwight Eisenhower could see that [National Review’s disgusting, reprehensible, clearly racist position] was wrong and backed the ‘57 [civil rights] bill. But Ike was a RINO, the kind of person George Will would despise.
But that’s the past, of course, and we can’t hold Will personally responsible for the things his predecessors were saying fifty years ago. But here’s the question—how is it that I can’t recall an instance of Will waxing indignant about some instance of racism directed against an African-American or Latino in the United States? I don’t believe it’s my faulty memory. Instead, I believe it’s that the new “color blind” American right is not dramatically different from the old “black people shouldn’t be allowed to vote” American right from fifty years ago. It’s a movement that’s basically indifferent to the interests of non-whites and totally uninterested in the question of whether or not there’s unfair discrimination against minority groups in the United States.
Tarring George Will with a 50-year-old National Review piece because he’s not, of all things, an Eisenhower Republican, so — who knows — maybe he would oppose the 1957 Civil Rights Act — this seems a logical stretch to me. A better line of attack would be to note that Will admires Barry Goldwater, and Goldwater opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Goldwater voted against ‘64 on constitutionalist grounds — because telling private businesses that they must not discriminate isn’t a power granted to the federal government. I think Goldwater was sincere on this. I think on the purely technical question, he was correct. I also think he didn’t have any racist motives. (Goldwater voted proudly in favor of ‘57.) But it’s possible to be sincere, and technically correct, and not a racist — and still be wrong.
There are two difficulties as I see it with Goldwater’s stance. First, it’s awfully convenient for racists, which is embarrassing to say the least. And second, it’s rather obviously possible for a law to do good on the whole, and to be almost entirely constitutional, even when some aspects of it are unconstitutional. I think that’s actually the case with ‘64.
One measure of sincerity for those saying “64 was unconstitutional” is to ask what other things they consider unconstitutional. If they have trouble naming more than a handful, then they begin to look less and less like strict constructionists, and more and more like racists taking any port in a storm. (I can name at least six cabinet agencies that I don’t think have even a remotely plausible constitutional justification. How about you?)
Goldwater may have been technically correct about a narrow constitutional issue, but he missed some far more important ones: ‘64 added some improper powers to the federal government (as if, in that year, this were some historical first). But it properly eliminated many, many other blatantly unconstitutional practices by federal, state, and local government. And while it infringed on the property rights of white racists, it also signaled to non-racists, both white and black, that their property rights might be safely exercised in the future, free from the mob violence of the supposedly civilized white South. On balance, this seems to have done more to further individual rights than to frustrate them.
I know, I know, it’s not easily reduced to a soundbite-sized judicial philosophy. But that’s really what I think. Which one is a worse abuse of American values? A racist being taken to court, given due process, and found guilty of violating a relatively well-defined law? Or a non-racist getting lynched for serving the wrong customers? And what if those are our only two choices? I know what I’d pick.
So Goldwater erred. But we’re still a long way from the loathsome National Review circa 1957:
The central question that emerges–and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by meerely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal–is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced ace. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. The British believe they do, and acted accordingly, in Kenya, where the choice was dramatically one between civilization and barbarism, and elsewhere; the South, where the conflict is by no means dramatic, as in Kenya, nevertheless perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own.
Disgusting. ‘64 was a tradeoff, but I think a very favorable one. Now if only conservatives would say so too.