If I were a member of the Sierra Club (my environmental contributions go to The Nature Conservancy) I would withdraw my membership forthwith after having read this essay by Sierra Club president Carl Pope. Pope, like so many others on the left, seems unable to imagine why anyone would object to a man who was, and may still be, a radical Leninist revolutionary serving in a high level position in our government. Nor does he see any reason, evidently, to object to someone on the public payroll who believes that the Bush administration was in some sense complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Why else would people like Pope draw the conclusion that any criticism of someone like Van Jones must be motivated by racism? Are they so cynical that they can't imagine anyone objecting to the appointment of a man of Jones' philosophy of governance and political judgment to a position of responsibility in the Obama administration?
Here are some excerpts from Pope's column:
Well, that [the administration's failure to defend Jones] was a mistake. So was the decision by the White House to treat the initial attacks not as part of an assault on the president but, instead, to allow them to be viewed as being about Van Jones. What we underestimated was the power of the fact that both Jones and Barack Obama are black. Yes, the hysteria was about politics -- I don't think Fox News really cares about Jones's ethnicity -- but it was enabled by race. Calling Bush a "crack-head" is seen by a large part of America as worse than calling him "addict-in-chief" because crack is not just a drug -- it is a drug used largely by black people. It reminds those Americans who are still uncomfortable with Barack Obama that we have a black president.
[A]t the end of the day, [that] was his crime. He spoke to and was of a part of an America that Fox and the reactionary right would like to put back on the plantation or pretend is not part of our nation.
But we shouldn't forgive either ourselves or the Administration if the next time we sense this happening we don't fight back harder, faster, and in a way that calls a mob a mob, racism racism, and an attack on the president an attack on America.
Barack Obama campaigned as one who would put racial divisions behind us, but his votaries are determined to make any criticism of this administration all about race. To criticize the President or any of his African American appointees has become for many prima facie evidence of racism. What these race hustlers fail to realize, however, is that the charge of racism is losing its punch. If everyone's a racist, if every opinion one holds is rooted in racism, then the word "racism" loses its power to intimidate. People are beginning to realize that no matter how respectful they try to be to the racial sensibilities of others they're going to be branded as a racist as soon as they express any opposition to any black in American politics, so why bother worrying about it?
Arguments like Pope's are as silly as they are sad. After three decades of trying to get past skin color we find out that, for the left, skin color is often the explanation of first resort for anyone who disagrees with them. So strong is this heuristic that even the lack of empirical evidence of racism is itself considered evidence for how diabolically subtle modern racists are. I'm reminded of the line from the novel/movie/play The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orzy about the Englishman who masqueraded as a fop risking his life to rescue French nobles from the Jacobin terror:
"They seek him here, they seek him there. Those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel ..."
Substitute "liberals" for "Frenchies" and "white racist" for "Pimpernel" and the lines could have been written for today's politics.
If Pope wants to find genuine racism perhaps he should look at Jones' comments about "white" polluters, or Jeremiah Wright's sermons, or Professor Gates' stereotyping of officer Crowley. Pope wouldn't see the racial bias in these men, though, because if he did, if he faulted any of them for the race-based sentiments they express, that would, by his own standard, make him a racist for criticizing a black man.
You can watch this video for yet another example of how the left seems unwilling to entertain any explanation, other than racism, for opposition to this administration or any African American who is a part of it:
RLC