The liberal end of the political spectrum in the US has been obsessed about race for at least 20 years now, and that’s a very bad thing.
Among liberals, the consensus is that “racist” views should not be tolerated. Of course, censorship is legally difficult to achieve in the US, so liberals have used, and used very effectively, the following tactics of limiting conversation to what they think is acceptable:
- Name-calling. Any time someone says something you don’t like, call them names. “Racist” is very popular.
- Ad-hominem attacks: Insult the speaker personally, often about things not remotely related to the conversation in question.
- Refuse to listen, and exclude the speaker from the venue by any excuse that can be brought to bear.
Unfortunately, liberals then make every issue they can into a racial issue. Want to talk about poverty? A lot of people in minority groups are poor, therefore anything you might say on the issue that a liberal would disagree with gets called “racist”. Want to talk about illegal drugs? A lot of minority group members use illegal drugs, so the only safe thing to say around a liberal is that you’re for them. Want to talk about gun control? Young minority males shoot each other a lot, so you’re not free to express your opinion about that. Want to talk about unwed women giving birth? A lot of them are in minority groups, so all you’re allowed to say about unwed motherhood is that it’s a great institution.
It is a very clear pattern: once liberals had bestowed upon themselves the authority to censor, that power has corrupted them and they are abusing it across the board.
Regarding any problem that minority group members are having, the only explanation that a liberal will tolerate anyone talking about is unfair discrimination. Among intelligent liberals, it gets a little more nuanced than that, one can discuss other causes, but only so long as they are all seen as indirect consequences of unfair discrimination.
This leads to a consensus, among liberals, that unfair discrimination is a huge problem, and the root cause of just about all of society’s ills. Which makes liberals pursue their censorship policy even more stringently, in a viciously increasing frenzy.
And that whole world view is poppycock. Among the lower classes of all ethnic groups, there is enough dysfunctional behavior to explain most if not all of their problems.
But we’re not allowed to talk about dysfunctional behavior, because if we do we’ll be called names.
xyquarx 
Brilliant Post!
I was discussing some of these issues with a friend, and she really disagreed with my view that dysfunctional behavior is the root cause of poverty. She felt that the poor are helpless victims of circumstances, and rather than judge their behavior, we should vote for a more generous government that will help them more. That may be true (though I don’t think so). But if it is true, the liberals should be able to make that case without resorting to censorship.
If you are worried about thus check out my book.culturism. if you’d review it, I could provide a copy.
Hi John, You didn’t mention that your book is available on Kindle for 99 cents. Just downloaded it, will look at it after I read the book I’m on.
Some people have misunderstood why I wrote this piece.
I read “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010” by Charles Murray. In the book, to avoid the conversation getting hijacked by race, he restricts his book to discussing how white Americans, especially lower class white Americans, are doing.
He brings up a lot of points, not all of which I agree with, that he backs up with copious statistics. A couple of points that I found interesting (and alarming) are that there has been a steady increase in the percentage of white people on disability, in spite of the advancement of medical technology. He also points out that 30% of births in the white lower class are to unmarried women, most of them never-married high school dropouts.
I was astonished to hear about these things, and was wondering why I hadn’t heard about them before. Murray never says this, but it seemed to me that has gone on in the US is that if you talk about lazy poor people or births out of wedlock, liberals will assume you are talking about certain minorities, castigate you for “racism”, and censor you. As a result of liberal hypersensitivity and aggressive censorship about race, American public debate is incabable of addressing rampant dysfunction, that is occurring among lower-class whites as well as some minorities.