Monday, April 28, 2014

Does Race Matter, Or Not?

This quote from The Nation has my head spinning:
The point here is not that only minorities or the poor can run organizations that advocate on issues that primarily affect minorities and the poor. That way madness lies. There is nothing inherent in an identity or a circumstance that automatically makes someone a better leader. Michael Manley, John Brown, Joe Slovo—history is not teeming with examples of the wealthy and light providing leadership for the poor and dark, but they do exist. People have to be judged on what they do, not who they are. This is not simply about optics. What an organization looks like is relevant; but what it does is paramount.
Why is what an organization looks like relevant at all? If the mission is paramount, if it's the most important thing, why would you care who accomplishes it?  Would you rather succeed under someone who doesn't look like you or fail under someone who looks like you?  If the mission is paramount, then you want to succeed--and it shouldn't matter who does the leading.

The reason lefties keep spinning and spinning and triangulating and explaining and clarifying is that fundamentally, their core philosophies don't make any sense.

1 comment:

allen (in Michigan) said...

The relevant question, in a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, is whether race can matter.

That there are differences is obvious to the eye but what's important is the question of whether those differences undermine the founding assumption. Can a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal survive the incontestable fact all men are not created equal? That there are differences between individuals and between groups?

I would say that the last 200+ years of American history demonstrate conclusively that first it is possible to subordinate those differences to the founding proposition of the nation and second, that it's not easy. But it is worth the effort.

The left, however, is antithetical to the founding proposition so all differences between people are opportunities to be exploited.