The Blank Checks Issued by Leftists

The left, whether it knows it or not, issues “blank checks” to certain groups. That is, it in effect tells these groups that they can do anything they like, and the left will stick up for them. With respect to anyone who complains, the left will condemn them as racist, sexist, homophobic, fascist, whichever term is appropriate. At some point in time prior to World War II, the left offered the Jews a blank check, though as Paul Berman noted in the passage I quoted here, there were leftists in France in the 1930s who were starting to question this. (Was every criticism of the Jews illegitimate? they wondered.) The Holocaust quickly returned the left to its status quo ante, but at some point in the 1970s or 1980s, the blank check to the Jews was rescinded and given instead to the Palestinians, who despite treating women, gays, and even each other in deplorable ways are never chastised for this by the left. Meanwhile, a blank check was given to blacks in the 1960s, and another was given to Muslims more recently.

The obvious criticism here concerns the wisdom of giving out blank checks like this. There are dangers here, though at the same time one can see the left’s reason for doing it. It’s not easy to separate the legitimate criticisms of a group from the illegitimate ones, and once the left allows some solidly legitimate criticisms, soon it will have to allow those that are on the borderline between legitimate and illegitimate, after which it will not be able to stop any illegitimate criticisms from being made. And that puts society right back to the situation of racism, sexism, or whatever from which the left was trying to break free. So, rather than trying to determine which criticisms are legitimate and which illegitimate, the left simply declares that all criticisms of the group in question are illegitimate.

This results in lots of frustration for nearly everyone. Consider the situation between poor whites and poor blacks beginning back in the 1960s. Up till then, the left had looked favorably on poor whites, because they thought of them as exploited workers. Once the left shifted its focus to blacks and had given blacks a blank check, poor whites suddenly found themselves cast aside. When they made what they thought were legitimate criticisms of black neighbors, they were immediately denounced as racists. Frustrated, poor whites began drifting away from the Democrats. They either stopped voting, voted Republican, or split their votes. This simply confirmed to the left that these people were racist, of course, but while it may have felt good to the left to denounce these people, it did nothing to bring them back into the fold.

Meanwhile, problems among poor blacks festered and never got resolved, with the result that many of them remained in poverty with no hope of getting out. Back in the 1960s, there was a slogan from the United Negro College Fund: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” But since the 1960s, leftists have been all too happy to let black minds waste away in the ghettos, and anyone who said there was something that the blacks who lived there were doing wrong was condemned as a racist.

Today, in fact, the front page of The New York Times had an article (here) which talked about how cultural explanations of poverty were back in vogue, after over forty years of being rejected by leftists.

Consider another example, that of Muslims. Today, as many have observed, it is nearly impossible to tell leftists that there are big problems in Europe among immigrant Muslims. Any perceived problem must really be the result of racism in the person perceiving the problem. Yet, it is not unlikely that there would be big problems, for these people come from cultures which are, to say the least, reactionary. Accordingly, they come here thinking that honor killings are legal, that rape is the fault of the victim, that husbands can beat their wives, that homosexuality is a sin punishable by death, that it is permissible to kill apostates, and for some, that one can mutilate the genitals of one’s daughters. Added to this nasty brew is the current leftist predilection for not pushing immigrants to assimilate, which almost guarantees that there will be problems.

Yet, trying to get leftists to acknowledge that there are problems is impossible. At best, one gets the claim that “Not all Muslims are like that.” True enough, but that observation alone isn’t going to help matters. When I pressed one leftist recently on what plan she had for dealing with the reactionaries among the Muslims, she thought my question was irritating and irrelevant. And the liberal I argued with over the summer (see here) found my talk of reactionary Muslims terribly disturbing.

What, then, is the result? Some Europeans see problems, but these problems are ignored by the left, so the Europeans who are complaining begin searching for any politicians who will listen to them. Unfortunately, such politicians turn out to be on the far right, which then further validates the view of the left that the complainers were racist in the first place.

Is there some criterion to distinguish legitimate complaints about a group from illegitimate ones? I don’t know of any surefire way to do this, but let me offer two suggestions. First, any complaints about criminal activity ought to be taken seriously. Second, complaints from the leftists’ own ranks ought to be taken seriously, too. The complaints of poor whites about criminal activity among blacks satisfies both of these. Likewise, complaints in Scandinavia about rapes satisfy both counts, too. One could also mention the riot in Birmingham, England, in the fall of 2005 between blacks and Muslims, a riot that was sparked by the claim that a black girl had been raped by Muslims. Since both groups are darlings of the left, it was hard to pick out who was in the wrong, though as perhaps an indication of the way things are heading, of the two leftist commentators I found who discussed this incident, both sided with the Muslims.

Beyond these two suggestions, let me point out that while I know of no way in which one can distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate criticisms, at the same time it is extremely unlikely that there would never be any legitimate criticisms. And given that that is the case, then it behooves leftists to take seriously people’s complaints and at least investigate them to see if they are true. Doing nothing but denouncing people as racists may be very satisfying, but it’s not very effective.

Comments

[Alrenous]

I agree so entirely I have nothing to add.

Would you care to explore why the cultural explanations have returned to the pages of the NYT, and where you see it likely to go? I'm interested in your further thoughts, if any.

[Michael Valle]

Excellent analysis.

[John Pepple]

Alrenous: I have no idea why these explanations have returned. They mention that a younger crowd of scholars is taking over and that they are not bound by old taboos, but one would think that they would be even more bound by political correctness than older scholars.

As to where it might lead, ideally to inner cities that are less crime-ridden, but that is probably hoping for way too much.