It's your name, man. It's just not black enough. Or maybe those aren't black pearls you're wearing.

I have no brief for Kling or McArdle, and I'm a big, big fan of your writing, Adam. I do think your charge here was quite unfair, and deserves to be retracted. I just don't see any racial subtext to the "reparations" quote whatsoever. The word "reparations" has a specific, contextual meaning regarding payments to the descendants of former slaves, but it also has other meanings, including very importantly the notion of payments imposed on the loser in a conflict by the winner (e.g., Germany's payments after WWII). This isn't some obscure use of the word; it's one of its central and most common uses (whether or not the idea of reparations for African-Americans has been more in currency lately than any discussion about WWII). And it's quite true that libertarians often characterize the government as thuggish, brutal, or violent when it uses tax money. This is a ridiculous use of language, in my view, but it's not racist.

I don't know Kling's work extremely well, but I've read enough of it -- and it's all wonkish, econ-ish, and levelheaded enough -- that I find it extremely unlikely that he suddenly decided to toss out some racially inflammatory prose.

It is true that "we're all racist," but not all of our actions are racist, nor do we all commonly use ugly, hateful, racially loaded images in our public discourse. That there's lots of racism (intentional & otherwise) out there doesn't make it any less troubling to base specific charges against actual people on flimsy evidence. So I have to say -- and again, I've become a big, big fan of your writing in general since you joined TAPPED -- that you missed the boat here and really ought to retract your charge.

Ay dios mio!!
Seriously???
"I know Arnold, and I've never met someone more mild-mannered and circumspect." Um, so?? Does this mean the man is incapable of putting his foot in his mouth either inadvertenly or on purpose. Isn't there some standard against a journalist ( or blogger) defending a subject of their writing with "i know X so therefore....." . Isn't some credibility lost when that's done?( sorry _>>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/12/npr-tells-fox-news-please_n_166467.html)
I think that had this happened:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/12/msnbc-anchor-peter-alexan_n_166449.html
we wouldn't still be discussing this. The "who could have known?, or why would anyone suggest..? is insulting.

P.S. "I think the answer is that it is a reparations bill, not a stimulus bill. People who pay income taxes tend to vote Republican. People who live off taxes tend to vote Democratic."
Not that anyone of any import should care, but this is what bothers me. Which people?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/04/exit.polls/
So, which people?

" Would it be racist of me to note that Mr. Wolcott's accusations seem vaguely redolent of the tactics of one Senator Joseph McCarthy?"

Not necessarily, but if you accused him of tactics similiar to "Senator Joseph McCarthy (often considered one of the worst ever Senators with white ancestry)", that might be close to racism, even if completely accurate.

On a quick perusal of the charges, looks to me, too, like your charge of racism was seriously misguided. In the 1980s the word "reparations" would have called to my mind two issues: first, German reparations payments to Israel; second, German reparations payments to France in the post-WWI period. The word didn't come to have any American racial connotations until the issue of reparations for slavery appeared on the political horizon in the early '90s. (I don't know when the notion was first floated in the modern era, but for white guys like Kling and me it didn't even register on the political consciousness until the Clinton Administration.) I hold no brief for libertarians and am far closer to your political views than to Kling's, bt I think you should retract your charge and apologize. And I've said the same to many Jews who have unfairly smeared non-Jews for anti-Semitism, although I'm Jewish and (to draw the parallel) anti-Semitism is part of my experience and being accused of anti-Semitism isn't.

It's a little weird to see a guy manage to use "reparations" and "people who live off taxes" so close to each other. Your average person think "policeman and firemen" when he thinks of "people who live off taxes."

The challenge for Republicans today is that the specter of Lee Atwater looms long. The problem with a political strategy of starting off with racially loaded language of n*** n*** and then evolving to talk about welfare and busing is that you get into really bad habits of talking about things. You learn how to sidle up to that line where you're discussing an issue in a way that's ginning up the the racist vote while still not setting off the suburban whites who get turned off by racism.

The challenge for them now is that a black president moves that line. A lot. But a lot of them have learned to speak that language without understanding the what it really means, and without mastery of that line. These were effective talking points against the last Democratic president, so they're sprinkling them in.

And their problem now is the moderate voters they need do understand the subtext when it's in a certain context. See, where a white suburban person might not pick up in that you're calling a white President a N**lover when you drop certain phrases in an economic context, they will realize that you're calling an black President a N*** if you drop those phrases in the context of any of his policies.

This is because N*** is the insult they understand much more deeply and subtly than N***lover, and when you're going after a black guy for any reason they know this option is on the table. So they notice when you use it.

It's not that this guy is a racist or not a racist--I have no idea what's in his heart. But he IS using talking points that were created by Lee Atwater and his heirs to stir up the resentment of racists by calling Democrats N***lovers. Whether he knows it or not.

He's got to learn to stop using those talking points. Unless, of course, he wants the take-away to be how he's using the old Republican Southern Strategy instead of whatever other point he wants to make.

anonymiss, I think that's interesting but unfair and unproductive. You're beginning to replicate Atwater's strategy in reverse: Atwater found it politically productive to move from saying the N-word to talking about public spending, and you seem to be falling into the trap of moving from talking about public spending to saying the N-word. That's a rhetorical move that is both unfair to the people you're talking about, and a form of slow political suicide. People's attitudes towards the stimulus bill are surely linked in deep and subtle ways to their constructions of race; they are also linked to their constructions of gender, nationality, religion, and other self-other identity issues, but you're going to get exactly nowhere by psychologizing things that way. If the debate over public spending becomes once again a debate about whether white people are racist, we are likely to wind up stuck with more decades of idiotic faux-laissez-faire corporate welfare.

I don't doubt that Kling feels he has been misinterpreted, and did not deliberately inject race into his arguments. But that's how racism frequently works, on a much more subtle and subconscious level than a deliberate one.

As I said in another post, you will be hard pressed to convince me that under any circumstance short of attending a conference on World War I, that if someone asked Kling his thoughts on "Reparations" that he wouldn't immediately assume the same thing Mr. Serwer did.

At best what was said was poorly worded and left completely open to misinterpretation, and at worst there was some subtle, subconscious racism happening in Kling's head.

Regardless, the countless accusations of Serwer "thought policing" from various blogs and commentators are ridiculous. Not once has Serwer ever suggested that people shouldn't be allowed to say things like this, he just wants us to be aware of things that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

I think Serwer may want to squash this beef and apologize, but I'm inclined to side with him on this one nonetheless. I'm reminded of a situation in which a white person in a class of mine did a bunch of monkey gestures at a black student, simply because it was a routine they frequently did, and the routine was interpreted as racist by the black student. You can argue that he was being oversensitive, or that the kid doing the dance was completely insensitive, and you'd probably be right about both. I'm pretty sure Kling meant no harm, but that doesn't mean you should jump on someone for picking up on signals that they have frequently had to identify and deal with before as hostile, even if it turned out to be a misinterpretation.

Sorry, but I think you're really stretching to make this point. Perhaps the word "reparations" raises flags for you because you've become accustomed to thinking about it in the context of slave reparations. But that doesn't mean that Kling has used or thought about that word in the same context. For all we know, his familiarity with the word comes from the idea of war reparations.

A similar thing happened after 9/11 when Bush used the word "crusade" in describing his 'war on terror.' "Crusade" has a very specific meaning for many people, especially in the context of Middle East relations, but for most Americans "crusade" is completely generic.

I think that at most you should say to Kling "maybe you should be more careful with your choice of words," but calling him out as a racist on such flimsy evidence is irresponsible.

Kling's racism isn't problematic, because it doesn't "shut down the discourse" but Walcott calling out Kling is out of line because it might hurt some delicate feelings.

Of course, this misses the point (aside from being slanderous): the whole point of these phony accusations of racism is to shut down the discourse. Since people like Walcott can't actually refute Kling's arguments on the merits, he tries to attack him personally. It's no different than Ann Coulter calling liberals treasonous.

"I wrote about this during the election, but white people are far less concerned about racism than they are about accusations of racism, because racism isn't really a part of their experience, but being accused of being racist is."

As a person of mixed European descent (so-called white*) who has experienced racism fist-first, but has never been accused of racism, I find that this comment reeks of unjustifiable racism.

(*This grouping makes no sense, as my ancestors were of such varied backgrounds, cultures, advantages, disadvantages, and occupations that tying a specific cultural experience and worldview to something as trivial as a remotely comparable skin color is ludicrous.)

Rob,

You sir are a master of irony.

With Megan on this one. Racism should be treated as utterly toxic in our discourse: but it's precisely because of that that accusations of racism shouldn't be thrown around so lightly, as an easy dismissal of an argument, and so on.

Using such phrasing, on Kling's part, is incredibly stupid.

Look at it this way. The derivation of the word "holocaust" is Greek and means "sacrifice by fire." Now imagine that Israel, somehow, managed to elect an Arab Israeli prime minister. And then a journalist CHARGED that prime minister with instituting a program that was akin to a "national security holocaust" or even an "economic holocaust."

Does anyone SERIOUSLY not believe he or she would be: a) derided to the hilt, b) denounced for their use of language at the VERY least and c) probably stunningly, ethnically insensitive and definitely racist. Honestly?

Please there would be an international outcry. Any notion that this was simply "poor word choice" would be summarily dismissed and not allowed to stand.

The bottom line is Serwer is right. We've been so indoctrinated with the counter-charge of "reverse racism" that any time someone makes a point that someone else is making a racially-tinged comment, they are almost immediately trumped by the counter-charge of "reverse racism."

Words have meaning OUTSIDE of just their strict definiton. The word "holocaust" has an intrinsically racial and ethnic connotation far beyond merely "sacrifice by fire."

Ditto the word reparations. Now certainly not to the same DEGREE. But the notion that it has NO ethnic or racial connotation is insane.

FYI: All examples of reparations mentioned above deal with (no offense, just being purely descriptive here) majority European-derived (or in American parlance "white") cultures having to pay an indemnity to groups that are readily identifiable as minorities (Jewish descendants and survivors in Germany, Japanese descendants and survivors in America.)

To claim that the word "reperations", particularly when applied on an economic basis, does not have an inherently racial connoation is to willfully ignore facts.

And Serwer should apologize? Please. How about NO ONE apologizes.

Just to be fully clear, I think Kling is well within his rights to say, essentially, that of course he's not racist, Serwer is being ridiculous, don't be so sensitive and back off.

I think Serwer, given the historical as well as the etymological importance of words, is equally within his rights to disagree and claim that Kling is.

And people can choose to agree with or disagree with whomever they want to.

We have to learn, on both sides, to get over instantly freaking out every time race is discussed.

I once told a close female friend of mine, I thought Benjamin Rush's article on women learning French in the 1770s had some merit. She told me she found Rush's argument and my stance on it sexist. I said I didn't. We both shrugged our shoulders and moved on.

I just feel like every time racism is brought up (at large, but especially in the blogosphere), everyone brings their emotions rather than just calmly examining both sides, listening the other's argument and maybe agreeing to disagree. Some people find Kling's argument racist, others don't.

Both sides have a fair amount of legitimate historical precedent (in terms of lack of sensitivity and oversensitivity) to back up their argument. Neither should apologize.

(Sorry if I used too many caps in my last post, was just trying to make certain points like degree, clear.)