Sep 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
An Ideology for White People
I was only able to attend this morning’s Politico event with Rich Lowry, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay very briefly, but Lowry started out with a joke about how it was incongruous to be the editor of a conservative magazine located in “very liberal New York City.” He said he would illustrate that, for example, it was funny that the National Review offices were for a long time located directly above . . . what would it be? Revolution Books? NOW NYC? No . . . a hip-hop record label. Everyone laughed!
The joke being, I guess, that conservatives and black people don’t mix. Which I suppose is true enough, but usually put so nakedly.
58 Responses to “An Ideology for White People”
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September 3rd, 2008 at 10:36 am
No, conservatives and contemporary lifestyles don’t mix.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
I’m also amused by the notion that a long-time center of world capitalism — NYC & Wall St — are somehow unbeknownst to conservatism. Yeah, those dozens of billion dollar institutions are all pretty much radical bolshies. As if in U.S. history the only influential right wingers came from somewhere on the Prairie, or in small towns, or within a few miles of the Mississippi River, yadda yadda. What nonsense.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
Hip hop doesn’t = black people you know.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
and country music != white people
Charley Pride, represent!
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
This has actually been bothering me today, and I don’t have JSTOR access where I am so I can’t check the usual journals on it, but I’d put down dollars to donuts that there were more black delegates at Republican conventions from 1864-1892 or so than there are at today’s GOP convention. It would be a good number to have.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
actually, i imagine that there are a fair number of blacks in america with traditional conservative values.
the rarity would be blacks who support the partisan noise-machine of the racist republican party, a.k.a. the nat review.
but then, that has relatively little to do with conservatism either.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 am
McCain/Palin:
“Country First… Then Maybe Some Classic Rock”
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 am
Can any conservative party ever appeal to non-whites as long as non-whites are, on average, lower in economic standing than whites? I do not believe it is possible as long as the liberal party is offering racial set asides and race based benefits.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 am
We’re WINNING!
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 am
You know, it was just a week or so ago that I realized why a city would make a zoning law about how small a home’s lot could be. It’s a way of keeping out poor people. If you’ve got big lots, then you’re going to have expensive houses that poor people can’t afford.
This has been obvious to many for a long time now, I’m sure, but as a recovering republican I felt like I’d uncovered a vast conspiracy right under my nose.
But, more to the point, the reason people can be so alienated by something like a hip hop record store is that they don’t realize how intentionally segregated their life is.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:12 am
You know, it was just a week or so ago that I realized why a city would make a zoning law about how small a home’s lot could be. It’s a way of keeping out poor people.
Moreover, the Pope is not a Baptist. And wild bears rarely if ever make use of public restrooms.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 am
Apparently Matt has never met a single person who doesn’t much care for rap and hip-hop music.
You might consider talking to some teenagers – there are plenty of people younger than the 30-50 range who don’t like one style of music or another as well.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
Well, but of course, you miss Matt’s point. Lowrey is not suggesting that the incongruity between rap/hip-hop label downstairs and the National Review offices upstairs is a matter of musical taste–after all, the National Review isn’t set to music–he finds their proximity politically incongruous.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:34 am
matt, just had to say you are doing some tremendous reporting behind enemy lines these days. It is shocking that it takes a motivated blogger to shine a light on some of this stuff and point out the things you are. Where’s our “liberal media”?
so yeah, just thanks.
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:35 am
Lowrey is not suggesting that the incongruity between rap/hip-hop label downstairs and the National Review offices upstairs is a matter of musical taste–after all, the National Review isn’t set to music–he finds their proximity politically incongruous.
Have you ever listened to rap? It’s the only thing I do listen to, but politically it’s very – I wouldn’t even say liberal, more Jeremiah Wright-esque, actually. Listen to Nas’s recent album, for example. So yeah, they are incongruous and Matt’s just being ridiculous as usual.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
In response to Chuck (#10):
Your last sentence captures it perfectly. Many, many people in this country (especially those above 40) have a deep mental segregation that they use to get through everyday life. Luckily, it seems that younger people today are overcoming it. I really think it’s the ultimate generation gap.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
You mean for old white people. Young white people like hip hop too.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm
hell yeah we do
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
And Obama.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Can any conservative party ever appeal to non-whites as long as non-whites are, on average, lower in economic standing than whites? I do not believe it is possible as long as the liberal party is offering racial set asides and race based benefits.
This is pretty strange.
First, I’m not sure what “racial setasides” and “race based benefits” the Democratic party offers, particularly at the national level. I mean, there are certainly feelings about the appropriateness of Affirmative Action, though that is usually managed at the state (or even individual institution) level, and often comes down to the courts.
Beyond that… what? It seems like most of the party positions about welfare or the social safety net are class-based, not race-based. I don’t think many programs have a box that you have to check off your race to get approved for. (Unless, of course, you assume that enforcement of things like EOE and fair housing are race-based benefits).
Further, it seems that white people have no problem voting against their class interest. There has been a lot of thought put into why that is, and where the flaws of the self-interested voter lie (what you hear a lot about today is that voting against interest is essentially aspirational – people vote as if they were in the position that they would eventually like to be in).
So, either the argument is that affirmative action is so singularly powerful that it eclipses all other political discourse, or their is some other reason that race and self-interest voting seem so closely correlated.
Here are a few hypotheses, off the top of my head:
1. For cultural and historical reasons, it is less likely that minority voters will vote in an ‘aspirational’ fashion. They are less likely to feel that they have upward mobility.
2. Minorities have a loyalty to the party that has been more willing to fight for non-programatic support such as enforcement of non-discrimination, etc.
3. Minorities feel disconnected emotionally from the GOP. Welfare queens and Trent Lott’s porch, etc, have taken their toll on goodwill.
I’m sure the list could go on. I think boiling down voting patterns of minorities to “they just vote their interests” ignores, well, everything else that matters. It pretends that, over the last 50 years, both parties have been equally supportive and protective of minorities against various abuses, but one just happens to offer a better deal to the pocketbook.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:33 pm
That should read:
“where the flaws of the self-interested voter model lies”
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:41 pm
“Have you ever listened to rap? It’s the only thing I do listen to, but politically it’s very – I wouldn’t even say liberal, more Jeremiah Wright-esque, actually.”
I disagree; the main two instances in my experience of hearing people engage in really tacky discussions their material largess are from rich conservative white people I know and from hip-hop music. A lot of the vibe of popular country (Toby Keith?)–most of whose listeners probably tend to vote GOP–actually isn’t that different from some hip-hop.
So Matt’s point is actually sound. If it weren’t that hip-hop is assocated with blackness, some of it could surely fit right in with a kind of coarse, foul-mouthed, ultra-macho conservatism. Say, South Park fans, or Robert Bork.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Hey Matt why don’t you move to Detroit. There is a lot of cheap real estate to be had there. Also lots of hip hop playing 24 hours a day. You don’t even need your own radio to listen either. And best of all you can soak up all that cultural diversity you left wingers talk so much about. Of course you better invest in some body armor if you make the move. But you won’t be moving at all. You’ll just stay put and piss and moan. But then that’s all your good for.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Is the rap label Nas’s label? Not all rap is political.
Bling-focused rappers are exactly what Republicans think we should all be about: buying up everything in sight and bragging about how rich you are. If Sean Combs was a white guy, Republicans would love him.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I would say that pop rap about money, guns and “bitches” could be considered coarse conservatism. But real hip-hop is steeped in a kind of revolutionary liberalism. I would hold Nas up as an example, like a previous poster. Listen to Public Enemy and Ice Cube for more examples. True hip-hop is about upward social mobility and the “black experience”, things that would certainly be more associated with liberalism in the last half-century.
September 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Doesn’t MY live in DC? It’s not like he’s living in Vermont.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Brad L,
Look at what the Democratic party has supported: Busing (see Seattle and Louisville in this decade), undergraduate separate and unequal admission standards (See Gratz), graduate and professional school separate and unequal standards (See Grutter), minority hiring requirements (See the current effort in law firms), minority set aside contracting (See Adarand), the current 8a program for minority set asides. You also have to consider the voting rights act and the requirement for districts where blacks and Hispanics are certain to win.
Any political party that would try to be conservative either abandons being conservative and supports those programs or oppose them and loses the non-white vote.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Anecdotally I’m sure we all know black people with conservative views. The difference, obviously, is between social conservatism and economic conservatives (the huge breach going on right now, if anybody will talk about it). On one side you have evangelical blacks, often Southern. On the other you have more successfully professional blacks, like – I hate to be anecdotal – my wife and some of her friends.
Other than one or two, who are a bit blinkered in my estimation, none of them would dream of voting GOP as it is now structured, with the social conservatives ascendant. In the future it will be important to watch out that these vital votes and agents do not stray to Libertarians, as that party grows in power (as it might). The big businessmen hip-hoppers like Jay-Z and Puffdiddly should be kept in the fold, too.
But, yes, the guy MY points out is tellng the truth: the GOP has lost with blacks, and may be losing Hispanics for another generation, too.
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
eric,
How can the Republicans have lost something that they never had. Republicans in the last 50 years never received many black votes and received a small portion of the Hispanic vote. The difference is that those groups are growing relative to whites.
thus Republicans are faced with tring to get a large portion of the white vote with each election cycle. The Bush Adminsration has probably destroyed that idea.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Lowry debated David Corn once at my alma mater, and repeated that same line, and to a similar audience response.
One difference: He mentioned, somewhat mischievously, that pot smoke was known to waft up to his office on occasion from the record label’s windows.
Apparently, knowing what pot smells like might have raised some brows amongst polite company like Delay and Santorum. Know your audience!
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I can’t imagine most people thinking of National Review and Eminem going together much either. But then again, it’s just way more fun (and probably builds higher readership numbers) to interpret every statement of our political opponents in the most uncharitable way humanly possible. People on the right and left do this a lot, but for some reason I expected better of MY.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
I’m tired of the fiction that conservative bloviators are so out of place in NYC and DC. Like Rich Lowry or George Will would fit right in at a NASCAR tail-gater.
They’re located in these places not by some ironic choice but because their every bit a part of the system they pretend to hate. They do very well by it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Are we going to play Rapper or Republican?
You can talk up Public Enemy all you want, but look at who the most powerful, best selling people in hip hop are: it’s not folks talking about embracing homosexuals (as the Rev. Wright did) or rejecting materialism (ditto). Sister Souljah is dead; long live 50 Cent.
Regarding the city zoning, if someone buys a property and builds the house on it himself, there is no minimum square footage requirement regardless of the size of the lot. Therefore if someone who is not wealthy can afford the lot in the first place, he is free to build a very small house on it. (Indeed, limitations on square footage often are coupled with the minimum requirements for lot sizes — the proffered reason for making lots a certain size is to maintain some space between houses, which won’t work if someone gets a big lot and then builds a massive house running to the lot’s property lines.)
Republicans in the last 50 years never received many black votes and received a small portion of the Hispanic vote.
Republicans didn’t lose the black vote until 1964, when they ran Goldwater, a man who alienated a large chunk of his own party because of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act (albeit on federalism rather than loopy Ron Paul “it worsened race relations and forced affirmative action!” grounds). Individual Republicans who committed to civil rights still garnered black voters’ support.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
“How can the Republicans have lost something that they never had. Republicans in the last 50 years never received many black votes and received a small portion of the Hispanic vote.”
Superdestroyer,
As usual, you ignore the fact that African-Americans steadfastly supported the GOP from the Civil War to the Great Depression. So your argument that the Republicans never had the votes of African-Americans is just an utter crock.
In addition, you ignore the fact that the Republicans in 2004 did capture a substantial portion of the vote from African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans who are RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES, particularly those with Protestant fundamentalist leanings. Granted, religious conservatives form a small segment of the African-American and Hispanic communities, but this segment can supply the margin needed by Republicans to reach 50%+1. Moreover, this religious conservative segment in racial minority communities has continued to grow in size, particularly in the Hispanic community (ever notice how many Hispanic churches have the words “iglesia Pentecostal” on them?).
So as much as I would love to write the epitaph of the GOP and of conservatism in general , I do not share your pessimism about the continued survival of Republicans and conservatives in the face of racial demographic change. In fact, as African-Americans and Hispanic Americans begin to constitute a larger proportion of the American electorate, I would expect a grower proportion of American whites to feal threatened by this change and become more rigidly conservative in their political outlook, and more rabidly partisan in their voting.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Regarding the city zoning, if someone buys a property and builds the house on it himself, there is no minimum square footage requirement regardless of the size of the lot. Therefore if someone who is not wealthy can afford the lot in the first place, he is free to build a very small house on it.
I think not. Minimum lot size, lot coverage, & setback requirements are generally applicable to all owners, whether individual, corporate, or whatever. You may know of an exception. I’d have to see it to be convinced.
Where a lot was legally platted and became substandard due to a subsequent building change, the owner may in some places have a vested right to build on it, or may be entitled to a variance on hardship grounds. I don’t know, I’m not a zoning lawyer.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
I believe that Bush received less than 10% of the black vote in both 2000 and 2004 and received less than 40% of the Hispanic vote even thought he was a native son of Texas and his brother was governor. Besides, the percentage of the Hispanic vote that Bush received has been in dispute and is probably lower than estimate. I do not believe that Bush received 50% of the hispanic vote in Texas.
In thirty years, the U.S. will have the same make up as California has today. Does anyone believe that blacks and Hispanics in California are going to start voting for the conservative party.
I also think you are confusing relgion is being conservative. Just because white church goers are more conservative than white non-church goers, does not mean that blacks or Hispanics are conservative. They both support big government and higher government spending. Both groups are also indifferent on national security issues.
September 3rd, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I would say that pop rap about money, guns and “bitches” could be considered coarse conservatism. But real hip-hop is steeped in a kind of revolutionary liberalism. I would hold Nas up as an example, like a previous poster. Listen to Public Enemy and Ice Cube for more examples.
Look, even Young Jeezy, who’s a classic money/guns/bitches pop rapper (actually, money/crack/bitches pop rapper), just put out an album entitled The Recession where he devotes a song to endorsing Obama, bitches about mandatory minimums, high rates of incarceration, Bush stealing the election in Florida, the war in Iraq, and generally seems to be in favor of some kind of ambitious redistributive scheme. Materialism does not equal crude conservatism.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I think the question of whether or not conservatism is really an ideology for white people is a separate question from whether or not that was Lowry’s secret meaning in his statement. Answering yes to the latter is just MY trying to interpret as uncharitably as possible.
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