R. P. Wolff, Ben Carson, and The Left’s Hatred of Conservative Blacks

Robert Paul Wolff over at The Philosopher's Stone opines:

Ben Carson may just be the most thoroughly despicable person to make a run for the presidency in modern times. So I take particular pleasure in the third quarter financial report that revealed that the good doctor spent 57% of the money he raised — raising money. I think while he has devoted himself to uttering ugly, contemptible things in his soft, soothing voice someone has been taking him for a ride. I hope his deeply religious supporters appreciate the fact that their dollars are being spent searching for dollars [and running up impressive tabs at expensive eateries — but that is another story.] Actually, since his biggest fans are faithful attendees at Christian services, they are probably used to this. (Emphasis added.)

Professor Wolff is not just some two-bit blogger, but an accomplished philosopher who has written some good books. But then he posts scurrilous, slanderous stuff like the above. (And this is just one example.)

What explains the Left's hatred of conservative blacks, a hatred so intense that it unhinges otherwise rational people like Wolff? Comments are enabled. I'm interested in your theories.

How is it that if a conservative argues against the ideas or policies of a black leftist such as Obama he is immediately labelled a racist, while if a leftist like Wolff viciously and personally attacks a black conservative while ignoring the content of his remarks, he escapes the charge of racism?

See here for other Wolff entries.

Posted

October 20, 2015

Leftism and Political Correctness, Race

Bill Vallicella

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Comments

18 responses to “R. P. Wolff, Ben Carson, and The Left’s Hatred of Conservative Blacks”

Mtowns

October 20, 2015

“Ben Carson may just be the most thoroughly despicable person to make a run for the presidency in modern times.”
Well, it seems that Herr Doctor Wolff doesn’t know much about modern — or even contemporary — American political history. It just staggers the mind. Hillary has an active ongoing FBI criminal investigation hanging over her head, one that has the extreme potential of an indictment, with years in prison on the line, and Wolff thinks that Dr. Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon is “despicable”. Good grief!
With respect to your question, the only theory I have is complete and total moral degradation. Nothing else really explains it. These guys just live in utter fantasy worlds, worlds that are intrinsically linked to a bankrupt moral vision.
Another possibility: Dr. Carson is living testament that a person can pull himself up out of poverty if he or she only has the grit and the desire to work hard and achieve. He is the old American Dream personified. Thus, he must be negated at all costs.

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Joe

October 20, 2015

They hate black conservatives the most because blacks are to them the ultimate left-wing argument against America. They are, even more so than indigenous populations, the group that has endured all that is wrong with our civilization, which they are endlessly trying to destroy and change. For a black person to then actually accept and champion elements of that civilization against them is the ultimate sickness within the black community. He’s a traitor working with the “colonizers” and those keeping his own people down. He’s equivalent in a way to a jew who is a Nazi, or the “house slave”. That’s why someone can call him “the most thoroughly despicable person” to run for president in modern times when he’s neurosurgeon who’s been helping to save people’s lives for over 20 years.
Just one theory.

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Joe Odegaard

October 20, 2015

What explains the unhinged hatred? It is the age old story of evil actually confronted with goodness. Let us not mince words. We are dealing with evil.

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spear

October 20, 2015

To lefties like Wolff, it is an established fact that conservatives are racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobes.
A conservative who also is of a minority group belongs to a special circle of hell for the lefty. They are, in some sense, hypocrites, for they have sided with the racists. And minority members, more than anyone else, should know what the ill-effects of conservatism are.
There is the similar “Uncle Tom” component, which Clarence Thomas is still bludgeoned with today. A black man who is conservative and comes to prominence does so by acting in compliance with the “old racist system” that keeps the blacks down, except for the “good ol’ boys” who work to keep the “system” in place. These blacks are especially held in contempt, because they are perceived as keeping their own down and benefiting from their own group’s oppression.
Having said what I said above, I suspect that a white candidate who what Carson has said would actually be held in contempt almost equally in Wolff’s eyes. His comments about the possibility of a Muslim president, his comments about the Oregon shooting, violate sacred cows of the left. He has violated their commitment to multiculturalism and he has engaged in “victim blaming” in their eyes. These are great evils to the progressive.

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jmsmith

October 21, 2015

Liberals see a man like Carson as an apostate, and to the faithful, an apostate is far worse than a mere infidel. You’ve seen the same attitude at work in the university, where conservative professors are held in greater contempt than, say, conservative lawyers. Like conservative Blacks, conservative professors are seen as traitors to the tribe, apostates. Traitors are always dealt with more harshly than mere enemies.

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BV

October 21, 2015

Right, an apostate and a traitor, indeed a traitor to his race as if race brings with it a set of ideological commitments. But why not if race is a ‘social construct’ — an absurd notion — or a choice as in the Rachel Dolezal case?

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Malcolm Pollack

October 21, 2015

Bill, the “race is a social construct” doublethink is one of the hardest self-delusions of the Left for a rational person to get his head around. On its face it seems an obvious absurdity to build so much of one’s ideology, and to expend so much effort and political capital, on something that, according to one’s own dogma, has no reality.
The only way it can even begin to make sense is if race is superficially real, but only “skin deep”. In other words: yes, there are ancient human subpopulations that differ in their pigmentation — but these variations in skin color absolutely must not be imagined to correlate, even statistically, with any other human qualities (unless, of course, the comparison with whites is a positive one). In this way race becomes just “real” enough for right-wing bigots to pick out their victims, and for liberals to succor these victims as an oppressed class.
So: to be a member of the victim class, but then to turn your back on your saviors on the virtuous Left and associate with your oppressor, is not only to betray your race, but to reject the Good. (And to insult the good people of the Left — but I repeat myself.)

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Malcolm Pollack

October 21, 2015

As for Rachel Dolezal, her crime was to covet, and pretend to, the elevated status of genuine victim-class membership, when she was actually a member of the despised oppressor class. As I’ve attempted to explain here (see also here), suffering and oppression are way too valuable to let just anybody enjoy them.

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Blaine Holder

October 21, 2015

My thought is that this isn’t even about race. The problem isn’t that he has betrayed his race but that he is successful. There seems to be this thought on the left that by being white you are automatically privileged and middle class and it you are black then you are poor and need government assistance. Carson falls outside of their over simplified categories. Therefore they just treat him how they would treat any other successful person, like he is white. This would mean that the lefts perspective actually turns in on itself and they become more racist than the conservatives they oppose.

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BV

October 21, 2015

Malcolm,
I noticed that too. There is something deeply paradoxical and indeed absurd about an identity politics that denies the reality of race or of sex.
There is also the tendency of lefties to defend underdogs regardless of what the underdogs have done to assure their remaining underdogs. For example, the Left’s support of Palestinians despite the fact that much of their misery is self-inflicted.
But now I am blaming the victim which is sure to enrage a leftist when it is obvious that victim-blaming is perfectly legitimate within limits.

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BV

October 21, 2015

As for the response to Dolezal, isn’t that what Marcuse back in the ’60s called ‘co-optation’?

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Tully Borland

October 21, 2015

I don’t think anyone has said this yet explicitly.
The Ben Carson’s are simply a huge political and existential threat.
Political: If the black vote were suddenly split, that would spell doom for Democrats.
Existential: The elite left needs to be needed. Ben Carson is a perfect example of someone who should but doesn’t need the left.

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BV

October 21, 2015

I agree, Tully. The Dems need the black vote and they need to keep the blacks on the leftist ‘plantation’ where they can be ‘helped’ and of course used in the promotion of the leftist agenda.
Leftists love victims and underdogs and it needs this clientele to stay in business.

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Whitewall

October 21, 2015

Carson has done the unforgivable…he found a weak spot in the Left’s imaginary fence around the plantation and made good an escape. He became a run away. Later he became successful. A run away who has succeeded and thereby disrupts the narcotic of Black suffering which is such an addiction to the Leftist psyche. They literally draw life blood somehow from the tribulations of Black Americans. White Liberal guilt can be a mutually beneficial thing.

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BV

October 21, 2015

You are right to point to the role of white liberal guilt. The lefties know how to exploit it. Typical race articles in the leftist press begin with references to slavery and Jim Crow as if these evils were not done away with decades ago.
The sad thing is that blacks will most likely always be on the bottom because they waste their time cultivating grievances and listening to race hustlers such as Al Sharpton.

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BV

October 21, 2015

There is also the problem of tribalism among blacks. Well-placed and successful blacks such as Juan Williams and Colin Powell will not denounce the Black Lives Matter thugs.
It would be as if you asked me: do you denounce the mafia? And I hem and haw and say, well those guys are mostly just businessmen trying to do right by their families, and you know John Gotti could be a little rough on people, but he was a great father and his kids loved him . . .

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David Gordon

October 24, 2015

Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell have been victims of this sort of abuse.

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BV

October 24, 2015

Hi David,
And I’m sure you remember Herman Cain and how he was treated:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4544494/hatred-on-the-left-disgusting-attack-on-herman-cain-part-1/?#sp=show-clips

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