Ruben Navarrette, who writes for the San Diego Union Tribune, has a column in the Seattle Times that hits the proverbial nail on the head in “Liberals don’t know what to do with nondeferential minorities”:
In the minds of many liberal Democrats, Hispanics and African Americans must seem to come in only two varieties: deferential or defective….So this is the Democrats’ dilemma. How are they supposed to market themselves to minorities as the one-and-only party of opportunity when Bush is putting nonwhite faces in high places? Better to try to paint the Republican Party as a restricted club, as Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean did recently when he described the GOP as “pretty much a white Christian party.” And minority Republicans as aberrations.
Ruben and I should meet for a cup of coffee. We could trade stories all day long.
I got an e-mail the other day from someone who says he’s a white liberal. He was writing to alert me that some of his conservative family and friends make “condescending remarks” about black people. Knowing human nature as I do (because I know my own so well), I have no doubt that his white conservative family and friends say negative things about blacks. And white liberals. And each other. And him. So what was his point?
That I’m being used by white conservatives.
In what way, you ask? Well, trying to follow his line of reasoning was difficult. From what I gathered, the mere fact that he’s heard white conservatives say nasty things about blacks means that since I hold views similar to theirs, I’m being used by the entire group. Perhaps as a patsy or a lapdog, playing the fall girl and delivering coded messages to the white nation. How should I know!? I’m only guessing. Don’t think about it too much, or you’ll get a brain cramp like I did. And please don’t ask me to post the entire e-mail. It won’t help you.
I could make a similar argument, a stronger one at that, about black liberals, but what’s the point?
Such correspondence used to raise my blood pressure, but now I let it roll off like water on a duck’s back. That’s just the way white liberals think. When they’re not calling me an ignorant bigot (sniveling behind aliases, of course), they’re giving me the “heads up” that I’m playing the House Negro for their conservative counterparts. I explained to the e-mailer, as I do with others, that God gave me a brain, and I manage to use it fairly well.
My opinions, which I stand behind publicly, every day on this blog, are mine. For all I care, neo-Nazis (white power!) can agree with every single word I write.
They keep forgetting to sign the checks, though. Hmmm…what’s up with that? 
