The eagerness with which critics and journalists have jumped on this supposed revelation of conservative racism should warn you to step back and mistrust those indignant voices. They smell an opportunity, an advantage over their opponents, and that’s the real issue, not the details of a history curriculum. If they have to distort those details in order to land a blow, so be it.
Too many conservatives fail to understand this rhetoric. The point of the current vilification isn’t to assert a position about history but to demonize a group. The attackers have no desire to dig into the day-to-day existence of plantation life, particularly the many ways in which slaves managed to cope and endure. No, they just want to humble and defeat their adversaries, to demolish the patriotic impulse and Western Civ legacy that gives energy to Republican Party initiatives.
It takes little effort to refute the specific charge, that is, the allegation that the curriculum is an apology for slavery and that it seeks to erase African American history, as our vice president put it. Slaves who made themselves useful to the masters by becoming skilled in carpentry, brickwork, or cooking got better treatment and were better equipped after emancipation than those who did not. That’s just common sense.
But, again, facts aren’t the point. Refutation doesn’t impress the accusers or their listeners who despise conservatives with a passion. They won’t withdraw the complaint. If a charge puts the opposition on the defensive, then it’s a good one, whether true or false. Winning is everything.
And not just winning. The nature of the charge makes that clear. It says that Gov. Ron DeSantis and his advisers aren’t merely wrong about history. If critics showed that they cited dubious sources and misrepresented historical facts, but still acted as responsible, enlightened officials, a debate would proceed. But the list of crimes goes further than that. It says that DeSantis & Co. want to denigrate an entire people, obscure their pain, and deny their experience. They have vicious motives, you see; they’re abusive individuals.
That’s the conclusion some on the left wish for Americans to draw. Forget the details of slavery—this is about the vile character of right-leaning officials. The slavery issue is but a strong moral pretext for demonstrating the immorality of the other side. The bad guys must be humiliated and denounced, then removed from the scene.
It doesn’t matter that identity politicians trade in simplistic, sentimental versions of victimization that divide the players into helpless innocents and dastardly torturers. The setup serves its purpose, compelling the villains to explain themselves. It’s a giant guilt trip, potent and handy and easy.
As I said, too many conservative commentators and politicians fail to recognize the game that’s being played. Or, perhaps, acknowledging the low tactics of race accusers is too confrontational for them, too bare-knuckle. They respond to the inaccuracies with factual corrections and think they’ve won the debate, not realizing that their antagonists have no interest in debating. They don’t allow a conservative a whisper of credibility. C’mon, you don’t sit down with abhorrent figures and pretend that they have a legitimate position. Instead, you act as prosecutor and approach the culprits as, precisely, culprits.
No matter how well they explain, no matter how many exculpatory facts they muster, the defendants remain defendants, guilty, always guilty. Maybe they have proven themselves innocent of this one specific charge, but they’re guilty in so many other ways that we needn’t show clemency.
Conservatives can’t verify their good character with these attackers. Historical facts and skillful articulation of them go nowhere. This is a contest of virtue, not of ideas and truths. Republicans don’t compete in that kind of skirmish very well, as we know. They prefer the worlds of law and business, not the culture/education spheres where these kinds of ad hominem tactics happen all the time. The forensic rules of political correctness baffle them. Imagine the 2012 pair Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan sparring with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Rachel Maddow over U.S. history. The latter would wipe the floor with the former.
The left knows this. It’s the only situation in which Vice President Kamala Harris has confidence. Republicans have typically responded to this cultural weakness by avoiding culture war issues as much as possible—which is why leftists and Democrats raise them so often (while berating conservatives on those few occasions when they’ve done so, for “being divisive” and reigniting the old wars).
While driving through the Midwest this week, I heard a conservative radio host criticize Mr. DeSantis for his anti-“woke” message, claiming that it alienates moderates and independents and costs him national support. His advice: leave the culture stuff out. If that’s best, however, then why do President Joe Biden and leading Democrats push pro-woke policies and attitudes so hard?
Answer: because they sense Republican fear. They know when the guys on the other side of the table blink. To run away from the culture wars doesn’t strengthen a conservative’s campaign. Rather, it hands the opposition a trump card. Unless Republicans across the board (not just Donald Trump and Mr. DeSantis) show as much unity and force on the culture/education front as the Democrats do, 2024 is going to be a long and frustrating year.
