Matthew Yglesias offers an interesting deconstruction of the attempts to link the Duke rape case to the Imus controversy. Like Yglesias, I have avoided writing about Duke — primarily because it was an ongoing police investigation and information was constantly in flux. And like him, I was struck by the attempts of some to dismiss the Imus controversy and its ugly racial elements by tossing the Duke case onto the table.
For months, …, every time I blog on anything even vaguely race-related, I’m struck by the sheer volume of people who want to respond “what about the Duke lacrosse case?” Well, I think, what about it? Then I read something like this from Victor Davis Hanson who really doesn’t cover these issues either, and it hits me. There’s this huge block of people out there, primarily reasonably prosperous middle-aged middle class white men, who in all genuineness seem to believe that what went down there is emblematic of broad-based social problem. They see the Imus controversy through the same lens — the lens that makes them think the issue here is Al Sharpton or hip-hop. It’s a mentality that believes — deeply and sincerely — that the middle-aged white dude just can’t get a fair shake in this country.
My sense, after this week, is that Yglesias’ depiction of the race filter is accurate. Much of the defense of Imus — and of others who have made race-denigrating coments — plays off this attitude.
That it doesn’t reflect reality, however, that white middle-class men are not a put upon class, not as a class, anyway.
If white middle-class men feel they aren’t getting a fair shake — and they aren’t — they should get together with all the rest of those not getting a fair shake and hold the people in power accountable.
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