I am not one that believes Americans do not talk about race or that we are cowards when it comes to the issue. Indeed Americans chatter about race all the time. After football, analyzing the issue of race seems to be our national pastime. I suppose it’s to be expected as the issue of race and racial equality is woven into the fabric of our country. But we have a very particular and stubborn framework within which we discuss the issue – race equals virtue.

For instance, the President’s recent Supreme Court nomination was more about race than it was jurisprudence – Justice Sotomayor’s race, her views on race and, once seated on the court, whether members of her ethnic group will now favor one political party over the other.

Republican Party leaders are staying up late at night trying to figure out how to attract more voters of a particular race. We can’t even discuss healthcare without it first passing through the racial sieve. The president has introduced the specter of “discrimination” to sell his plan to nationalize healthcare and new left intellectuals are now claiming that socialism is new code for the N-word. (Just so we are clear: socialism is code for socialism. The attempt to link opposition to policies perceived to be socialist (and in many instances they are in fact) to the scourge of racial hatred is despicable racial exploitation for the purposes of political gain. But I digress.)

I am told perhaps once a week by some angry Black or new liberal white reader that Black people are unwanted in America and that my respect for the founding principles (and opposition to the Democratic Party) is evidence of my racial self hatred.

No, we are not fearful of race; what we are is reluctant to move our discussions of race beyond the narrow confines of Black grievance and white guilt. Therefore the image I have of a town hall on race is an evening filled with Black appeals to historic injuries, Whites telling Black folk to stop whining and, what is more likely, many like myself hanging their heads in quiet resignation that no amount of national self-flagellating and no amount of time will ever absolve this nation of her original sin, and that indeed the sins of the father are visited upon each succeeding generation. If the goal is to move us beyond race – to prod us towards the virgin light of a post racial America — I fear such a town hall would be rather unproductive.

I am of the opinion that a national dialogue on the principle that our human capacity for reason should trump our notions of race would be far more interesting and ultimately far more fruitful.

The sins of Americas past as it pertains to race were begun in the misguided placing of virtue on skin color. Contrary to the ideals of our founding, the happenstance of birth as opposed to the individual struggle for a life of significance and good conveyed both worth and value upon some at the expense of others. Alas, we are still reaping the fruit of those seeds sown so long ago.

In the pursuit of a magical “level playing field” this generation continues to lay the veneer of race over every discussion of policy. The result is a continuing dialogue filled with terms like disparate impact and psycho-historical effect. These are all just variations on the same misguided attempt to assign worth to skin color. We talk all the time but never learn the lesson that before men can be equal men must first be free – free of judgments based on their race or ethnicity.

The road to post racial America will not pass through emotional rap sessions but through the veneration of the still revolutionary idea that God creates all men with an equal right to life, liberty and private property regardless of race.

If there is a town hall that aims to engage citizens about the value of these ideas versus the value of skin color you can count me in.

The year was 1984 and Michael Jackson was the biggest sensation since Elvis – moonwalking was rapidly replacing blue suede shoes in America’s pop culture lexicon.  Jackson’s notorious publicity machine was becoming a global tour de force, and he was sending the White House requests for visits, concert tickets and more!  Most of all, Jackson was keen on having Reagan present him with a major award.

After all, Michael Jackson always gets what he wants, right? This has been a familiar refrain in the stories to emerge from the recent coverage of the pop star’s death — Jackson wanted a Chimp named Bubbles, he got it.  Jackson wanted a rocket suit, he got it.  New nose? Done, done and done again!  One of the tragedies about Michael Jackson is that no one would ever say “no” to him.  Makes you wonder if Jackson was not only the King of Pop, but the Prince of little Punks. 

In 1984, when the Jackson’s “Victory” tour was heading to Washington, D.C., the White House received a list of wishes Jackson expected to have granted: Presidential attendance at the performance, official White House invitations along with special honors from the President lauding — and practically knighting — him in front of the world press (though Jackson didn’t use the word “knight,” we know he had probably picked out the outfit as evidenced in the above photo).

The whole affair would mean big, big headlines.  But there was one hiccup.  Jackson’s requests had to go through a certain 29 year old lawyer named John Roberts — and he was no pushover. Roberts fired off this memo:

Frankly, I find the obsequious attitude of some members of the White House staff toward Mr. Jackson’s attendants, and the fawning posture they would have the President of the United States adopt, more than a little embarrassing.

With that, the bubble burst on the King of Pop. While most of the world was going ga-ga, Roberts was unimpressed and level headed. Denying Jackson’s request for a major award to be presented by President Reagan, Roberts penned a confidential memo to his boss saying:

Enough is enough. The Office of Presidential Correspondence is not yet an adjunct of Michael Jackson’s PR firm.

Not… yet. Perhaps even Roberts recognized the immense, inevitable power of Jacko.  Eventually Reagan held a ceremony in the Rose Garden to present a lesser, symbolic humanitarian award to Jackson for a PSA announcement on teen drinking and driving.  A scant six years later, Roberts had moved on, and Jackson was back at the White House.  This time, he received his much bigger, super-duper award from President George H.W. Bush: “Artist of the Decade.”  When even Presidents can’t say “no,” druggists have no chance.

Now, I can’t speak for Judge Sotomayor, but all this raises a VERY important question that I hope someone asks: would a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male, like John Roberts, who hasn’t lived that life?  Or put more simply: would she have said ‘no’ to Jacko?

This week the Arizona state legislature answered that question with a resounding, “yes!” The state legislature cleared the way to place the Arizona Civil Rights Initiative or ACRI, on the Ballot in 2010. ACRI is a constitutional amendment that would prevent the state from discriminating on the basis or race or sex in the areas of public employment, contracting or education.

The action taken by the State legislature now makes it possible for the people of Arizona to actually decide if their state (and ultimately our nation) agrees with the sentiments of former President Kennedy.

That is not to say the opposition rolled over. No longer able to gum the petition process; they resorted to stalling tactics and back biting.

Hispanic legislators claimed that Rep Steve Montenegro, who sponsored the measure in the assembly, was not truly Hispanic because he is Puerto Rican and not Mexican. No doubt this must come as a shock to the Obama Administration. Judge Sonia “wise Latina” Sotomayor is being hailed as potentially the first Hispanic to sit on the United States Supreme Court. Sotomayor is Puerto Rican. The good news is that thanks tot his revelation Senate Republicans are now free to oppose Sotomayor. Because she is Puerto Rican and not Mexican, Republicans need no longer fear losing the Hispanic vote.

More fascinating were the words of State Representative Cloves Campbell. During testimony before a legislative committee Campbell insisted that special preferences [based on race] would be necessary for years to come. When asked exactly how many years he responded, “400 years!” Thus Campbell provided credence to the growing sense that he took the small bus to school and also that a good many supporters of racial preferences are more interested in exacting payback then they are in actually realizing equity.

The Rationale of Campbell and others that favor preferences is that they are needed to ensure diversity. Racism in America is systemic so if left to its own devices the system will naturally deny Black people (and other minorities) access. As proof they offer what is known as disparate representation or disparate impact. In other words the fact that a particular minority group is not statistically represented in any endeavor or policy at the same percentage they are of the population is proof of discrimination and it is therefore necessary to cook the books as it were.

The problem, of course is that people are not statistics they are individuals and ought to be judged as such against the same criteria. The very idea of disparate group representation as a rationale for race preferences turns that proposition on its head as it also does the idea of equality before the law and equality of opportunity. It is as if in answer to Kennedy’s question supporters of preferences have said, “Not so fast.”

They must be made to explain how this nation will ever move beyond its ugly history of racial discrimination if we not only allow but encourage government to discriminate based on race. They must tell us if they believe “the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.” Finally they must explain to the citizens of Arizona (and the larger American citizenry)– what could be more important than having a state constitution unequivocally affirm that it must treat all of its citizens equally and without regard to race?

In 1963 Kennedy asked the country to make a moral decision. In the age of Obama those that continue to support racial preferences must do likewise. They must ground their opposition not in legalese or political correctness but in the terra firma of moral correctness. They must follow the lead of the Arizona legislature and examine their consciences and then take the fist steps toward a truly post racial society.

It is a continuing source of fascination that the new left has chosen this view of the founding, replete with its historical inaccuracies, while the political right has adopted that of Abraham Lincoln and Justice John Marshall Harlan. It was Harlan who wrote in his famous dissent in Plessey v Ferguson that “Our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”

This brings us to the current controversy surrounding the president’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court.

During her Judge Mario G. Olmos Lecture at Berkeley Sotomayor remarked, “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences. I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Revelations of the remarks were met with condemnation. Democrats were shocked-yes shocked!-to discover that some Americans find repugnant the idea that ones ethnicity makes them more qualified to make decisions. The left has responded to the reproof of Sotomayor with stuttering indignation, accusations of a latent fear of brown people and claims that Sotomayor’s reputation was being besmirched unfairly. (The fact that Democrats have routinely besmirched the reputations of brown justices nominated by Republican presidents on far less substantive grounds or outright lies seems to have slipped their minds. But I digress.)

In point of fact, Sotomayor is not a racist. She is, however, clearly enamoured with the identity politics of the left.

The denial of a universal human nature is the philosophical heart of multiculturalism. For those steeped in multiculturalism there is no objective truth or objective right and wrong because reason is purely the result of different cultural and environmental influences. Therefore the values of every culture are equally valid. The individual ceases to exist except as part of that larger culture from which he receives his identity, his rights and his very life. This is a direct contradiction of the declaration, which recognizes certain self-evident truths that exist for every individual in every time.

The political extension of multiculturalism is diversity. We are now taught that diversity (as opposed to racial non-discrimination) is a virtue – that we must have critical mass in our schools and universities and that in order to respond to the varying needs of a varied people our government agencies and courts must be made to “look” like America. The political method turns the foundational principle of judgment “without regard to race” on its head. What we learn is that there is some inherent value in race, that in fact race is primary. And after rejecting the idea of a universal human nature and the universal truths that should apply to all men we are met with the revelation that our ideas of justice and compassion are not the result of reason and an association with the divine, but of “inherent physiological and cultural differences,” which make Latina jurists superior to white male jurists.

Had similar sentiments been expressed by a white man his career as a justice would be over. And properly so. Isn’t the disapprobation of Sotomayor a sign that we have entered into a true post racial society? Isn’t the vision we have for America one in which we repudiate the idea that race conveys some value or detriment to ones ability?

The left cannot have its racial cake and eat it too. The founding was either true or it was not. If true then Justice Harlan was correct and our constitution is color blind, racial non-discrimination is in fact an essential building block of our republic and a value to be encouraged in our society. If the founding was untrue then Justice Taney and Calhoun were correct and our ideas of race are dictated not by any universal truth embodied in our founding document, but by the changing whims of men and the onward marching of time.

Joseph C. Phillips is the author of “He Talk Like a White Boy” available wherever books are sold.

Unless I’m missing something, I don’t recall the Women’s Suffrage Revolt of 1920 where armed women stormed the Capitol, beheaded president Harding and declared their right to vote.  I also must have missed it when Martin Luther King Jr. unleashed suicide bombers on D.C. until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

No.  Great men and women brought the nation together and increased awareness of social and political injustices.  The great service of Martin Luther King, Fredrick Douglas, Susan B. Anthony and others was to expose injustice and let the powers that be know that the Constitution should and does apply to all people.

Power, they say, is taken and not given.  Except, of course, in the United States.

All of these changes have come to pass because enlightened white men, who held power in this country, saw and appreciated the injustice.  Sure, many of them opposed change, but in the end, wiser heads prevailed and the status quo was changed.

In 2008, 95% of black voters voted for Obama.  Imagine if white men truly were the racist, power clinging, exploiters that many would have you believe we are and voted the exact same way.  Obama would have lost by a landslide.  In fact, white men make up a larger voter block than all minorities combined.  Yet, we don’t vote as a group.  We have varied political views.  White men will vote for and work towards policies that are directly counter-intuitive to their own financial and social standing, simply because they believe it is the right thing to do.

So when someone claims that a “wise Latina” would make a better decision than a white man in terms of social justice, I call foul.  A little friend of mine called History says something different.

I don’t confuse this hypothetical inquiry with Beethoven’s realization of his genius. I’m sure he knew of his own greatness. This is different, though, from the pressure that one may experience if his or her genius is also perceived in its historic context and significance. 

In other words, would Beethoven be able to remain Beethoven if, well, he was conscious of the fact that he was Beethoven, (or Beethoven the way he is perceived today)?

These musings of mine could easily be dismissed as exercises in futility or outbursts of excessive if not useless imagination if they were not so coincidental with the policies and style of our current government and prevailing cultural mindset. 

Just reflect on how inappropriately often and in such unjustified associations we have heard the word “historic” in our very recent history. Obama’s presidency is “historic.” The first female Republican VP is “historic,” as well the first “historic” female Democrat VP, who by the way had a falling out with the first “historic” African-American president. Now, we have a “historic” first Latino woman who was nominated as a Supreme Court Justice. 

This concept of “historic” assumes a false level of quality and meaning. Unhealthy awareness and emphasis on “historic” deprives us from the realization of the meaning of history. “Historic” has become the whore of history. It is a telemarketers’ approach to history. Instead of letting history happen, it is being fabricated. The event is being hyped up and flashed out as something that we must acknowledge as carrying some sort of generational significance. The real process is not allowed to take place and stand on its own merit but instead forced into history as something that belongs there on the basis of it being “historic.” 

It is a tautology that has a danger of infinite regression to nonsense. 

Isn’t everything that happens in history “historic?” Just like everything that happens in the physical world is physical. 

“Life happens to us when we are busy planning it’, said John Lennon.  And so does history. 

Real history is a process that involves the totality of existence and experience, the concept of “historic” disrupts this process and takes everything out of context and meaning. “Historic” spotlights and does not comprehend. History is a conscious memory, while “historic” is a selective amnesia. Just compare how “historic” was the ascension to Presidency of Barack Obama, the son of white college educated woman and Kenyan student and how hostile and “un-historic” was the appointment of a grandson of slaves Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. Also reflect on how “historic” was Hillary Clinton, the wife of a former president running for president, and how “un-historic” was Sarah Palin the wife of an Alaskan fisherman. 

“Historic” it is not just sickness of our age. Every age has heralded its “historic” moments while ignoring the true meaning of history as a living totality of time – past, present and future.

Yet, our age of instant communication tends to overly “historisize’ an event or an individual without giving it due time to mature and organically enter the fabric of human memory. 

It is only unfortunate that this flashy media/entertainment/ marketing hype became such an established norm and guiding star in our everyday decision making process and social attitudes.

The first three days following Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for the Supreme Court Justice have already been indicted in the Wall of Fame of “Historic.” Anything that follows now will be working against this “historic” candidacy.  In reality, “historic” rapidly becomes the code word for race and gender politics and, of course, by default, race and gender blackmail.

“If there is the perception that somehow she is being treated unfairly or they are distorting her record or comments, I think there will be a backlash in the Latino community,” said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza. “All we want is for the process to be respectful and fair. There could be great resentment within the Latino community if it is seen somehow that she is not being treated with the respect due to a Supreme Court nominee.”

One recalls confirmation hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas and wonders why there was no backlash in the African-American  community over “the high tech lynching” of a brilliant  black man, a descendant of slaves, who was moving up to a “historic” height of becoming the first black conservative Supreme Court Justice. 

Why there was no backlash from African-American leadership and community when a black man was treated with appalling level of disrespect by a white male whose family possessed slaves only three generations ago? That white male did not consider Judge Thomas as a “historic” personality when he was accusing him on the basis of false and unsubstantiated claims, but years later by  the same iron logic of “historisizing” that man had a change of heart and became the second man to “the historic” personality of Barack Obama. Yes, that white male who was publicly and unreasonably humiliating Clarence Thomas was no one else than venerable Senator Joe Biden, now very sensitive to “‘historic” process after he lost his presidential bid.

Why did Judge Thomas lose his immunity of “historic” being? Was it because Judge Thomas never thought of himself in “historic” terms, or to open parenthesis – in racist terms? Is it because Clarence Thomas who was removed from slavery only by three generations and grew up as poor boy working on his grandfather’s farm from dawn to dusk entered the history on his own merit and based on the “content of his character” rather than riding on the “historic’ wave?” Or was it that he never thought in Judge Sotomayor’s lines when she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life”?

If by “historic” we agreed to imply accomplishments and processes that entirely exclude white male and if we have to be  careful, as Press Secretary Gibbs suggests, in criticizing the “historic,” then let’s call it what it is – “a racial blackmail.” I am sure Judge Sotomayor is a brilliant woman but there are a lot of brilliant and capable and Yale graduate types of people who do not meet the fundamental qualification of being on the Supreme Court.

The primary qualification is not brilliance, a great personal story or being “historic” but a highly just and measured intelligence equipped to translate the truth in totality — in the real time of history that transcends race and gender, that transcends the precise definition of flashily marketed “historic.” It is a person’s balance of character that elevates one’s judicial capability beyond personal opinions and leanings as well as the dangerous trends of time.

In fact, the Supreme Court Justices are not the 9 best jurists chosen from the multitude, but the 9 best equipped citizens who can be trusted with the custody of eternal truth. By definition, the Supreme Court Justices, must be those citizens who transcend personal and contemporary beyond ordinary

What we need on the Supreme bench, at least as an ideal, are “Beethovens” of the law so we can be ameliorated by their ability to transcend the left and right vibrations of our soul and interpret the law of balance, the only truthful music of society. 

Just as is the case of Beethoven when we listen to his music, we could care less if he was the first great deaf composer or the last sharp-seeing German. We are carried away by the meaning and power of his music and it is the beauty of his work that highlights Beethoven in the history of humanity.  If Beethoven was concerned with being the first “historic” deaf German composer from Bonn, we would’ve had him in the “Guinness Book of Records” rather than on our shelves of favorite music and eternally burning the light of truth and beauty in our hearts.

I decided to stick to direct quotes from the President within the last 18 months. Some I have commented on, the others, as they say at Harvard Law, res ipsa loquitur.    

1)  ”…not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t — not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited — I am.”   Speech to Congress, February 24, 2009

2) “And that is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists…” Speech to Congress, February 24, 2009

3) “My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs.” I wonder if the President knows he doesn’t have a line item veto.  

4)  “My immediate task is making sure that the second half of that money, $350 billion, is spent properly. That’s my first job.”  Press conference February 9, 2009, talking about TARP money.

5)  ”It also contains an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability, so that every American will be able to go online and see where and how we’re spending every dime. What it does not contain, however, is a single pet project, not a single earmark, and it has been stripped of the projects members of both parties found most objectionable.” Press conference February 9, 2009  talking about his own economic bill.

6)  “Second is recognition of the limits of the judicial role, an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret, not make law, to approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice…” I thought about putting this first because he was introducing Sotomayor who is on tape saying judges make policy, among other things.

7) “It’s not just enough to change the players. We’ve gotta change the game.” He has appointed over 150 recycled Clintionistas

8) ”I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.”  Either this is a lie or his later position where he opposes gay marriage, take your pick for number eight.

9) “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.” In reference to Rev. Wright 42 days before he disowned him.

10) “To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn: I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President, too.”

Game over. 

And now, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is pretty much doing the same thing preemptively, telling critics of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to watch what they say when it comes to her confirmation hearing. This is amazing, only because there was no need to say it at all. 

Everyone’s already on their tippy toes. Look at the media who swallowed the “the first Latina ever” story as the only the story worth reporting. And check out some of the wimpier columnists, who would rather roll over on their damp mattresses than fight against the joys of “empathy.” Here’s a hint: when someone thanks you for your willingness to comply, they’re really grateful for your wussiness. 

For fun, imagine if Marlin Fitzwater had told the liberal media to watch their words during the confirmation of Thomas – another Supreme Court nominee with an “inspirational” story and a nonwhite skin color. Would that have stopped the pitchforks? Uh, no.

Hell, do any of you remember Judge Robert Bork – a brilliant man so vilified because he didn’t fit the liberal mold – that his last name became a verb for political lynching?

I do. Which is why I think raising a little hell over Sotomayor seems like a fun way to spend the summer.

But then again, I may just do sudoku.