A Different Kind of Division

[Valin]

NY Times:

ROSS DOUTHAT

August 24, 2013

 

 

(Snip)

 

Then, the major issue facing black America was entirely zero sum: for Dr. King to win, Bull Connor had to lose. There was no potential common ground so long as segregation lasted. Jim Crow had to perish outright for African-Americans to move forward as Americans. And their white supremacist oppressors knew it, which is why they turned to state-sponsored violence and state-sanctioned terrorism to defend their system and way of life.

 

Today our polarized politics may encourage a zero-sum attitude, but the underlying realities do not. George Zimmerman is not a half-Hispanic Byron De La Beckwith. Voter ID laws are not Jim Crow come again. And the thread of white identity politics running through Obama-era conservatism is just that a sense of resentment and grievance, not a supremacist ideology reborn.

 

(Snip)

 

Likewise in education policy, another longstanding racial flash point. There the older battles over integration and busing have mostly given way to a debate about competition and teacher standards in which conservative states are often laboratories for reform. From Chris Christies New Jersey to Perrys Texas (which does a better job educating minority students than many liberal states), the politics of education increasingly produces cross-racial alliances and intraparty debates that look nothing like the civil-rights era divides.

 

(Snip)