It’s not just that what Pat Robertson said is heartless, mean-spirited and hateful. It’s not that it is totally historically inaccurate, and it’s not that it is a nearly unprecedented example of blaming the victim. It’s also worth noting, however briefly, that it is terribly racist as well.

Robertson, and I suspect millions for whom he is a guiding light, has a hard time explaining how it was that people of African and Native American descent threw off the chains of imperialism so long ago without the help of a some supernatural force.  Yes, long before much of the rest of the hemisphere had emerged from colonization and subjugation, proud group of people of color- led by revolutionary Toussaint L’ouverture- crushed  the mighty French empire. So invested is Robertson in his own whiteness, that he cannot imagine a situation in which black folks might get the better of white folks without the help of the Devil. Robertson’s quirky theory is not just about his usual God-on-our-side attribution of disaster (see his comments about 9/11 and Katrina)- this time it is a clear representation of his racial politics.

This vision of the Haitian people and their history also absolves people of European descent- especially those from the United States- of any complicity in the degradation and overwhelming poverty suffered by the Haitian people for so long. No market reforms, no amount of economic or humanitarian aid will make a difference- these people are cursed and doomed to their fate. This kind of supernatural attribution, then, serves both to rob black folks of their agency and proud history of resistance while obscuring the role of the rest of the world in creating a situation in which Haitians (even without natural disasters) live and have lived for so long.

As with any comment like this one, it is not so shocking that an individual holds such a worldview. What warrants attention is that Robertson’s choice to publicly endorse such a position suggests that there are millions who share this way of seeing the world. And that, not unlike the earthquake that destroyed thousands of human lives, is a true disaster.

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I was just listening to an interview with folks involved in the making of the movie  The Big Fan and something occurred to me. For most folks, being a true sports fan is about having strong opinions- to be filled with certainty about a team’s personnel decisions or what factors might cause a team to do well or to do badly.

I offer an alternative: in sports analysis, like political analysis, being truly engaged is about seeing things from multiple points of view, understanding that things have many causes, and that solutions are seldom simple. To be clear, this kind of understanding- this kind of orientation to the situation- is not mutually exclusive with strong opinions or strong engagement. I submit that perhaps the opposite is true. One can only truly arrive at a strongly held perspective when one understands the full complexity of the issue at hand- including evidence to the contrary of that strongly held perspective.

A big part of our problem, it seems to me, is that this kind of analysis is (so they tell me)  not good TV. So we have Jim Rome and Glenn Beck. But once again, I stand astride the the disappointment of today and am hopeful for tomorrow. I am a Chicago Cubs fan, after all.

In the flurry of reaction to Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s comparison of conservative resistance to passing health care reform to historical instances of conservative resistance to change, one is taken back a bit. It’s true that Reid’s argument was stiff and awkward, but the substance of his point is not really a historical controversy whatsoever: political conservatives have resisted change throughout the history of these United States.

We would do well not to confuse or conflate the conservative political philosophy with the Republican party- especially in historical terns. Contemporary conservative Republicans – especially in the South- have often (if deceptively) pointed out that it was the Democratic Party that resisted Civil Rights in much of the South from the 1890s to the 1960s. What this rhetorical slight of hand ignores is that those Southern Democrats were unambiguously philosophically conservative. Every major advance toward a more just society in the history of these United States has been opposed by conservatives. The record is clear. Below is but a sample of the changes and advances that were opposed political conservatives (whatever their party)  at the time of of the change (whether through legislation, legal precedent, or general practice).

• Extension of the franchise to landless (poor) White men.
• Publicly funded education for all male citizens.
• Abolition of the Slave trade and limitation to its practice in established zones.
• Abolition of the practice of slavery.
• Extension of the franchise to all non-whites and women.
• An end to child labor.
• The 8-hour work day & worker’s compensation.
• Establishment of Social Security and a basic Social Safety Net.
• Glass-Stegall Act- establishment of the FDIC and regulation of the financial sector.
• Passage of the GI Bill and the Fair Housing Act
• Creation of the FDA, EPA, Department of Labor, and other Worker and Consumer Protections
• Brown vs. Board of Education- desegregation.
• Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts.
• Passage of Minimum Wage Laws.
• Loving vs. Virginia (an end to bans on interracial marriage)
• Higher Education Act- creation of the Pell Grant and Loan Programs
• Establishment of National Parks and land set-aside for non-commercial use.
• The Equal Rights Amendment (not passed)
• Clayton Act – Trustbusting and other regulation of commercial interests
• Establishment of Miranda Rights
• Establishment of Medicare & Medicaid

Very, very few folks who identify themselves as conservatives in the modern political environment would argue agains the existence of any of these rights and institutions. One wonders- on the one hand, why do so many conservatives ignore their own ideological genealogy- and on the other, how many issues currently debated will be as shocking to the conscience of future generations as the idea of debate over the moral imperative of the above issues is to our own.