how to prove conservative stereotypes about liberals and race

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I am, as you know, not a fan of Rand Paul. Being that I am a socialist and that Paul is (sort of) a libertarian, this will come as no surprise. And, I agree that there was much to shake my head at in Paul's remarks at Howard University, from both a policy perspective and on the level of aesthetics. There are many ways to criticize the stuff he said. Just about the worst way to do it is to snark around, giggling and hawing at the rube from Kentucky in a way that makes your disagreement seem cultural rather than substantive. And the really stupid way to do it is to simultaneously claim that we need to move past feelings and dialogue when it comes to race-- a point I've made dozens of times myself-- while ignoring the actual, substantive point a powerful legislator made about a matter of law. From Dave Weigel's far more honest take on Paul's remarks.

I am working with Democratic senators to make sure that kids who make bad decisions such as nonviolent possession of drugs are not imprisoned for lengthy sentences,” said Paul. “I am working to make sure that first time offenders are put into counseling and not imprisoned with hardened criminals.” Barack Obama and George Bush did drugs, after all, and they turned out okay because they got “lucky.”

The drug war, of course, is one of the most damaging weapons that is employed in this country's ongoing war on black people. It's also one of the few places where I ever feel genuine optimism about our coming to legislative progress on race and class injustice. I can actually imagine a Republican coalition working with progressive legislators to help gradually decelerate our ruinous, racist, cruel drug policy. I can't see that happening, though, if prominent liberal voices like that of Hayes are so busy chuckling and snarking on national television that they give up every opportunity to find common cause. 

Of course, because he's Rand Paul, and Rand Paul is a dumbass with generally bad politics, he couldn't help himself:

Paul was on to something, but it didn’t last. “Some argue with evidence that our drug laws are biased—that they are the new Jim Crow,” he said. “But to simply be against them for that reason misses a larger point. They are unfair to everyone.”

Look, we've got a system that is almost sadistically bent away from representing the interests of our cities. High population states are systematically underrepresented compared to their rural, low population counterparts. Our governmental structures emerged from a fetish for compromise, one that holds the whole country hostage to the most extreme conservative minority. No pragmatic political value can be wrung from those structures without occasionally finding common cause with people who generally believe stupid things. If Rand Paul is willing to throw his voice and his vote behind a long-term effort to end the drug war, I'm willing to listen to what he says, even if he turns around and demonstrates that he doesn't understand the full extent of the problem, where it comes from, or what it will take to actually end racial inequality in this country.

Weigel puts it aptly:

When he left the campus, past the students still holding the “White Supremacy” banner and conducting interviews, Paul remained the Republican most likely to reform mandatory minimums. He remained the most prominent Republican supporter of drug law reform. He wouldn’t apologize for the Republican Party, or for libertarianism, or for that 2010 interview about the Civil Rights Act. “Should we limit speech from people we find abhorrent?” he said then. “Should we limit racists from speaking?” Now, he was offering African-Americans some accommodation, from time to time.

I wonder if Hayes has considered the possibility that part of the reason why we have such a problem with racial equality in this country-- why we have a hard time getting to those substantive, material changes that he is talking about-- is because people like himself are so busy sneering at the cultural differences of their political opponents that they can't produce common ground. What does Hayes imagine would happen if a conservative who is on the fence about drug law reform were to watch his show? How does this performance do anything but eject such a person from that conversation?

My fear is that Hayes didn't worry about that because he knows that no such person is watching his broadcast. To someone who would never in a million years vote for Rand Paul, who agrees on substance with probably 99% of the things Hayes believes on drug and crime policy, and who can think of a thousand things wrong with Paul's reported remarks, this clip looks like nothing more than pure red meat for Hayes's assumed audience. It's service journalism, reassuring Hayes's Democratic viewership of their superiority on this issue. I am, as you know, not someone who ever insists on compromise or political expediency. If Hayes thinks that Paul's legislative perspectives on the drug war is incorrect, and can't support them, he should say so and say why. I'd support that kind of principled resistance. But to claim to want to focus on the material aspects of our racial inequalities and then ignore the substance of a prominent Republican's take on just those aspects is dishonest and unhelpful. I would turn Hayes's question back on him: what, exactly, is your priority?