Dinesh D'Souza doesn't have a clue

Dinesh D'Souza doesn't have a clue.

Not about the root causes of the problems that plague African

Americans. Not about the solutions needed to fix them. And

certainly not about racism, American style. When it comes to these

things, D'Souza is an intellectual lightweight, not a heavy lifter

of ideas and analysis.

His most recent lighter-than-air musings on these topics come in

"The End of Racism," a book in which D'Souza mixes a small dose of

facts with an overdose of fiction. From this dangerous blend he

concludes "that most of our basis assumptions about racism and

civil rights are either wrong or obsolete."

What does he mean?

Well to begin with, D'Souza says anyone who believes that

slavery was racist is mistaken. It was just an act of "superiority"

by "enlightened" white folks bent on making a buck, he concludes.

D'Souza says racial segregation wasn't the mean-spirited action

of bigots, but rather an attempt by well-meaning members of "the

Southern ruling elite" to protect blacks from the wrath of poor

whites "humiliated by their defeat in the Civil War."

And worse, this native of Bombay, India - who immigrated to the

United States 17 years ago - says the most serious problem facing

black folks today is something he calls the "civilization gap."

"Racism is what it always was: an opinion that recognizes real

civilizational differences and attributes them to biology," says

D'Souza. "Liberals should henceforth admit the differences but deny

their biological foundations."

So far the harshest criticism of D'Souza's book has come from

the ranks of black conservatives - at least one of whom senses

beneath the author's sterile language the incessant drone of

someone yelling "nigger, nigger, nigger."

"Dinesh D'Souza is the Mark Fuhrman of public policy," Robert

Woodson angrily declared last week during a press conference he and

Glenn Loury called to announce their resignation from the American

Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank with which the

three men were affiliated.

"The moral authority of the conservative community from which

Mr. D'Souza hails rests on its response" to his book, Woodson said.

What he wants from his conservative colleagues is an unwavering

rejection of D'Souza's broad condemnations and sweeping

categorization of African Americans.

Don't hold your breath.

A few, like Jack Kemp - and maybe William Bennett - will

distance themselves from D'Souza's thesis. But most will not. He's

given them the absolution they need to speed up their assault on

gains made by blacks during the civil rights movement - and they'll

try to take full advantage of his warped thoughts.

D'Souza knows little about African Americans. His conclusions

don't derive from any personal acts of discovery, but rather from

ideas that are rooted in the plantation owner's justification of

slavery and the bigot's defense of bigotry.

It is no more correct for him to blame the behavior of African

Americans for the "rational discrimination" he says many of us now

suffer, than it would be for me to say that the slums of Calcutta

are filled with people who have created their own living hell.

There's nothing rational about race-based discrimination.

D'Souza looks at the deviant behavior of a small fraction of

black people - which he correctly calls uncivilized - and infers

that the great masses of African Americans are to blame.

That's tantamount to me saying we should treat him as a pariah

because men in India still get away with dowry murder - the

practice of killing a wife whose family can't come up with a big

enough marriage payment to the groom and his family.

"The End of Racism" is sensational in its naive propositions.

But it is wrong - dead wrong - in its analysis of the nation's most

troubling and divisive problem.

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[1]

QDEWAYNE WICKHAM, D'Souza is wrong, dead wrong, Gannett News Service, 24 Sep 1995.