Waiting for Gatreaux?

I attended a fund-raising luncheon for a public interest organization today. One of the attorneys being feted was a litigator who has devoted four decades of his life to remedying racial segregation in public housing. He was spry for an octogenarian, and gave a good speech. But one thing that I’ve always found irritating about these events is that the audience for his comments—which generally castigated American society for the social injustice that comes attendant to being born black and poor—was uniformly white and privileged. This was a fundraiser, and I suppose socio-economic diversity is a small price to pay when you’re raking $100 for each seat at the table. But I’m put off when I see the upper crust of society—with their cuff links, fancy watches, and tailored suits—nodding solemnly along with the choir, as if they understood. I believe that far too often, progressives view blacks as an abstraction, and that any closer examination of who they are as individuals and the messy lives that they have led would unnecessarily complicate our foundational understandings of why we have to stick it to the Man. And I’m certain that this willful obtuseness runs counter to the gross generalizations that many liberals secretly harbor, but cannot admit. Would you still think the integrationist ideal makes good sense if 10% of Winnetka was vouchered out to low-income black families? I don’t think so. I suppose this beats the views that you might find at the opposite end of the political spectrum.