The Party of (In)Tolerance, Part I

The post title links to a selection of blogs compiled by Michelle Malkin documenting numerous examples of liberal hatred and bigotry against minority Republicans. The Democrat Party used to self-righteously claim that it was the party of "tolerance" and "compassion." This is as much a misnomer as the notion that Islam is the "Religion of Peace."

Jeff Goldstein--one of the blogosphere's most trenchant commentators on poisonous identity politics--points out that Democrat tolerance appears to be contingent upon party affiliation.

Lisa Gladden notes that racial jabs are to be expected in national politics, because “party trumps race” —in this case the argument being that (superficial) blackness being equal, the deciding factor in black identity politics is now political affiliation. Therefore, it follows that a move away from the Democratic party is tantamount to a move away from black authenticity, a willful act that opens to attack those “race traitors” who have surrendered the protections that proceed from adherence to the dictates of the group’s identity. Which is to say, racial jabs are okay when they are aimed at those who’ve surrendered the protections offered by the group, because those who’ve left the group no longer meet the requirements for protected blackness.

Perversely, then, we have progressives sanctioning the kind of racial attacks they would normally decry on the grounds that those who choose the wrong party affiliation have surrendered the protection of their race. And what makes this so troubling is that it redefines the idea of “offense” as something that is to be decided upon by identity groups—and so is yet another way in which identity politics robs the individual of autonomy.

UPDATE:

James Taranto at Opinion Journal reports that, for Democrats, tolerance of another's political views does not extend beyond party affiliation.

Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

"Because he is a conservative, he is different than most public blacks, and he is different than most people in our community," she said. "His politics are not in the best interest of the masses of black people."

This is the equivalent of racist white politicians in the pre-civil-rights South denouncing a white liberal as a "nigger lover." If black Democrats--and white Democrats, for that matter--cannot disagree respectfully with a conservative who happens to be black, they have no moral authority when it comes to combating racism in other manifestations.