I did a fun Bloggingheads recently with Dayo Olopade talking about why Juan Williams was really fired, why Clarence Thomas isn't a sellout, Israel/Palestine, and a few other things:
I just want to briefly respond to Radley Balko's post the other day on "The Clarence Thomas rule."A distinction should be made between "black person adopting conservative views" and using their ethnicity as an alibi while parroting the worst kind of black stereotypes to white conservative audiences, like saying Michelle Obama looks like Stokely Carmichael in a dress. Obviously it's a lucrative hustle, but one worth knocking. Conservatives and liberals both blur the distinction when it's in their political interest to do so -- whether it's liberals attacking a black person for being conservative or conservatives proudly citing a black person who dutifully recites some old-timey racist trope. But they're not the same thing.
