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Race Card Quotes

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Race Card Quotes

“I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to. Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral.”

United StatesPrejudiceIraqLondonCowardiceImperialismIraq WarJane AustenBaghdadPride And PrejudiceVandalismMendacityGeorge W BushEdward SaidFitzwilliam DarcyThe AtlanticRace CardHouse Of SaudIraqisNational Museum Of IraqOrientalism Book
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Not long ago, having expressed some disagreements in print with an old comrade of long standing, I was sent a response that he had published in an obscure newspaper. This riposte referred to my opinions as ‘racist.’ I would obviously scorn to deny such an allegation on my own behalf. I would, rather, prefer to repudiate it on behalf of my former friend. He had known me for many years and cooperated with me on numerous projects, and I am quite confident that he would never have as a collaborator anyone he suspected of racial prejudice. But it does remind me, and not for the first time, that quarrels on the left have a tendency to become miniature treason trials, replete with all kinds of denunciation. There's a general tendency—not by any means confined to radicals but in some way specially associated with them—to believe that once the lowest motive for a dissenting position has been found, it must in some way be the real one.”

FriendshipRacismDissentTreasonLeftismEdward SaidRace CardPolitical Radicalism
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“In America, communities of color have always put our "economic anxieties" second to placate the economic anxieties of "real Americans" from the "Rust Belt." We just pray and hope they will do the right thing and vote for a qualified candidate who doesn't want to put babies in camps. Sometimes it works, and other times we get Trump. If we are to be honest with ourselves, the group that has historically always played identity politics is white voters, and the rest of us have been hijacked by their rage, fear, and anxiety. Theirs are the grievances of "regular Americans from the heartland." When we voice our concerns, we are "playing the race card," engaging in victimhood, not pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, abusing political correctness, and enforcing cancel culture and affirmative action.”

AmericaPoliticsRacismEconomicsAmericansDonald TrumpPeople Of ColorAnxietiesRace CardRust Belt
Book:Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American
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