Conversation On Race, Wingnut Style

Ever since the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, the right wing has been furiously scrambling to turn the tables and portray Zimmerman as the victim of a thuggish black teen.  Part of the right wing narrative has been to depict the true victim, Trayvon Martin, as threatening due to his attire, age, and most significantly, skin color (and the lethal Skittles he was carrying).

Now we have a column in the conservative rag Nazional National Review by ancient warfare historian and toga aficionado Victor Davis "Maximus Gluteus Eruptus" Hanson, claiming that he warned his son to avoid black male youths (a cynical reversal of Attorney General Eric Holder's advice to his son about polite behavior in the presence of whites), first quoting his own father:

“Be careful if a group of black youths approaches you [Hanson's father said].  After some first-hand episodes with young African-American males, I offered a similar lecture to my own son.”

The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates delivers a great takedown of Hanson's horsemanure and the move by the Nazional National Review to publish it.  Here's part of his summation:

"It should come as no surprise that Victor Davis Hanson's generational advice has met with mixed results. But when you are more interested in a kind of bigoted nationalism than your actual safety, this is what happens.....These two strands -- stupidity and racism -- are inseparable. The pairing seem to find a home at National Review with some regularity. It's been a little over a year since the magazine cut ties with self-described racist John Derbyshire for basically writing the same thing that Victor Davis Hanson writes here.... You are what your record says you are and at some point one must conclude that these are not one-offs, that the magazine which once blamed the Birmingham bombing on 'a crazed Negro,' is dealing with something more systemic, something bone-deep."

Exactly.