Racism and "Redoubt Republicanism"

New York Times commentator Charles Blow took aim at that Heritage Foundation immigration "study" that has turned out to be written by some right-wing hack whose Harvard Ph.D. work consisted of asserting that Latinos have low IQ scores, probably because Latinos are genetically dumb. Blow has a name for the weasel words -- "skill-based" differences -- this author suggests when trying to "blunt negative reaction."

Skill-based. Clever. Or Machiavellian.

In reality, it’s just another conservative euphemism meant to cast class aspersions and raise racial ire without ever forthrightly addressing the issues of class and race. This form of Roundabout Republicanism has entirely replaced honest conservative discussion, to the point that anyone who now raises class-based inequality is labeled divisive and anyone who raises race is labeled a racist.

It’s a way of wriggling out of unpleasant debates on which they have stopped trying to engage altogether. The new strategy is avoidance, obfuscation and boomerang blaming.

This “skill-based” phraseology is simply the latest in a long line of recent right-wing terms of art.

I don't quite agree with Blow that this is "Roundabout Republicanism."

I think better term for what is practiced here is "Redoubt Republicanism." This is a political movement that has chosen to lock itself away, against the United States that is, and even more against the United States that will be. They seem to think they are re-enacting the battle of the Alamo, heroes standing pat against a foreign horde. Clinging to white supremacy, Republicans are immured in a prison of their own making.

Also, since when did anyone, left or right, believe that IQ tests measured anything except the ability to take IQ tests? I thought scientists like Stephen Jay Gould had killed that notion off a generation ago. But the ghoulish myth recurs ... Harvard must have gone downhill.