What Hath Deval Wrought?

Let me be clear: I'm not holding Deval Patrick personally responsible for the obsession with race and skin color by the American Left. I wrote an entire book about it long before Patrick became governor.

However, both on politics and policy, Patrick is a proud proponent of the "Race must matter!" philosophy. A philosophy that has feed the cynical, racist campaign strategy of the Clintons (Gov. Patrick's old boss), and has brought us this:

This battle over quotas for public-sector jobs is a glaring example of how immigration is turning the race-based policies of the last 40 years, originally designed to help blacks, against them. For African-American leaders like Claud Anderson, head of the Harvest Institute, the turnabout represents a betrayal of the civil rights movement: only blacks deserve quotas. “When did our government ever exclude immigrants or deny them their constitutional rights, as they did African-Americans?” he asks. But for other blacks, the demands of Latinos and Asians that government set-aside programs include them are further evidence that racial preferences were misguided in the first place. “Blacks who support skin color privileges now will be singing a different tune later once government starts discriminating against them once again, this time in favor of Hispanics,” writes columnist and blogger La Shawn Barber.

This excerpt is from a fascinating (and despressing) article in City Journal about how black and Hispanic Americans are fighting over who benefits most from the racial spoils system put in place by Deval Patrick and others. Read the entire article and what jumps out at you (well, at me, anyway) is what's missing: Any reference to "merit," or "achievement" or "equal treatment under the law."

The Left abandoned those ideas long ago.