National Review writer Jonah Goldberg is usually in the position of dismissing racism as a paranoid fantasy. But on Friday, the conservative magazine’s senior race reporter had some news: “Dr. Ben Carson is black.”
Goldberg, in a column on the magazine’s website, criticized the media for not talking enough about Carson’s race, suggesting that “it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black.” Forget the ample discussion among the media about Carson’s race and Republican politics -- if Goldberg hasn’t come across it on Breitbart, it doesn’t exist.
But here’s the kicker: Like Rupert Murdoch -- who recently made waves by saying Carson would be a “real black president” -- Goldberg said he thinks the retired neurosurgeon is “more authentically African-American” than President Barack Obama.
One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama, given that Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents. In his autobiography, Obama writes at length about how he grew up outside the traditional African-American experience — in Hawaii and Indonesia — and how he consciously chose to adopt a black identity when he was in college.
And they say conservatives don’t get race.
