Are conservatives racist?

By Armstrong Williams - 09/21/12 08:58 AM ET

Well, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is having its annual legislative week in Washington, D.C., this week, opining about members’ favorite subject, "racism.” They can't seem to stop reminding their audience that President Obama and his Democratic machine continue to champion their causes and if Romney is elected, we will return to the days of the great plantations.

They have taken Romney's covertly videotaped comments about the 47 percent and are creating a new political industry and campaign. However, the president's record on fighting crime, closing the education gap, reducing unprecedented poverty in minority communities and creating an entrepreneur class during his tenure has taken a massive nosedive. Why is it that conservatives — white and black alike — are always the biggest impediment to the progress of many blacks in this country, according to the high-pitch rhetoric of the CBC and Democratic machine?

What you’ll often hear from conservatives like me is that the left’s solutions to the problems that ail minority communities are themselves racist, since they operate on the fundamental premise that minorities are incapable. There’s almost nothing, according to Democrats, that minorities are cable of accomplishing without the help of the government. To hear some Democrats speak, minorities are incapable of doing just about anything without a handout or a leg up.

Believing — as white and black conservatives alike do — that minorities don’t need anyone’s help to get ahead in life may be naïve, or unrealistic, but it is not racist. And certainly not as racist as the notion underpinning Democratic policy: that minorities can’t make it in this world without free money, special scholarships, quotas, affirmative action, lower admissions standards and any other mechanism employed to propel them forward. After all, isn’t racism defined as a belief in the inherent inferiority of a group of people based on their skin color? And yet it is somehow, inexplicably, not racist, if your intentions are good — not to hold them down, but to help them out.

The litany of accusations can reach absurd proportions. Want to emphasize teaching about this nation’s founding in our public schools more than the history of Swahili in Africa? You’re a racist. Want the government to stop handing out our tax dollars to companies simply because they’re run by blacks or Hispanics or women? You must be a racist. Want to keep health insurance the way it is, and not turn it all over to politicians and bureaucrats in Washington? You must be a racist. It sure gets tiresome, doesn’t it?