Subjective Intent Isn’t the Issue

One thing to say about this thread, which has won a coveted Belle Waring Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence in Trolldom, is that given the inevitable displays of racism we’re going to see as Obama runs for president we’re going to be seeing a lot more of one of the central arguments there. That is, the “you can’t say that anything is racist, including an experienced border state politician calling an adult African-American man “boy,” without unequivocal evidence of that person’s intent” argument. The beauty of this standard — which his trolls also used to defend George Allen — is that you can never prove racism because the knowledge in question is unknowable. How can you know to an absolute certainty what’s in David Duke’s mind? You can’t.

It’s essentially irrelevant anyway. It’s fair to use people’s statements to make inferences about intent in most cases, but more importantly the intent doesn’t matter; the comment is racist whatever was in Davis’s mind. Just as George Wallace’s ringing defenses of apartheid were racist even if they were in considerable measure just political posturing. When it comes to public rhetoric, it’s public meanings not private intent that matters.