There seems to be a spate of commentary today telling us that Republicans must repudiate racism. It would be be great for Democrats if the Republicans would preoccupy them with a series of show trials to prove to skeptics that racism will not be allowed to exist in the party. Free speech is protected, but free thought is not? I don't know if I'd vote Republican if I were black, but I hope I'd have the sense to realize that I was being rolled by the Dems. If the Republicans are supposed to be ashamed of Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond, what does that say about the Democrats' toleration of Robert Byrd, Fritz Hollings and other southern Democrats? The fact is that when someone runs as a member of your party and wins, and isn't David Duke, you don't turn your back on him. The Democrats accepted Cynthia McKinney--is that their Southern Strategy?

The most ludicrous part of the Lott brouhaha is the effort by the Clintons to claim that we're still living in the bad old days. I think that race is going to be used as a wedge or a club until we get used to living in a color blind society. That means an end to racial preferences and quotas and to all the ways that people seek to milk the system by claiming that they are victims. After being a public defender, I came to see the "everybody's out to get me" attitude as a road to criminal thinking and failure. It's the kind of thing that we have to take seriously and remedy when it's true, but it is rarely a good way for an individual to view himself and his own life. The worst thing one can do is to give himself excuses, even when they're real, because he'll be defeated from the start. I would support affirmative action that gave school choice to poor people and more money for schools which produce results, to help minorities to compete with others of the same playing field. But the most important thing they can do for themselves is to instill the values of education and academic achievement in their children. I read a study some years ago in Scientific American which sought to understand why the children of Vietnamese "boat people" who arrived in this country with nothing and not speaking English were graduating disproportionately in the top quarter of their high school classes. The authors concluded that the biggest factor was that the parents pushed education, doing the chores so that the kids could do their homework, with the older siblings helping the younger.

We've heard about the subtle racism of low expectations. Now let's see some of the advantages of high expectations.