Why liberals can't think straight about race CAUGHT IN A TORTURED DANCE OF GUILT AND VOYEURISM, THE RIGHT-THINKING GATEKEEPERS IN THE MEDIA AND ACADEMIA HAVE PERFECTED WAYS TO AVOID SEEING THE COLLAPSE OF THEIR RACIALIST POLITICS. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY JIM SLEEPER | conservatives are quick to welcome converts, liberals quicker to expose and expel heretics. That not-so-old saw came back to me recently when I learned that a young liberal historian reading my book "Liberal Racism" had asked a colleague about my political bona fides. "Sleeper is almost persuading me," he said, "but where is he really coming from politically?" He was drawn to my argument that liberals have only deepened racism by color-coding our politics, law and civic culture instead of nurturing a common American vision that might help to sustain broad coalitions. Yet, wary of seduction by a right winger wearing civic clothing, he wanted to know who'd funded me and where my work had appeared. Should it matter? Good ideas can come from "bad" people, and if a book seems persuasive, it ought to be seriously engaged. My doubter sounded a bit less engaged than cornered, however -- and I think that he is typical of political and literary gatekeepers at liberal publications and university departments who look for excuses to dismiss testimony, from within their own ranks, that liberals have recapitulated racism by kowtowing to "race consciousness" and racial loyalty. Never mind those few old lefties who still want to make blacks the cats' paws of their revolutionary agendas. Never mind even the larger cohort of liberals of all colors who make their livings in a vast race industry of foundation-funded activists, corporate diversity trainers, professors of blackness and purveyors of other racialist epistemologies. I'm thinking more of elite white liberals like the young historian who questioned my politics -- academics and journalists, many of them Ivy League and more than a bit sheltered from off-campus racial realities. They aren't driven by ideology or material self-interest as much as by a misplaced moralism that makes them address race as penitents and, more often, voyeurs. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - NEXT PAGE | The challenge of racelessness