Now that he has a post with a link up explaining what has happened, I think that I should say something about the fate of Chris Roach, an early friend of this blog who linked to Eunomia before most.  After I learned that Chris Roach was booted from Brainwash‘s site because of something he had written in the comments here at Eunomia, which his associates there deemed unsuitable and racist, I have to say I was stunned.  No, not stunned.  I was offended.  I have a very low opinion of people who engage in PC purges, which is what this was, but most especially when they are unmerited and committed out of a hysterical desire to appear correct only to those who despise everything Brainwash purports to represent.   

Whatever the hyperbole of the original comment that the management at Brainwash used to justify Chris’ removal (and I grant that there were some ill-chosen words), he more than made up for any mistake with his subsequent explanations as far as I was concerned.  To the extent that he erred, he erred in terms of expressing himself clearly so as to avoid misunderstanding.  In the content of what he said, he said what countless conservatives have said before and will say again–though they will make sure to couch all of it in preciously appropriate language that will avoid touching the tender sensitivities of some.  He made a claim about social pathologies and cultural dysfunctionality in the black community, except that he did not make the appropriate ritual prostrations as he did so, and he was therefore cast out. 

I don’t know Chris personally, but we have been blogging colleagues and share a great many views, and I have never once gotten the sense from anything he has written that he holds any malicious or hateful views.  To cut ties with someone on the basis of one comment and one comment only, even if it was intemperate, is the mark of cowards.  Brainwash is, of course, within their rights to let go whomever they please, but that does not make them right for doing so. 

I regret that I did not get into that comment thread to lend some help, but I assumed that Chris was able to answer well enough for himself.  Indeed he is, and he continues to blog separately from their site.  Frankly, Brainwash has embarrassed itself by acting like a third-rate ideological rag.    That their management probably thinks they have done the right thing, and not merely the expedient and easy thing, is all the more to their discredit.  The limits of perimissible opinion on the right just became even narrower.