Anti-Trump conservative writer David French generated some collective eye-rolling last week when he confessed in an interview that he’d slowly come to accept that racism is real.
Ya'll, no. Everyone in these comments saying something along the lines of 'but he now realizes he was wrong/he admits he was wrong' obviously is not familiar with David French's history.
He has made a career out of alternately standing against Trump/racism/fascism, and then jumping back in line to curry favor with MAGA when it suits him. And he and his wife specifically exploit their family to do so.
For example, he repeatedly discussed online threats and harassment directed at his family - *specifically his daughter* - when he was considering running against Trump the first time. He was vocally anti-Trump, warned about how dangerous his supporters were, based, of course, on his unique experience.
Then, he immediately pivoted to 'oh, the hysterical left is exaggerating' about the dangers when Trump got elected.
Case in point: the executive order during Trump's first administration that banned people from certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., including people who already had visas and green cards. At the very same moment immigration attorneys were headed to airports to assist people detained and denied entry - because the order took effect when they were mid-flight - he was writing online that "hysterical Democrats" were misrepresenting what was happening, writing that "*of course* the ban didn't apply to people who were already granted visas, that would be blatantly unconstitutional." You know, silly alarmist Dems! This is while a five-year-old legal permanent resident was being detained alone without his parents at Dulles.
Of course, there was the mea culpa, 'I realize I was mistaken' follow-up article after it became clear CBP was doing exactly what it looked like they were doing. He claimed he had been naive, then.
I could list numerous examples of similar. This is his whole thing. He repeatedly exploited his daughter's vulnerability for his own benefit.
The fact that he apparently has credibility and people still listen to him just enrages me. He has no ethics or principles.
This has caused me to reflect that I live in a crowded city in a country where I only occasionally see another white person and have felt nothing but warm and welcoming behaviour towards me.
Desegregation of schools had a very important pro-social component. Children have to be taught or conditioned to be racially prejudiced. Prejudice can exist on a spectrum. This includes not knowing what one should have known about the ugly and pernicious nature of racism in our society. That is still prejudice although the state of mind is more akin to reckless than intentional.
By being exposed to and learning the realities of black children as he went through school, David French might have had a better handle on the fact that his daughter’s skin color was not race-neutral for a whole lot of white people.
(Full disclosure: I didn't listen to the podcast, though I'm familiar with both the Fifth Column and French separately, and am judging by your account.)
Stephen, I usually agree with what you write, and I generally find your takes to be fair, but this article is full of what I can't stand about progressive criticism—a person comes to acknowledge something that he got wrong, and we dunk all over him for not getting it right in the first place.
This is obviously going to be an issue which strikes at the heart of your life experience and affects you in a way that I can never fully appreciate. I certainly can't fault your gut reaction, and as with everyone, including me, our rational takes tend to support what we feel in our heart. But I would ask you to consider that you're perhaps being unfair to someone I've come to have a great deal of respect for.
I understand how this might sound like French wants a cookie, but from listening to and reading the man a great deal over the years, I have every confidence that he was sharing this experience for the benefit of other listeners who, like him, needed to hear it. I don't know how much you listen to the Fifth Column, but I can assure you there will be listeners who do.
I grew up in Baltimore at around the same time as Ta Nahesi Coates did, so I'm not naive about racism. But even I am somewhat surprised by the experience he describes for his daughter in *this day and age*. Well, ok, surprised until I remembered that this was Tennessee we were talking about, but only because I had the opportunity to experience Tennessee about 15 years ago when I was dating someone from there.
But if you told me that this happened, say, in modern day Montgomery County, MD, where I live now, I'd be stunned. Yes, French is from Tennessee, so perhaps he ought to know better. But I doubt he would argue with you that in his life as a white Evangelical, he knew and encountered very few progressives or Black folks.
To some extent, I'm sure we see things very differently from our corner of liberal /progressive thought. I am very much of the school of thought that places universalist, race-blind principles as an ideal to be approached. I'm sure that you do as well, and like you I acknowledge the fact that reality diverges from this, at times considerably. But I have what you might fairly call the privilege of not dwelling on the latter. Regardless, I've come to reject a lot of what I see as racial essentialism over the last so many years, and the idea of having to raise a black child "as black" fills me with a great deal of trepidation, so I can relate to French's *previous* attitude on the matter.
But French is someone, who, like many in the Trump era, has evolved a lot over the last 10 or so years. If you're going to portray the guy as a pastiche of various things that he's said since 2015, it will be easy to make him seem contradictory and hypocritical. For example, he's reversed his position on gay adoption. In fact, he's acknowledged not only being ignorant of racism, but of the toxicity within Evangelicalism that gave rise to MAGA.
We all have perspectives that reflect our biases. To some that dress is blue and it never occurs to you to see the gold until someone points it out, and then you can't unsee it. I've listened to French a lot over the last few years, and I've never heard him come across as "snotty" or anything remotely like it. I've actually found him to be remarkably thoughtful and possessing a great deal of self-awareness and humility.
Like I said, I didn't hear the podcast, but I'd be surprised if I did and came away from it thinking any differently. You obviously see him in a different light, and I do understand even if I don't completely relate. But I'd ask that you at least consider that you're reacting more to the man he as he once was than the man as he is today.
Eric, before I left evangelicalism French and Keller were guys I admired. I still think they are/were as kind versions of that culture as exists. That said, someone on this thread opined that they remain in that culture and tied to a system of beliefs that, I think, are at odds with the character of God. Christian writers like David Bentley Hart, Pete Enns, Rachel Held Evans…these folks helped me move away from beliefs that kept me in fear and blindness. We are in need of a new Reformation, imo. Jesus said, “You will know a tree by its fruit,” and the fruit of evangelicalism is seriously rotten. Until French and other evangelicals are willing to question the foundations of doctrines like penal substitutionary atonement and verbal plenary inspiration, that world will continue to live in fear and be unable to see the harm they are doing.
I think French is, like all of us, a fundamentally good person doing the best he can given the light he’s following. But his changes of heart about race have come about in spite of the culture he continues to support, which is a telling problem.
My dude. This is *ancient* news. He has been writing about racism for more than 10 years.
And if you lack the grace to acknowledge somebody who admits they were wrong and sincerely changes course, then you have completely lost the plot.
I wonder. Have you ever changed your mind on a civil rights issue? Realized that what you were taught didn’t include all there was to know? How about a little humility.
I genuinely loathe people who cannot formulate empathy without experiencing a problem first hand and until they experience the problem first hand, it isn't real or as big of a deal to them and they think everything is exaggerated.
Sadly it took his daughter’s trauma when she was threatened by boys from a wealthy, elite school for him to learn what a cruel farce his life had been.
How he makes amends will tell whether he actually woke up to what his black neighbors deal with on a daily basis.
There’s a lot he can do in the US, Tennessee & Franklin.
Time will tell whether this is a real repentance or just virtue signaling.
It's hard to change. I grew up next to an intensely racist family, including the kid about my age who I spent a lot of time with. He ended up at the ER once after a sock in the gut for calling me a n----lover. (We were about 10.)I moved away and many years passed before I saw him as a mature adult, and without any reference to our past he mentioned in passing that he tried to get his mother to stop using the N word. Soon after I brought him a copy of an Al Green album and he called me up one day ripping with enthusiasm about "Reverend Al!" Before that I had gone with his younger brother to see the Modern Jazz Quartet, and he wasn't a bit racist. The experiences of life overcame an ugly start. Some good things happen.
And he will 'forget' his daughter is Black again as soon as he gets some pushback from the people who provide his bread and butter. I saw it happen with the pastor of a church I used to attend. In the wake of George Floyd's murder he suddenly though 'golly gee, my son is Black. Perhaps I should care about educating the church about race.' So he managed to scrounge up two Black members (it was a VERY large church) and held a barely publicized Facebook Live conversation with them. (From a church that publicized every move they made.) Set up a page on their website with a list of resources to help educate people. Within a week that list was decidedly shorter (I will bet if you hazarded a guess as to which writers were removed you would have a good chance of getting some right). Within another week the link to the page was gone from the main website so that you could only access it if you already knew it existed and could type it in. Within another week it was gone altogether. And a month later they held a series on 'Can't We All Just Get Along' aka 'How to Accept the Racists In Your Midst and Not Make Them Uncomfortable.'
I still think about that sometimes and wonder if his kid will ever realize just how thoroughly his dad threw him under the bus because talking about race pissed off some big donor. And I think about my own kid who is not Black, but who is transgender, and I wonder if I could ever just shut up because talking about her identity pissed someone off. It would feel like betraying her.
So anyway, that is my long winded way to say that French will be aware for about another week or two and then probably say 'you know, it wasn't really that big of a deal. It was probably isolated, and maybe she misheard because she has been conditioned by the media to jump to conclusions.' Or something like that.
French is one of those conservatives who finally realizes something people on the left have been saying for years is true and then wants a prize for it. He thinks being the last one to know gives him some sort of extra moral authority.
Why do you say he wants a prize? He started writing about race a long time ago, and that’s his child. He raised her and he is still raising her. You have no reason to say that he’s insincere in his love for her or what he has been saying about race for a long time now. Have some grace.
Ya'll, no. Everyone in these comments saying something along the lines of 'but he now realizes he was wrong/he admits he was wrong' obviously is not familiar with David French's history.
He has made a career out of alternately standing against Trump/racism/fascism, and then jumping back in line to curry favor with MAGA when it suits him. And he and his wife specifically exploit their family to do so.
For example, he repeatedly discussed online threats and harassment directed at his family - *specifically his daughter* - when he was considering running against Trump the first time. He was vocally anti-Trump, warned about how dangerous his supporters were, based, of course, on his unique experience.
Then, he immediately pivoted to 'oh, the hysterical left is exaggerating' about the dangers when Trump got elected.
Case in point: the executive order during Trump's first administration that banned people from certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., including people who already had visas and green cards. At the very same moment immigration attorneys were headed to airports to assist people detained and denied entry - because the order took effect when they were mid-flight - he was writing online that "hysterical Democrats" were misrepresenting what was happening, writing that "*of course* the ban didn't apply to people who were already granted visas, that would be blatantly unconstitutional." You know, silly alarmist Dems! This is while a five-year-old legal permanent resident was being detained alone without his parents at Dulles.
Of course, there was the mea culpa, 'I realize I was mistaken' follow-up article after it became clear CBP was doing exactly what it looked like they were doing. He claimed he had been naive, then.
I could list numerous examples of similar. This is his whole thing. He repeatedly exploited his daughter's vulnerability for his own benefit.
The fact that he apparently has credibility and people still listen to him just enrages me. He has no ethics or principles.
This has caused me to reflect that I live in a crowded city in a country where I only occasionally see another white person and have felt nothing but warm and welcoming behaviour towards me.
I read "David French generated some collective eye-rolling" but with "collective" replaced by "competitive" and thought "This sounds like fun!"
Someday before he dies, he'll realize that gun culture is crap.
Desegregation of schools had a very important pro-social component. Children have to be taught or conditioned to be racially prejudiced. Prejudice can exist on a spectrum. This includes not knowing what one should have known about the ugly and pernicious nature of racism in our society. That is still prejudice although the state of mind is more akin to reckless than intentional.
By being exposed to and learning the realities of black children as he went through school, David French might have had a better handle on the fact that his daughter’s skin color was not race-neutral for a whole lot of white people.
(Full disclosure: I didn't listen to the podcast, though I'm familiar with both the Fifth Column and French separately, and am judging by your account.)
Stephen, I usually agree with what you write, and I generally find your takes to be fair, but this article is full of what I can't stand about progressive criticism—a person comes to acknowledge something that he got wrong, and we dunk all over him for not getting it right in the first place.
This is obviously going to be an issue which strikes at the heart of your life experience and affects you in a way that I can never fully appreciate. I certainly can't fault your gut reaction, and as with everyone, including me, our rational takes tend to support what we feel in our heart. But I would ask you to consider that you're perhaps being unfair to someone I've come to have a great deal of respect for.
I understand how this might sound like French wants a cookie, but from listening to and reading the man a great deal over the years, I have every confidence that he was sharing this experience for the benefit of other listeners who, like him, needed to hear it. I don't know how much you listen to the Fifth Column, but I can assure you there will be listeners who do.
I grew up in Baltimore at around the same time as Ta Nahesi Coates did, so I'm not naive about racism. But even I am somewhat surprised by the experience he describes for his daughter in *this day and age*. Well, ok, surprised until I remembered that this was Tennessee we were talking about, but only because I had the opportunity to experience Tennessee about 15 years ago when I was dating someone from there.
But if you told me that this happened, say, in modern day Montgomery County, MD, where I live now, I'd be stunned. Yes, French is from Tennessee, so perhaps he ought to know better. But I doubt he would argue with you that in his life as a white Evangelical, he knew and encountered very few progressives or Black folks.
To some extent, I'm sure we see things very differently from our corner of liberal /progressive thought. I am very much of the school of thought that places universalist, race-blind principles as an ideal to be approached. I'm sure that you do as well, and like you I acknowledge the fact that reality diverges from this, at times considerably. But I have what you might fairly call the privilege of not dwelling on the latter. Regardless, I've come to reject a lot of what I see as racial essentialism over the last so many years, and the idea of having to raise a black child "as black" fills me with a great deal of trepidation, so I can relate to French's *previous* attitude on the matter.
But French is someone, who, like many in the Trump era, has evolved a lot over the last 10 or so years. If you're going to portray the guy as a pastiche of various things that he's said since 2015, it will be easy to make him seem contradictory and hypocritical. For example, he's reversed his position on gay adoption. In fact, he's acknowledged not only being ignorant of racism, but of the toxicity within Evangelicalism that gave rise to MAGA.
We all have perspectives that reflect our biases. To some that dress is blue and it never occurs to you to see the gold until someone points it out, and then you can't unsee it. I've listened to French a lot over the last few years, and I've never heard him come across as "snotty" or anything remotely like it. I've actually found him to be remarkably thoughtful and possessing a great deal of self-awareness and humility.
Like I said, I didn't hear the podcast, but I'd be surprised if I did and came away from it thinking any differently. You obviously see him in a different light, and I do understand even if I don't completely relate. But I'd ask that you at least consider that you're reacting more to the man he as he once was than the man as he is today.
Eric, before I left evangelicalism French and Keller were guys I admired. I still think they are/were as kind versions of that culture as exists. That said, someone on this thread opined that they remain in that culture and tied to a system of beliefs that, I think, are at odds with the character of God. Christian writers like David Bentley Hart, Pete Enns, Rachel Held Evans…these folks helped me move away from beliefs that kept me in fear and blindness. We are in need of a new Reformation, imo. Jesus said, “You will know a tree by its fruit,” and the fruit of evangelicalism is seriously rotten. Until French and other evangelicals are willing to question the foundations of doctrines like penal substitutionary atonement and verbal plenary inspiration, that world will continue to live in fear and be unable to see the harm they are doing.
I think French is, like all of us, a fundamentally good person doing the best he can given the light he’s following. But his changes of heart about race have come about in spite of the culture he continues to support, which is a telling problem.
My dude. This is *ancient* news. He has been writing about racism for more than 10 years.
And if you lack the grace to acknowledge somebody who admits they were wrong and sincerely changes course, then you have completely lost the plot.
I wonder. Have you ever changed your mind on a civil rights issue? Realized that what you were taught didn’t include all there was to know? How about a little humility.
I genuinely loathe people who cannot formulate empathy without experiencing a problem first hand and until they experience the problem first hand, it isn't real or as big of a deal to them and they think everything is exaggerated.
Sadly it took his daughter’s trauma when she was threatened by boys from a wealthy, elite school for him to learn what a cruel farce his life had been.
How he makes amends will tell whether he actually woke up to what his black neighbors deal with on a daily basis.
There’s a lot he can do in the US, Tennessee & Franklin.
Time will tell whether this is a real repentance or just virtue signaling.
This is ancient news! He started writing about racism more than 10 years ago. Time has already told.
It doesn’t sound naive. It is naive. Then again, conservatism is built inside a fence of naivety, blindness, and lack of empathy.
RACISM ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA WHERE HAS DAVID FRENCH BEEN ?
French also takes pre-Trump Republicans at their word. “Small government, personal responsibility”… basically an idiot.
I don’t think it’s smart or kind to criticize someone for becoming more aware and sensitive.
I'm not convinced he's done either.
It's hard to change. I grew up next to an intensely racist family, including the kid about my age who I spent a lot of time with. He ended up at the ER once after a sock in the gut for calling me a n----lover. (We were about 10.)I moved away and many years passed before I saw him as a mature adult, and without any reference to our past he mentioned in passing that he tried to get his mother to stop using the N word. Soon after I brought him a copy of an Al Green album and he called me up one day ripping with enthusiasm about "Reverend Al!" Before that I had gone with his younger brother to see the Modern Jazz Quartet, and he wasn't a bit racist. The experiences of life overcame an ugly start. Some good things happen.
And he will 'forget' his daughter is Black again as soon as he gets some pushback from the people who provide his bread and butter. I saw it happen with the pastor of a church I used to attend. In the wake of George Floyd's murder he suddenly though 'golly gee, my son is Black. Perhaps I should care about educating the church about race.' So he managed to scrounge up two Black members (it was a VERY large church) and held a barely publicized Facebook Live conversation with them. (From a church that publicized every move they made.) Set up a page on their website with a list of resources to help educate people. Within a week that list was decidedly shorter (I will bet if you hazarded a guess as to which writers were removed you would have a good chance of getting some right). Within another week the link to the page was gone from the main website so that you could only access it if you already knew it existed and could type it in. Within another week it was gone altogether. And a month later they held a series on 'Can't We All Just Get Along' aka 'How to Accept the Racists In Your Midst and Not Make Them Uncomfortable.'
I still think about that sometimes and wonder if his kid will ever realize just how thoroughly his dad threw him under the bus because talking about race pissed off some big donor. And I think about my own kid who is not Black, but who is transgender, and I wonder if I could ever just shut up because talking about her identity pissed someone off. It would feel like betraying her.
So anyway, that is my long winded way to say that French will be aware for about another week or two and then probably say 'you know, it wasn't really that big of a deal. It was probably isolated, and maybe she misheard because she has been conditioned by the media to jump to conclusions.' Or something like that.
David French started writing about racism more than 10 years ago. He hasn’t stopped yet. He’s been never Trump for a long time.
Does this bring you up short, even a little? Your utter confidence that you know who he is seems to have been misplaced.
Wait til they redistrict his family so the black kid will never be able to vote effectively.
French is one of those conservatives who finally realizes something people on the left have been saying for years is true and then wants a prize for it. He thinks being the last one to know gives him some sort of extra moral authority.
Why do you say he wants a prize? He started writing about race a long time ago, and that’s his child. He raised her and he is still raising her. You have no reason to say that he’s insincere in his love for her or what he has been saying about race for a long time now. Have some grace.