”Many think Pendleton leans too far white.” So reads a May 28 Tribune headline to describe Clarence Pendleton, a black conservative appointed by President Reagan to head the Civil Rights Commission. Those who think this way seem to be saying that if a black does not cling to a political philosophy on the leftward fringes of the Democratic Party, he or she is somehow acting
”white.” Supposedly blacks cannot have as diverse opinions as whites like President Reagan and Walter Mondale without something being wrong. If I were black, I would be quite offended by such an assumption.
I had the privilege of hearing Mr. Pendleton speak last summer and he was subjected to verbal attacks similar to those at his West Side speech. He did a tremendous job in turning back his critics and in so doing cited the works of two black economists who hold free-market ideals, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams. So the next time people think that whites somehow have a monopoly on conservative/libertarian thinking, a look at the facts would prove otherwise.
