,
5 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1. All this talk in the conservative press (like National Review) about Ilhan Omar being an ungrateful immigrant reminded me of Joseph Sobran complaining about ungrateful African-Americans in National Review in 1979. 
2. The context here is that Sobran is describing a debate between civil rights activist Roy Innis and Sobran's pal Ernest van den Haag on affirmative action. After the debate, Sobran chided Innis for his lack of gratitude to America. "You expect me to thank you," Innis replied.
3. More context, van den Haag, who Sobran is championing here, was a scientific racist who argued against Brown vs. Board of Education & insisted the best way to fight prejudice was segregation. He supported Jim Crow & apartheid.
4. Sobran, of course, was someone whose racism bothered even his National Review colleagues when he started working at the magazine in the 1970s (although they kept him on for 2 decades).
5. In 1986, Sobran praised Instauration: "an often brilliant magazine, covering a beat nobody else will touch, & doing so with intelligence, wide-ranging observation & bitter wit. It is openly and almost unremittingly hostile to blacks, Jews, and Mexican & Oriental immigrants.''
