Comparing Obama to Trayvon Martin Is Fine if You've Declared Racism Over

D'Souza, with no ulterior motives, interviews the president's half-brother. (AP)

Since author and Obama-disliker Dinesh D'Souza wrote a book declaring The End of Racism (three bucks at Amazon), it was not racist when he on Tuesday referred to the president as the "Grown-Up Trayvon in the White House." Can't be. Racism is over.

Update: He deleted the tweet, but we took a screenshot.

The book, released in 1996, articulates the conservative writer's position on racism. If you're not interested in paying even $3 for it, D'Souza (pictured above at left) explained its argument to PBS shortly after the book came out. In short: Racism was created as a concept to explain why non-Western cultures didn't match the West's cultural achievements. He says "racism is a doctrine of biological inferiority usually accompanied by the practice of systematized discrimination," then arguing that that perception of inferiority has largely subsided.

And then, later, that one problem distinctive to black culture is "the extremely high, virtually parasitic reliance of African-Americans on the government."

So I’m not saying that it’s peculiar or bizarre that blacks rely on the government. I’m saying today, when the government cannot employ large numbers of people, when public confidence in the government is low, the Korean or the Asian strategy of entrepreneurship, of small business, which is very weak in the black community, we need to stress that.

See how it works? There's no racism anymore, so now we can have some Real Talk about African-Americans. Arguments that institutionalized racism — and the obvious and persistent existence of discrimination — somehow affect the black population are dismissed in favor of the argument that African-Americans choose to rely on government assistance.

If this sounds familiar following last year's maker-vs-taker, 47-percent-are-dependent-on-government campaign, it should. D'Souza's theories launched him into the conservative pundit stratosphere. Here was a person of color saying that conservatives are authorized to dismiss entire minority groups. D'Souza didn't invent this argument, but by declaring racism over, he certainly helped clear its path.

The first line of @DineshDSouza's Wikipedia bio is amazing (via @the_sy_guy) pic.twitter.com/1s6Vg01zYJ

— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) November 26, 2013

D'Souza's role in the 2012 campaign was more direct than obliquely influencing political theory. He also created the (completely unfounded) idea that President Obama was influenced by his father to hate Western culture, by virtue of his father being a Kenyan anti-colonialist. It's an argument that starts with D'Souza's goal — prove that Obama hates America — and then work backward to find the cause. At the time D'Souza released that theory, The Economist