Hanania doesn’t criticise anything specific about the bills directly or offer a clear thesis for why they led to a rise in crime. There’s no analogy to clubbing seals here. The strong implication imo is that giving more freedom to black people itself led to bad things happening because black people (according to Hanania) have a bad culture. Which is a different and much more offensive (to many) thesis.
(I agree that this is then used as a segue to a pretty insightful and biting critique of conservatives, which is the main point of the article. And I can see the pragmatic value of his argumentative approach for reaching racist conservatives. But I don’t think that does much to defend against a charge of racism here.)
Sorry, this isn’t a very strong analogy.
Hanania doesn’t criticise anything specific about the bills directly or offer a clear thesis for why they led to a rise in crime. There’s no analogy to clubbing seals here. The strong implication imo is that giving more freedom to black people itself led to bad things happening because black people (according to Hanania) have a bad culture. Which is a different and much more offensive (to many) thesis.
(I agree that this is then used as a segue to a pretty insightful and biting critique of conservatives, which is the main point of the article. And I can see the pragmatic value of his argumentative approach for reaching racist conservatives. But I don’t think that does much to defend against a charge of racism here.)