I would just like to document the fact that this time you can't blame Black folks. This time, it's your own leaders.

JIM LEHRER: Do you read the split in the party the same way?

DAVID BROOKS: Not quite. I mean, there is a split. And there's a split between the business side and the law-and-order side. But there's also social conservatives, like Sam Brownback, who are on the McCain-Kennedy side, because they believe in being good Samaritans, and for other reasons.

And I'm not sure how serious a blow it would be if they passed something like McCain-Kennedy. I think it's no accident that every major national Republican over the past 20 years has basically been where Bush is now -- Reagan, Bush, McCain, who's got national ambitions, the big state governors, the senators who have to run in the states.

If you look at the hard-core anti-immigrant House members, they come from districts where the Republicans win 80, 90 percent, all-white districts, safe districts. So they aren't -- I don't trust that they're good judges of the party, or of where the country is, or even where the party is.

Actually, it's always been your leaders...ours just talk and screen folks for entry into their respective political parties.

Mr. Brooks isn't a leader, of course...he is, however, a spokesman or vehicle those leaders use to get their viewpoint out there, trouble the waters, stuff like that. In the same roundtable, Mr. Lehrer says (in reference to possible personnel changes at the White House)

JIM LEHRER: You have tremendous sources within this White House, David. Anybody else going to go?

...so this isn't just an opinion.

No one forced Mr. Brooks to say that. In fact, the version he gave on Face the Nation was more polished, making no mention of the whiteness of those Republicans' districts. But I don't think he thought you were listening. And you weren't...were you?

Now to tell the truth, I think the "throw the immigrants out" contingent are...okay, "wrong" isn't the word I want, because you do get to make the nation you want...you just have to live with the repercussions. And I don't think most in that contingent have thought through the repercussions of what they are asking for (though there is no real answer to comments on the absurdity of implementing a guest worker monitoring bureaucracy when no one seems to know how to make the current system support much lesser demands). And I'm not really trying to make y'all crazy.

I'm anticipating y'all going crazy though...you don't take being ignored lightly, and roughly half the potential angry white men in American are going to come out of this feeling pretty ignored. In the NY Times you've got Mr Brooks saying

Almost half of second-generation Latinos ages 25 to 44 have attended college, and those who graduate earn more on average than non-Hispanic white workers.

and Linda Chavez saying

Mexican-born men, for example, are more likely to be in the labor force than any other racial or ethnic group, according to the Census Bureau. Nearly half of Latino immigrants own their own homes. While most immigrants from Latin America, especially Mexico and Central America, lag in educational attainment, their children are far more likely to stay in school: according to research by the Pew Hispanic Center, 80 percent of second-generation Latinos graduate from high school. Almost half of second-generation Latinos ages 25 to 44 have attended college, and those who graduate earn more on average than non-Hispanic white workers.

I ask you...does lauding their competitive abilities really make you feel better about the immigrants? How can anyone expect a bunch of folks whose real income has stagnated or receded to take that annoucement as a Good Thing?

I sense your cynicism. "This Black partisan," you say to yourself, "is trying to foment internecine strife in the White Race." Nope. As I said, this is me anticipating your anger and making clear Black people are not the legitimate target of your anger. You see, just like you are getting set up, so are Black folks...but I don't like the contours of the plan so far. Now that your income and employment levels approach the level you associate with Black folks, others are already lobbying on your behalf. And their suggestions look remarkably like those Black folks have said were needed for decades.

One would think the realization white males take collective damage simply from the transfer of attention from them to girls for a decade or two would take the air out of the recent press about how "something very different happening with young black men." I see you good folks as being on the same path as Black folk; we're just further along that path "for various historic reasons." In your case, it seems Corporate Persons are playing the role of the mainstream.

My opinion, as a Black partisan, is that an unholy mess is a real possibility. We would all be more effective in addressing it if we all select our targets correctly. So I feel it prudent to keep the cause and effect of things clear.