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News and Views: An Inquiry Into the Origins of the Term "Race Hustler"
The sum of our search seems to be that a race hustler is anyone who uses law or political pressure to advance the life chances of black people. Variations of the term appear in the form of "racial racketeer" or "race-hustling poverty pimp."
Our readers must have noticed that in recent years the term "race hustler" has been in constant use in public commentary on racial issues. Like the term "outside agitator," which was common in the 1960s, the phrase "race hustler" is an essential item in the jargon and hyperbole that role today's racial dialogue in the United States. Let's examine where the expression came from and what it means.
According to the dictionary, a hustler is a person who is involved in an illicit or unethical way of doing business or obtaining money. A hustler perpetrates fraud or deceit. The hustler is a seam artist looking to put something over on an unsuspecting victim. Today the term race hustler has become a shorthand way of showing scorn for people who try to advance the status and opportunities of blacks in the United States. It is sometimes used when one's argument is flawed or when one is weak on one's facts.
Professor Thomas Sowell, a well-known and highly regarded conservative economist at Stanford's Hoover Institution, uses the term race hustlers to describe groups of blacks and whites who profit from the use of race or racism to explain the problems of the black community. In Professor Sowell's view, race hustlers seek to keep racial tensions at a boil to further their own political or economic objectives. In his syndicated column this past June 25, Dr. Sowell wrote:
"Race hustling is a remarkably lucrative occupation and the hustlers range from the level of the ordinary streetwalkers called `community activists' to the Hollywood madam level of Ivy League professors in black studies....Learned professors from the Ivy League write psycho-babble about the `deeper' significance of gutter talk in rap music. Journalists and...