>
> ``It's also not constructive to reduce all politics we hate to racism.
> Straussianism is not racist at the core, taht it, it does not turn on
> the notion of race. It is elitist and antidemocratic -- isn't that bad
> enough?'' Justin
It would be interesting to do a study of what Strauss and his students think about race. As I recall, Strauss hated rock and roll, which he referred to as "jungle music" -- a rather suggestive phrase. Allan Bloom inherited the master's disdain for popular music deriving from the African-American experience and shared the general neo-con hostility to any programmatic attempt to amelorate the condition of black life in America (i.e., opposition to affirmative action or scholarship focusing on the black experience). On the other hand, if Saul Bellow's Ravelstein and other gossippy accounts are to be trusted, Bloom did have a thing for young black and asian men. Of course, sexual attraction to the racial other can be found in both racists and anti-racists, so the last item may not be relevant. In general though, I think the elitism of the Straussians often takes a racial caste, given the simple sociological fact that the elite in our society is overwhelmingly white and the helot class includes many people of colour.