Russ Douthat's Thinking About Black And Brown Folks

In his April 17, 2011 "The Middle-Class Tax Trap" op-ed in the New York Times, columnist Russ Douthat drops this gem:

"[T]he working-age America of the future will be far more diverse than the retired cohort it's laboring to support. Asking a population that's increasingly brown and beige to accept punishing tax rates while seniors receive roughly $3 in Medicare benefits for every dollar they paid . . . promises to polarize the country along racial as well as generational lines."

Commenting on Routhat's piece, Hendrik Hertzberg writes that Routhat thinks that "taxophobic people of color will take out their Ayn Randian anger on the old, sick, and the white. (Never mind that brown and beige seniors will be just as 'entitled' as white ones to a ride on that three-bucks-for-a-dollar Medicare gravy train.)"

Colorblind my . . . well, you know the rest.