Liberal commentators will always say conservatives are just a bunch of racists. This is a lie. But conservatives need to do a better job convincing the racists that it's a lie.

A handful of conservatives, including quietly influential figures in important conservative institutions, were outed last week by leaked emails as participating in a pro-Hitler, nakedly anti-Semitic, and plainly racist email list.

While liberal journalists are prone to inventing racism everywhere, this was no invention. The article in Splinter by Hannah Gais was no smear. It was serious and fair reporting that ought to cause conservatives to ask what we are doing wrong.

John Elliott, formerly of the Institute for Humane Studies and Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was a central figure in the story. IHS and ISI are respected and mainstream conservative institutions. Thousands of conservative and libertarian journalists and activists have passed through them. Hundreds of them received mentorship from Elliott. I’ve been friendly with Elliot for a decade. He’s brought me in (and gotten me paid) to speak to students at both organizations.

My first reaction upon reading the Splinter story was horror that otherwise sane-seeming people in the United States hold Hitlerian views. (For what it's worth, Elliott apologized for the emails and said he no longer believes those things. I pray that’s sincere.)

“According to one former mentee,” Gais wrote, “Elliott opened up to those he deemed ‘red-pilled’ — a term used by white nationalists and so-called ‘men’s rights activists’ to refer to someone who has been awakened to their cause.”

So my second reaction was: At least Elliott never suspected I was red-pilled.

My third reaction was: Great, now liberals are going to paint everyone who’s gone through IHS, ISI, or the Daily Caller as racists.

But my fourth reaction was the unsettling one: Why the hell did racists seek homes in conservative and liberal institutions, and why the hell were young conservatives easily won over to racist views?

Snide liberals will chuckle and say something like, “Because conservatism is racism.” But the snideness and falseness of that answer shouldn’t deter us from mulling over the question and doing something to make clear that conservatism and racism don’t mix — that if your red pill looks anything like Elliott's, you're really not welcome here.

Again, none of this will stop the bad-faith or hate-filled folks on the Left from calling us all bigots in the pages of Bloomberg News or the Washington Post. But it will serve at least two good ends: First, it will make it clear to diehard racists that they’re not welcome over here. Second, it will protect impressionable young conservatives from being wooed by them.

What’s needed is not mere “outreach” to black, Hispanic, or Jewish voters. Conservatives ought to make elevation of African Americans, immigrants, and religious minorities so central to conservatism that all dedicated racists will be thoroughly repelled. If we can't make them stop calling themselves the “alt-right,” because they won’t want to be associated with us, we can at least disgust them with such a focus.

Why? Mostly because it’s the right thing to do.

Conservatives don’t give it enough attention, but one of the greatest evils in the U.S. today is rank racial inequality. The median income of African Americans is below $31,000, which is less than half the median income of white Americans. More blacks are imprisoned in America than are whites, even though there are nearly five white people here for every black person.

There are a thousand points of data like this, all confirming that being an African American means living with the odds stacked against you.

Do you remember playing video games that allowed you to set the difficulty level? Imagine if you could set the difficulty level for your life. The data all suggest that being an immigrant or an African American means setting a much higher difficulty level than being a white guy.

To accept this reality doesn’t require one to declare that whites are all vile racists or oppressors. It doesn’t require agreeing that the U.S. is fundamentally a white supremacist nation. It just requires the sincere acceptance of two premises: First, that all humans are created equal (the official teaching of the U.S. founders and all Abrahamic religions), and second, that blacks and Hispanics have far worse outcomes in the U.S.

If both of these premises are true — and they are — then things in the U.S. still aren’t fair and can be improved. And if the game is rigged so badly in the U.S. that thousands of young men are shot on the streets of Chicago, that tens of thousands of black babies are aborted every year, that hundreds of thousands are born out of wedlock, then isn’t that a crisis that deserves attention?

Conservatives ought to make it a priority to fight for the fundamental dignity and equality of racial minorities who have been denied that dignity and equality. It will require overcoming decades of injustice, and so won't happen quickly. We won't disabuse the Left of their self-satisfied smears and conceits, but that's not the point. Conservatives will be able to take solace in the fact that we're fighting the good fight and pissing off the racists.