Racism or victimhood?
Bookworm on Mar 14 2008 at 9:48 am | Filed under: African-Americans, Barack Obama
Yesterday, the print news, the blogosphere, and the radio world were filled with stories about the MSM’s sudden discovery that Obama’s spiritual mentor is a very angry man, who speaks hatefully of whites and of the United States of America. The common conclusion: Jeremiah Wright is a racist, and it doesn’t help Obama’s broader reach that he’s been partnered with this man for 20 years and that he refuses to disassociate himself from Wright (although it does reveal a loyalty I find surprising in an opportunist like Obama).
The Anchoress looked at Wright’s rhetoric and wondered if racism was too facile an analysis:
So, do I think Wright is being racist, here? To be honest, no I really don’t. I think he is highlighting some truly egregious truth in the United States while exploiting some legitimate grievances to encourage a victim’s mindset; he’s playing to the cheap seats with some of this, to be sure, but so did Gloria Steinem when she supported Hillary by writing that if Obama were a woman with his resume, he’d never be where he is.
What is going on here is a profound slight-of-hand, or an illusionist’s expert misdirection. You are being told to think you’re seeing one thing, when you’re actually seeing another. Except for the fact that whoever released these tapes has played it, this sermon would not be an example of a “race card” being thrown. It’s a victim card. This is about the Primacy of Victimhood over all else. And frankly, I think if white America falls for this and starts freaking out over Wright’s “racism” then they will be submitting to a HUGE and insidious manipulation by the Clinton team, who, as Instapundit suggests, may reasonably be assumed to have brought this forward.
Both Democrat candidates have been playing victim cards in their turn, for months. Yesterday Geraldine Ferraro upped the ante by playing the gender and reverse-racism victim card.
These are not “racist” or “sexist” gambits being played by Wright or Steinem, but appeals to emotion, and appeals to emotion are too often used to gloss over a lack of substance, or so I have been told by my correspondents on the left, lo these many years, as they accuse the GOP of governing on “fear,” (because terrorism is not a real threat).
I think the Anchoress is on to something here, because this is all about victimhood, but I think she errs when she substitutes victimhood for racism. In the Wright universe (and, by extension, in the Obama universe), I suspect that the two concepts exist simultaneously and feed off of each other.
“Inextricably intertwined” is a legal phrase that is, I think, pretty self-descriptive: it refers to situations in which two causative factors are so tied together that it is impossible for the court to tease out the separate strands. It occurs a lot in attorney’s fees battles, when one side claims huge attorneys fees, arguing that matters both compensable and non-compensable are so intertwined that they can’t be separated, so the attorney should be paid for them all.
I see that same concept operating here, when it comes to modern victim hood and its being yoked to old-fashioned racism. Since the 1960s, as real racism of the KKK variety vanished, a new racism arose. In the old days, blacks were victims of explicit acts of racism, such as “whites only” jobs, restaurants, bus seats, drinking fountains, pools, etc., not to mention the sheer venom rained upon them in ordinary conversation and interactions. The racism was the dominant note, with the victimization being the result.
Nowadays, however, with a few anomalous exceptions, those overt acts are gone. All that is left for the American blacks is a pervasive sense that they’re not getting ahead. As compared to white and Asian Americans, they’re doing less well economically, more of their men are in jail, more of their girls have sexually transmitted diseases, few of them do as well in school, etc. How does one account for these myriad failings?
Because the black establishment is so deeply invested in the Democratic social welfare policies, blacks cannot even consider the possibility that their status results from the fact that liberal government policies, by infantilizing them, makes it virtually impossible for blacks to stand up and succeed. John Doggett, whom the liberals attempted to destroy back in 1998 when he stepped forward to defend Clarence Thomas, understood this:
When I started my career as a legal services attorney in 1972, I thought that liberals really cared about the poor, the oppressed and people of color. Twenty-six years later, I have learned that while some have good intentions, many liberals are closet racists. They claim to be “sensitive, progressive and concerned,” while in reality far too many of them truly do not believe that blacks or Latinos are as smart as they are. In fact, their liberal orthodoxy cannot exist in a world where blacks and Latinos no longer “need” their help.
You can get even lengthier analyses along these same lines from a few other African American writers who look at the soul-destroying culture of enablement emanating from the liberal white establishment: John McWhorter’s Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
If you’re African American and are denied a large batch of analytical tools necessary to examine your situation, how then do you explain the fact that blacks, on the whole, are not doing that well in America? If it’s not the fault of Democratic policies, and if you can’t (or won’t) blame yourself, you must be the victim of some nefarious scheme — and that scheme can be only one thing: racism.
This modern victimhood/racism analysis, then, is the mirror image of the reality in the 1960s, when racism was the dominant note, with victimization as the inevitable result. Here, the victimization becomes the dominant note, with the victims backing into racism as the only possible causative agent. From there, it’s easier to keep taking that conclusion to further and further extremes: Because blacks are deeply invested in the Democratic party, which therefore by definition cannot be a contributing factor to racism or victimization, that racism must come from some amorphous “government” — not the same one that demands affirmative action, quotas, welfare, etc., but some evil, secret government controlled by people who are not Democrats, and who therefore must be Republicans.
Mentally inhabiting a logical universe that prohibits investigating or recognizing certain facts, demands false syllogisms that force together two ideas that may have been a pair in the mid-20th century, but that no longer work in harness in the 21st century. For Wright, things aren’t going well, therefore he’s a victim. And if he’s a victim, there must be racism. And if there’s racism, it must be because of evil white conservative men covening in the back rooms of government offices. QED.
(One more thing: if you’ve noticed, as I have, that the entire angry African-American argument seems rooted in realities of the past, not the present, you’re noticing yet another example of the Left’s perpetually regressive take on the world, something I wrote about here, at the American Thinker. The African-American community is, in many sectors, a suffering community. Its problems should be identified and addressed, but that can never happen if “progressive” rhetoric remains stuck in 1963.)
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21 Responses to “Racism or victimhood?”
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Pastor Wright can say whatever he wants.
He just doesn’t get to say it all from a tax-exempt pulpit.
I agree with you 100% that the African-American Community is suffering in many sectors.
The Pastor doesn’t help but hinder his congregation by not addressing the root causes. Of course, if you want to live in 1963 you also get to look like a fool.
In my opinion:
Obama is playing the race card and he has learned from his Pastor Master-his spiritual guide. One cannot have it both ways - SENATOR Obama, running for PRESIDENT, who graduated from HARVARD while his surrogate mouthpiece, who more than suggests that it is the ‘whites’ that are evil.
QUESTION:
How is it that Stephanie Powers gets the ax for calling Hillary Clinton a ‘monster’ and Pastor Wright/Wrong gets called, a ‘crazy old uncle’ and gets to keep his job and affiliation with Obama?
ANSWER:
The race card is in a stacked deck.
In looking at one Wight video, he said something about loving ones’ enemies, in a tone that was 180 degrees from love. Wright’s tone of voice oozed hatred. I am reminded of Marc Antony’s funeral oration in Julius Caesar, where he repeated that Brutus was an honorable man. At the end of Antony’s funeral oration, the crowd was ready to lynch honorable Brutus. So, Wright’s technique of saying one thing and meaning another is not unique.
oooooo…now you’ve done it, Book. I fear that you’ve really made HelenL mad. Let’s see what she has to say about this. I think that I’ll go and put some popcorn in the microwave oven and get ready for the show.
2008.03.13 Politics and National Defense Roundup…
This post will grow as the day goes on. Don’t forget to check back later. Worth knowing about today: Winter Soldier II Off To A Lying Start Winter Soldier II: The curtain opens; Plus: More on the anti-recruiter war;Update: Pinkos disrupt Move America …
Danny,
What Wright assumed that everyone knew (and everyone in his church does know) and what he alluded to by mentioning the few white people who were present, [I'm assuming you watched the same YouTube video I did and that may be a false assumption] is this: When a black person blames whites, he is not speaking about every white person individually. He means racism (against black) is so systemic that we don’t realize it exists.
Wright isn’t living in 1963; he knows things are better than they were then. But “better” isn’t the goal, equality is.
When a black person blames whites, he is not speaking about every white person individually.
No, he’s just talking about skin color and how the black experience is special because of skin color compared to the white experience.
He means racism (against black) is so systemic that we don’t realize it exists.
Which is the aforementioned “black experience”.
But “better” isn’t the goal, equality is.
Perfection is the goal and coincidentally perfection is also the enemy of the good. Instead of making things better, things are made worse because it is not for the good.
Ymarsakar, Perfection is the enemy of excellence. And the “black experience” is something neither you nor I can know experientially.
HelenL - You DO mean equality of OPPORTUNITY, correct? Equality of OUTCOME would be ‘from each according to his ability/to each according to his need’ and that would be wrong, Wright?
Perfection is the enemy of excellence.
Striving for the perfection of one’s own heart, mind, and strength is the only way excellence can be brought up. The seeking of perfection through world dominating belief systems, however, is an entirely different matter.
And the “black experience” is something neither you nor I can know experientially.
Racist comments about where I came from only came from blacks, helen, not whites. Blacks invest too much in self-delusion to believe that they are righteous simply because their ancestors and parents were treated badly. It does not give them justification to lash out at those weaker than they, because they can’t become stronger than the whites.
Nor can you justify their actions by saying you or their targets are “ignorant” of the “black experience”. As if a child in Rwanda and Darfur should suddenly welcome the war just because it had no “experience” of the “violence” done on others. The Black Panthers themselves have claimed, on cable tv, that what the whites have done to blacks, the blacks will do to the whites. The new Race Wars are only a few steps away in history. Such goals are what good men and women must combine against.
It is neither religion nor economic desire that creates war primarily. It is grievances, the exploitation of a people’s grievances. Those grievances may be just or unjust, the manner in which it is exploited can also become just or unjust.
It is perhaps convenient for people to define racism as economic and class differences. True racism is about ensuring that the color of a person’s skin is the primary consideration when you think about that person. Just like all prejudices, it is nothing special if the color of the skin being considered is red, black, white, yellow, or vari-colored. Those that define racism as class differences, are only fighting for Marx, not Lincoln or slaves. Their cause is a wrongfully adjudicated one.
To Book’s post,
Nowadays, however, with a few anomalous exceptions, those overt acts are gone. All that is left for the American blacks is a pervasive sense that they’re not getting ahead. As compared to white and Asian Americans, they’re doing less well economically, more of their men are in jail, more of their girls have sexually transmitted diseases, few of them do as well in school, etc. How does one account for these myriad failings?
The same way the Arabs and Palestinians account for their failures, Book.
blacks cannot even consider the possibility that their status results from the fact that liberal government policies,
Resulting in many blacks recognizing that the bureaucracy always gives you the run around and aren’t interested in fixing your problems, which obviously means that the blacks support more Democrats and more welfare programs as a solution to that.
makes it virtually impossible for blacks to stand up and succeed.
Which, conveniently, keeps them focused on violence and perceived grievances, grievances that can be used to harness the power of blacks for political goals. Just as Arafat harnessed the power of the Pallys and the wealth of the Euros.
Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America
That’s actually a form of false flag mission. You know, where the leader of a group of people specifically and explicitly sets out to create vulnerabilities and groups to attack their own people, then proclaiming themselves the saviors of a people that they themselves were responsible for hurting. Most blacks think that is what Bush did. Few blacks, however, think that about their own leaders, white or black or latin.
If it’s not the fault of Democratic policies, and if you can’t (or won’t) blame yourself, you must be the victim of some nefarious scheme — and that scheme can be only one thing: racism.
It is not so much racism as the perceived economic gap and the way they see the rich as being heartless exploiters of the weak and poor. They, thus, draw together as a community against a common perceived threat. Which is a natural human reaction to outside threats that seek to destroy or undermine your community. This is the same human behavior that people say Bush wanted to get with his false flag mission on 9/11. The Democrats, however, were long time masters of acquiring “unity”, though.
Which proves, once again, that Democrats are talking about themselves when they accuse other people of nefarious goals and machinations.
Its problems should be identified and addressed, but that can never happen if “progressive” rhetoric remains stuck in 1963.
This applies to the entire 100 percentage of the human race on this planet, Book. It applies to Muslims, to Africans, to those that died in Darfur and the Holocaust, as well as those peeps in the Bosnian and various other genocide and ethnic cleansing attempts. Rwanda. The UN. All of this is of One Piece, Book. It is the same Gordian Knot, from which only something like what the US is doing in Iraq can solve.
The solution to the problem of disenfranchised and downtrodden groups of people can never be solved by catering to “progressive”, Democrat, or Leftist philosophies. And if it is not solved, then the Middle East will simply become our own neighborhood in reality.
I doubt many Americans would prefer to see that come about, but they will have no say about it after they have helped bring it about. That’s the Catch 22. The Democrats need the support of the people to put themselves in control of the people.
After college in 68, I went to Philly and worked for the welfare department. I had never been around many blacks or Jews or gays before, and suddenly there were all sorts of people were coworkers, clients, supervisors, and people you got to know through parties or friends. Maybe it was because of the mass of first-generation-college-educated boomers who were trying to find their way in a dramatically changing world, but there was a honest sharing of experiences. We talked about family experiences and about feminist writings and homosexuality. We really learned from one another, and we valued one another for our human qualities. I don’t know exactly how or why this deteriorated into PC and victim groups. It’s very sad that it did, but I am convinced it doesn’t have to be this way.
Expat, I, too, “am convinced it doesn’t have to be this way.” But as long as we invent silly terms like reverse racism, we work against equality based on opportunity. What you and I desire is based on “valu[ing] one another for our human qualities.” Human beings come wrapped in very different bodies, and we must always feel comfortable wearing the one we have.
Helen, words like diversity are just as harmful. Maybe the situation I experienced was possible because there were so many of us and we weren’t old and established enough to have settled into tribal loyalties. We didn’t represent anyone but ourselves, and we lived with our board and brick bookcases. No staus to defend.
Expat, Sometimes I think the problem is, the world was already in motion when we got here.
In that, we’re all equal, except for Adam and Eve. And please, let’s not go there.
Everyone comes from somewhere. Nobody got to where he/she is without help. No one “happens to be white.” I am white because my father and mother were also white. No one “happens to be Christian.” I am Christian because I made choice to be based on how my parents raised me. Babies are born naked and relatively helpless. In that, we start equal. So we all have people to defend or react against (or usually both). It’s silly to pretend we are islands and not a part of the continent. We are not culture free. Nothing is neutral. If we pretend that we are culture free, our actions scream, “white is right.” Otherwise, we admit the US is filled with diversity. And that diversity matters to someone.
Can people set differences aside? Yes. But why would we want to? I like being the individual I am. And I hope others will feel likewise.
Helen,
I don’t know what you’re talking about. In today’s parlance, the word diversity is not about being a unique individual. It’s about groups that seek to set themselves apart, make claims on society for special treatment, and expect allowances for failings. By that I mean, that for the members of such groups (not all members, for sure, so don’t start down that road) their individuality is the last thing they are trading on.
And would you please explain what on earth you mean by: If we pretend that we are culture free, our actions scream, “white is right.”
Hi Judy, I was responding to Expat and didn’t mean to confuse. Not much was related to the original post.
By “if we pretend that we are culture free, our actions scream, ‘white is right.”" I mean, that for years in the US, whiteness has been a given. Since white people have been in the majority since 1776, we have presumed that culture meant “white culture.” In fact, we assumed it so well that sometimes we feel culture-less. By that I mean, we scream, Why do we need Black History month? We don’t we have White History Month? Because all non-designated months are majority months. That’s why. Whiteness is a given, unless otherwise stated. We are not culture-free, even if other ethnic cultures, fairs, religions, museums, etc. are more showy.
You might not agree, but I hope I’ve explained what I mean.
Interesting point, HelenL. So, when people say things like “He/She does, says or believes this or that because it’s part of ‘black culture’ or ‘Hispanic culture”,” that’s OK, then. Right?
Danny, It’s okay in the sense that it is a part of a given culture, (we are assuming the person isn’t lying about something we don’t fully understand). It may or may not be fully true. But POV is much more important than we think; where and who we came from influences how and what we think. To say otherwise is foolish.
Take for example, the Mexican view of the day of the Day. It is true in their culture. They do communicate with those ancestors. Can I, in the same way? Probably not. It isn’t something I grew up believing. But will it enrich my own faith to see what they believe? Inly if I want it to. This isn’t situation ethics; it’s seeing the world through different eyes, because I choose to try to understand other people.
I think this is part of the reason people from the middle East are hard to understand (Muslims for example). Americans don’t think the way they do.
HelenL - Some people’s culture/religion expects them to wantonly kill other people who do not agree with them. It will not enrich my life to understand them and I don’t want to learn to see the world through their narcissistic eyes. A culture - or a religion - that does not encourage people to kill other people is a better, superior culture/religion. Better to focus on understanding cultures that discover cures to diseases, develop ways to feed hungry people, distribute aid to the needy, tolerate (in the true meaning of the word) differences, defend the voiceless and secure the blessings of liberty for the oppressed. Get my drift?!
This isn’t situation ethics; it’s seeing the world through different eyes, because I choose to try to understand other people.
No, it isn’t situational ethics.
Take for example, the Mexican view of the day of the Day. It is true in their culture. They do communicate with those ancestors. Can I, in the same way? Probably not.
It is relativistic epistemology and metaphysics. What is real or true depends upon what a person grew up believing. Because you didn’t grew up that way, you can never truly believe in it. But you don’t have to believe in something when you believe that truth is based upon not upon free will and desire for it, but upon how one grew up.
It isn’t also limited just to saying that you can’t pray to their ancestors the way they pray to their ancestors. It is the entire construction of cultural, ethnic, and race experiences that are somehow unique to the point that nobody else can adopt that culture as their own. The new guy will forever be alien because he didn’t grow up that way.
But as long as we invent silly terms like reverse racism, we work against equality based on opportunity.
Jesse Jackson’s support of Affirmative Action can not really be called “a silly term”. Although he is working against equality based upon the opportunity of suffering good and bad consequences of the choices you made of your own free will.
What you and I desire is based on “valu[ing] one another for our human qualities.”
That in itself will never solve the problem of other human beings who use their understanding for malicious purposes. You can understand your neighbors all you want, but it takes force, violence, and active resistance to take care of the problem of people who don’t think like you and don’t want to think like you. I suppose you can understand those that want to see your death, and perhaps can even sympathize with it, but you’re not going to stop it just by understanding it.
Nothing is neutral.
Not even pacifism when it comes between defender and the aggressor.
If we pretend that we are culture free
Pretending cosmopolitanism is a bad thing. Actually doing what it takes to become cosmopolitan, however, is something the human race would benefit a lot from.
And that diversity matters to someone.
Division doesn’t benefit anyone except Lucifer and the God of War’s henchmen.
As for white majority month culture, this is predicated upon the assumption that culture is what you grew up with. In America, culture is what you have chosen to embrace. And this applies to the majority as well as to the minorities. When there is liberty, people can choose amongst many things, even the specific culture that they will call their own.
The breaking point here is that if you believe culture is what you were brought up in, and nobody else can understand it the way you do, then you setup what is known as “inferiority complexes” amongst minorities. This also sets up superiority complexes amongst the majority, the whites in helen’s words.
Neither are particularly intrinsically good or productive for human beings to have. Superiority complexes bred “white man is smarter than black men”, “Europeans are are advanced than the American Colonial Heathens”, and “white man’s burden”. Inferiority complexes produced the Holocaust, Socialist revolutions resulting in the deaths of many millions of individuals to feed the hunger for superiority, and petty as well as federal crimes galore. Harriet Tubman made a couple of remarks concerning how often the people she tried to convince to flee were shackled to slavery, not by the white man’s power, but by the mental beliefs of the slave. The mental belief of the slave that he is indeed inferior and thus needs the protection of the “Master”, so obviously running away would not be good for the slave. This is another form of the inferiority complex. The Islamic world has the same complex, they just used violence to express it. But regardless, the same consequence is that inferiority complexes keep a people chained and oppressed.
If you can’t, really can’t, choose the group or culture you belong to, then this makes people very susceptible to inferiority and superiority complexes. Would the white man’s burden people feel as arrogant if they knew it was true that the black man can be just as superior as the white man, if the black man was given the choice? Would slaves feel that they were truly inferior if they knew that simply by choosing differently, they can become the equal of their owners if not more so?
The belief that culture restricts people to their little cubby holes is what divides human beings, and it is division and strife that feeds the fires of war and utter devastation.
America’s solution to this was liberty. To allow and to ensure that people can choose what they believe to be their best path in life. This includes laws, social groups, and yes, culture.
When people from different cultures combine in one location to work together for the good of all, what you get is a meta-culture. A culture above all other cultures, because it is the only culture that people chose as their own. People wouldn’t choose to belong to this culture if they didn’t feel a benefit to it.
Sometimes this gives rise to conflicted loyalties. Like in Africa where natives from India came to Ghana and lived there. The father from India grew up in a caste system so he didn’t want his daughter to marry someone from Ghana. The daughter said that she isn’t from India, she is a part of Ghana. Her friends are in Ghana, she grew up in Ghana, and she went through school in Ghana. So why shouldn’t she marry a boy from Ghana as well? The father said no, he’s a different caste and castes can’t mix, you’re culture is Indian and so you should respect your roots.
This, then, is an example of the conflict of loyalties. Which are you more loyal to, the culture you were born to or the culture you have chosen? And what happens if the culture you were born to and the culture you have chosen are the same culture? Many people can’t choose their culture because they are never given a choice, they are never provided opportunities. When your choice is between A and A, do you really have a choice about it?
Here in America we also have immigrants that have to find a way to reconcile their loyalty to their roots and ancestors to their loyalty to their chosen country, a country with a meta-culture of their own.
Here in the US, with so many different cultures to choose from and call your own, people have the ability to decide for themselves what they want. Do they want traditional Chinese? If so, they can shop at Chinatown and learn Chinese. Do people want the Civil War culture? If so they can do re-enactments and belong to the Society of Creative Anachronism. People have a choice because there are so many to choose from and they are not penalized or executed for choosing a choice others disagree with.
Will people in Chinatown look weirdly on the white man speaking Chinese and acting Asian? Yes, but every culture is not the same. Some cultures are more inclusive, others are more exclusive. The Chinese culture normally looks down on blacks as being inferior to whites, for example. If you don’t like that, don’t learn to become Chinese or ignore that part of Chinese culture. Most cosmopolitan Asians won’t say to a person trying to learn about Vietnam, Japan, and China that “you have to be born Asian to understand”.
No, you don’t. It’s an advantage, maybe, but human comprehension is not limited to what we were “born as”. Down that road lies slavery.
And so when people talk about limiting folks to the cultures that they were born with and “best understand”, what are we really talking about? We are really talking about putting people back in the bad old days when your choice was between A and… A. It wasn’t even between bad and worse, just bad and bad. You ain’t even got a choice between bad and worse back in the day.
Remember inter-racial relationships? Even if whites or blacks wanted to “step across”, their buddies would swoop in and grab them back to their natural culture. Got to keep these folks chained and in their place, you know. Can’t be having white people act black and black people act white, that’d be… fake.
it’s seeing the world through different eyes, because I choose to try to understand other people.
There is nothing wrong in trying to understand other people. What is wrong is setting artificial limits on what people can understand, from some kind of “central authority” that knows best.
When people say “you can’t know my experience, you were never born black or Native American”, what they are really saying is “I’ve been in this village all my life, you foreign speaking folks are strange and will never be accepted as one of our own, so better git on out before we hang ya”.
America should not be going backwards in human history but forwards. The secret of American power is not exploitation, stealing resources, slavery, capitalism, or even the democracy/republic. It is people willing to combine together, regardless of what or who they were born as, for the good of all. It is the people and their ability to decide for themselves their fate, that is the secret of American success and people. Anything that limits the ability of people to choose, anything that says “you were born this way and so shall you remain this way”, is a blight upon human progress for a better world.
Helen says in post 11:
“Expat, I, too, “am convinced it doesn’t have to be this way.” But as long as we invent silly terms like reverse racism, we work against equality based on opportunity.”
Helen, in a sense I agree with you. “Reverse racism” should simply be called “racism”. I think the term “reverse racism” is used in response to the idea that people of color cannot be racists by definition. That they cannot engage in racism. Of course they can! Racism is racism, period, and it’s ALL ugly.
I taught high school math in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley for seven years, in a city more than 90% Hispanic. There were few to no black people, but my school had one black football coach.
This coach upon his arrival was attempting to rent an apartment and could not find one. He was suspicious at one rental community that he liked. A fellow Hispanic coach returned with him, and the Hispanic coach inquired about a rental and was led to and allowed to view several nice properties. He sat down to fill out the paperwork and was assured there would be no problem.
He stopped midway through, said “I’ll be right back”, and brought his fellow (Black) coach in, and said, “Actually I can’t rent the apartment, but my friend here can. Please bring him the paperwork.”
The Hispanic rental agent was absolutely FURIOUS. She was beside herself at the thought that this Black man was going to be allowed to live in an apartment that she controlled. The Hispanic coach eventually made it very clear that she had no choice, and he spelled out the legal ramifications. He got the apartment.
Now, this is just one story. However, I spent a great deal of time among Hispanic families, and this friendly football coach represents the rare exception in my experience. And I do mean RARE. I heard so many epithets hurled at black people in general; I experienced what can only be described as a broad, pervasive racial hatred from nearly the entire Hispanic community down there against all blacks.
That was 1986. I see from the Texas results that Barack Obama got about 30% of the vote in the Valley this year, so there remains hope. Things are changing. I’d be interested in seeing a breakdown of voting exit polls by race/heritage and age in the Valley, and especially in Brownsville, where I taught and lived for seven years.
Perhaps I’ve moved off topic, but if the incident I described above isn’t racism, then what is it? If “people of color” cannot be racist, then how would you describe such incidents?
I like to believe that I’m not racist in any way, shape, or form, but who can say? I think I’m not racist. I’d befriend ANYONE whose value system is reasonably close to my own. Yet I reject cultures that I find harmful; I’m no tolerant multiculturalist that seeks EQUAL value from all cultures. I find much of what is considered “current Black culture” to be very harmful.
I’m also gay, but I find nearly all of “current gay culture” to be incredibly harmful, especially to gays themselves. Does that make me an anti-gay bigot? I don’t think so. But there are those who refuse to differentiate between culture and race, or culture and “identity”. I prefer the conceptual differentiation to be between culture and characteristic, not “identity”, a word which has been poisoned by the pervasive use of identity politics.
A few words about Obama’s pastor. I don’t reject him categorically 100%. He can raise a point about the Tuskegee Airmen and the fact that the government deliberately diseased them with syphilis. He’s correct.
But I’d have to point out that the military, after exploding atom bombs in the Nevada Testing Grounds, would deliberately march its soldiers into the fallout to determine the effects. And the Tuskegee Airmen were in the military. It is not as if the civilian population were given syphilis. However, the pastor remains correct: Not one white soldier was deliberately given syphilis, and in that action can clearly be seen racism in its worst sense.
The pastor also says that our Founding Fathers said “all men are created equal”, but what they meant was “all WHITE men are created equal”. As a general statement, he is again correct.
It’s not fair to imply, however, that the American Apartheid against black people was a 100% phenomenon. There were dissidents from the very beginning, and the abolitionist movement contained many whites who even went so far as to participate in the Underground Railroad in resistance to the slavery and the Apartheid.
I could accept the pastor’s “GOD DAMN AMERICA” if each such statement were balanced by an equal statement extolling its virtues; this would make it clear that he was identifying those situations, and those people, who at specific times engaged in the form of evil we call racism.
However, this pastor has NEVER, not even once, as far as I can tell, engaged in any statements or rhetoric that praises America and its people. Never. Due to this, and due to Michelle Obama’s corroborating statements, we can draw conclusions.
[...] Bookworm believes I err in a bit of this, and that’s certainly possible. [...]