Sam Bain, Columnist
Ideology: Conservative Republican | Writing from: Ohio
“I hate white people, all of them. Every last iota of a cracker; I hate him….You want freedom? You’re gonna have to kill some crackers, you gonna have to kill some of their babies.”
These are the horrific words said by King Samir Shabazz, a former leader in the New Black Panther party. Where is the outrage? This same man was charged with violating the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for intimidating voters outside a Philadelphia poll on Election Day 2008. After having the charges reduced several times, the case was mysteriously dropped all together with a large ignorance of the media.
It seems to be the case that all too often conservatives are the ones accused of racism by Liberals who claim to be proponents of fairness and equality. This is not the case. Now I am not here to explicitly call any man a racist, but to call out those who throw out the race card flippantly. Time after time it has been used as a political wedge to either dishonorably gain votes or lash out against an opponent who happens to not share your views.
One of the most pressing issues of race baiting has been whether or not it is acceptable to be black and a Republican. Never mind the fact that the sole basis of this notion is ludicrous, the idea that one’s race should directly imply your political affiliation has taken roots too deep in America and places certain people in a confined box. Let’s go back to a 2008 speech in which the Reverend Al Sharpton was asked whether or not Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were considered “house negroes” for serving in the Bush Administration. Just short of answering yes, Sharpton says he believes, “that they are in the house and the rest of us [blacks] are in the field.” Again I ask, where is the outrage for this intolerance, particularly in the black community? And what did you hear from the media? Silence.
The Rev. Al Sharpton. Credit: AP
Remember when Glenn Beck said Obama had “a deep seated hatred for white people”? The left was furious, but where is that indignation when black conservatives are treated in the same manner? While I do not condone Beck’s comments and do not believe that Obama himself is a racist, some of the people he surrounds himself with and the comments he makes are cause for concern because bad company corrupts good character.
Whether it was Obama’s “typical white person,” comments or his unnecessary slander about the Cambridge Police Department, something is to be said about the same man that believes his election was supposed to bring about racial healing in the United States. “We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism or at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, ‘Not this time.’” Then candidate Obama uttered these words in Philadelphia months before his historic election, but as soon as he takes office, the race card is whipped out once again. Dr. Joseph Lowery, the reverend who gave Obama’s inaugural benediction prayed that, “White will embrace what is right.” That phrase is almost subtle enough to be ignored which is exactly what happened. It slipped by like a thief in the night, undetectable by the media.
Recently, Chris Mathews begged the question of Republican voters in South Carolina, “It’s okay to be Indian-American [referring to Nikki Haley’s gubernatorial nomination] but we got a problem with this black president?”
This all too common for the Left. Take the Tea Party, for example, of which there has been an onslaught of criticism. While Whoopi Goldberg calls out Tea Party racism, she defends Mel Gibson.
Out of all the charges of racial hated brought against the Tea Party, not one of them has been proven true. Where are the signs saying “Lynch Obama” and the ones blatantly displaying racial slurs? You will find none. Meanwhile, the NAACP brings forth a resolution condemning the Tea Party’s so-called racism based on media propaganda. I think one question remains: will we see a resolution condemning Mel Gibson or the New Black Panther Party?
Too often black racism has been getting a free pass and the issue of race itself is exploited for ratings in the media. When you water down racism and accuse anyone who dares offer a dissenting view of harboring prejudice, you take away from the real issue at hand. It is 2010 and America has its first black president and racial tensions are boiling hot. Was not Lincoln’s idea of a more perfect union the binding and connection of men’s souls regardless of color and creed? After all this nation has been through, from the Civil War, to 60s to the 2008 election, race is deliberately being used as wedge to divide Americans. Conservatives are NOT the cause of this. To answer Chris Mathews question, the GOP does not see race when looking at candidate; we are focused on issues and issues alone. The media and left may be playing games with race, but I believe the average citizen is not that gullible to be sucked into the media’s influence. We have come a long way as a nation, but loosely using race as divisive measure will tear this country apart because real racism is being ignored and meanwhile the Democratic Party is crying wolf.
Very good article with some very good points. Our politics in this country have become very confusing and nasty. What happened to Obama the peacemaker at home and abroad?
If the “average citizen” wasn’t too gullible to fall for the media influence then we wouldn’t have the Obama administration right now. So many people heard the words “Hope and Change” throughout the media and thought of the promises of flowers blooming in every “hood” and the end of money worries for the low and middle class. And instead we sit in an even worse economic situation.
All though, I did enjoy the article. Good Job
From your defense of the Tea Party to your discussion of black racism, you underlie this entire article with a disturbing notion of racial progress.
Although an overwhelming majority of Americans reject overt racism, its oppressive nature has crept into subtler expressions that pervade every corner of our country. The moral victories of the Civil Rights Movement were limited to the forms of unconcealed bigotry that maintained the institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow era. No movement, however, is powerful enough to redress centuries of systematic racial oppression and I think it’s safe to say that the living descendants of the Civil Rights Movement would agree with that assessment.
Consider that white job applicants with criminal records have a better chance of being called back for an interview than black applicants without one, even when all the qualifications are the same. Or that the lightest-skinned immigrants to the United States make as much as 15 percent more than the darkest, even when the immigrants in question have the same level of education, experience and measured productivity. Maybe you should look at the MIT study that showed that job applicants with “black sounding names” are 50 percent less likely than their white counterparts to be called back for a job, even when their credentials are the same. I could go on and on and on but this new era of racism that departs from the overt bigotry of our past is a reality.
You want to talk about division? This country is divided by the mythical colorblindless that you venerate. Without systematically redressing remnants of the “old racism” while ADDRESSING its contemporary manifestations, we will continue to see the types of racial divisions that you decry. While you may not find many nooses at a Tea Party, you will find scores of white people who are in denial about the relevance of contemporary racism. It’s not just the Tea Party, however. White liberals are some of the most dangerous harvesters of white denial because they preach the same doctrine of colorblindness that we hear from the Tea Party while also signaling racial benevolence. While the average Tea Party member would readily dismiss racism as a significant factor in my aforementioned series of statistics, the white liberal would at least recognize that the social injustices that maintain racial inequalities.
You live in a post-racial fantasy that is neither possible nor desirable. The type of colorblind narrative that you assert is pouring salt on our nation’s gaping racial wounds and we only reach true unification when both liberals and conservatives abandon these colorblind delusions.