Biblically described, there are three types of love: agape,
phileo, and eros; aka godly love, friendship, and sexual desire, respectively.
Somewhere along the way, a new definition of love was added to the language,
one which has a single outward feature: giving a person what s/he wants. With
this type of "love," one must give a person anything s/he wants or
approve of the gift. Anything less
becomes the opposite of love: hatred. And when a group wants a thing for the
sake of some characteristic of that group, opposition to the giving becomes
hatred of that group.
Thus, when a white person won't give a black person what he wants
or disagrees with him, it's racism on the white person's part. When a man won't
give a woman what she wants or disagrees with her, it's sexism on his part.
When a heterosexual won't give a homosexual what she wants or disagrees with
her, it's homophobia on the heterosexual's part.
And when a black person, woman, homosexual, etc. disapproves of
this gift, that person is ousted from the group by the group’s recipients. After all,
a few naysayers have the potential to cut off the giving, so any other
potential naysayers must be discouraged. Ostracism has potential to keep the
others silent.
The bestowal of this new type of love is required from those who
are perceived to be in a position of worldly power, but reciprocity is not required of the
perceived powerless recipients of that "love." Additionally, and of
the most importance, the new type of love has pride as its foundation. The
"powerful" giver is proud to have given the gift and the
"powerless" receiver is proud merely on the basis of group membership to have
received that gift. No gratitude is required on the part of the latter. That
group is only getting its just due.
It matters not if the giving will hurt the giver or the recipient.
It doesn't matter if the giving of said gift will hurt any aspect of society.
It doesn't even matter if the gift will wipe out the lineage of the
recipient. All that matters is that the recipient
gets what s/he wants. (It's interesting to note that the German word for the
noun 'poison' is das Gift; the verb
'to poison' is vergiften. The last
also means 'to pollute.')
So it is that actor Ken Wahl--a white man-- is called a racist by
a black man. Wahl's alleged crime: hoping that the abortionist Kermit Gosnell
gets the book thrown at him for being a small but egregious part of the
self-genocide of a people.
Black guy called me racist due to my stance on #Gosnell.I said,"Don't u care that the babies he killed were black!? U should,G! I do!" #tcot
But the discerning know
what Wahl’s real “crime” is: not wanting to give a designated black person what
that person wants, and, thus, refusing to show his “love” for the black
race. Gosnell wants freedom, but Wahl
wants him to be imprisoned. Therefore, Wahl is "racist."
You know, it’s almost
as if most of the world has become populated by billions of narcissists.
For certain, Kermit Gosnell does not consider the babies he
murdered to be human beings, much less fellow black Americans. Here's a little
secret that not too many non-blacks know:
there is a certain segment of the black population--an elite--that looks
down on the majority of blacks and believe that the world would be better off
without them. This elite has existed for a long time and what they think about
the vast majority of blacks would make a Klansman blush. (One white person who
does know: Anne Rice. She outlined the culture in her excellent, non-vampire
novel, The Feast of All Saints.) From
his courtroom and jailhouse demeanor, I suspect that Gosnell is one of these
self-styled elites.
It's said that many of his clientele were young black drug addicts
and prostitutes. Someone like Gosnell would believe that he was doing the black
race a favor by "culling the herd," that is, getting rid of the
inferior members of his race. That he didn't even allow his victims the dignity
of proper sanitary conditions and that he kept trophies of his youngest victims
are just symptoms of his singular psychopathology...and actually, the former makes
sense given what I suspect about Gosnell. Puncturing uteri, over-drugging and
passing along diseases through dirty instruments would--and did--cause many of
the women to become sterile.
But he had accomplices! No, I'm not talking about the creatures
who worked in his office; I'm referring to the Pennsylvania authorities who
knew since 1993 what kind of charnel house Gosnell was running and did nothing
about it. The only reason that we know about Gosnell is that he happened to
over-drug one of his patients, the patient died, her husband alerted the
authorities and, as a result, the DEA--a federal agency--swooped down on
Gosnell's clinic. And, here's something pertinent: neither that patient nor her
husband are black. One wonders how many black people complained to the state
authorities about this man over the past twenty years.
Now, most of you know I'm not wont to play the race card, and, in
a way, I'm not doing it now. You see, I
think that the Pennsylvania authorities thought they were "loving" Gosnell
and his mostly black patients. How? By
giving them what they wanted--in spite of the complaints from some
black people about Gosnell, black women kept going to him to have him murder
their babies.
This is where the new type of love has brought us: all taking, all appetite—and easy disposal of an
inconvenience like children because children require adults to do more than
just take, be more than just appetite. (And, remember, just because most women
who have abortions do so early enough within the legal limit doesn't make
their children any less murdered. I know.)
UPDATE (May 15, 2013): In the comments, uptownsteve--the infamous troll of black conservative sites and pages--unwittingly demonstrates the truth of the premise of this essay. Thanks, Steve!
This was originally a Facebook note, but I think it needs to be said at as many places as I can say it. It is slightly edited from the original.
*****
Recently, I had a misunderstanding with a Facebook friend about a comment I left on her page. My comment wasn't directed at her and the particulars of the misunderstanding aren't important, but I've seen the idea floating around for some years now--especially since it has become well known that there are a lot of black Americans who still hold a grudge against white Americans for slavery and Jim Crow and especially since a certain person became President of the United States--that black Americans ought to be grateful for those white Americans who died "for" our ancestors' freedom.
Let's get something straight.
I'm quite grateful to God for planting me in this country, in spite of the means of how it was done. It delivered me and mine from idolatry and Islam. God makes all things work together for the good for those who love Him and are called to His purposes.
This country was founded on freedom for all and, it took some time, but America has lived up to its foundation. I hate the fact that Americans had to walk in the wilderness to make that happen: to kill each other in a Civil War and to make some of its citizens live in quasi-citizenship for 100 years after that. But it happened, nonetheless.
Here's the thing: did those who fought for the freedom of my ancestors 150 years ago and for the true citizenship of me, my parents and grandparents fifty years ago (my lifespan) do it to earn the gratitude of black Americans or did they do it for God and/or the honor of our country? One wonders if black Americans' freedom could have been accomplished without the bloodshed. Perhaps not, but black slaves certainly did not make white Americans kill each other over the bondage of the former.
If life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are gifts from the Creator granted to all human beings, then those who defend the same should not care about gratitude from other human beings. As far as this matter goes, any gratitude which the likes of me might offer only serves to engender pride in the recipient. Pride is a sin; all types of pride.
True freedom fighters have the clean conscious of God. May that be enough for them.
I've lived a relatively long time and I've never known or heard of anyone who "demanded gratitude" for the sacrifices made to free the slaves in this country. Has anyone? That's a straw man...
Some people are quick to call you a liar when your experience doesn't match theirs. Humans...
Dedicated to the memory of the fearless Andrew Breitbart.
Note: I began composing this essay some months before the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman shooting, but, in its wake, I felt that it was time to finish it and post it.
Usually I’m reading several books at once and using Kindle for Blackberry iPhone has exacerbated this low level of ADD.
One of the opened books on my device is Lee Harris’s The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West. The subject matter is obvious; however, in the preface and the first few chapters, Harris barely mentions Islam at all. Instead, he does two very valuable things: he defines his terms and lays the ideological foundation for those terms as they relate to his subject. The two sets of players in the scenarios that Harris describes are: rational actors and tribal actors or fanatics. All of the following excerpts are taken from the book’s preface.
Throughout most of human history, men have not behaved like rational actors but like tribal actors; and in many cultures of the world today, they continue to behave that way. They have no choice. When everyone around you is a member of a tribe, you must either belong to a tribe or be an outcast. Whereas the rational actor asks himself, “What is best for me,” the tribal actor must ask himself,” What is best for us?”
*****
[W]hat limits [the tribal actor’s] freedom is not so much the pressure of the tribal mind applied externally, but rather the fact that the tribal actor thinks with the tribal mind, and so cannot even imagine doing things differently from the way they are done by his tribe.
*****
The rational actor has the luxury of appealing to his conscience in order to condemn the behavior of his own community.
*****
The tribal actor, on the other hand, cannot take a moral stance outside the perspective of his tribe. For the tribal actor, the highest ethical idea is: “My tribe, right or wrong.” The mere idea that his tribe could be wrong is unthinkable for the tribal actor, since he defines as right whatever the tribe deems right, and wrong as whatever the tribe deems wrong.
So let’s see how these observable truths relate to black Americans.
We have seen black Americans like former presidential candidate Herman Cain (R-GA), Rep. Allen West (R-FL), and Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC)--people who are obviously black and of African descent, using the eyeball test and known heritage--be deemed "not really black.”i Men like the foregoing are those who are not Democrats, who oppose the policies supported by the Democrat Party and who do not politically support Democrats of any race or color, not even the present President of the United States of America. But how can black Americans who are not Democrats or Liberals or Leftists become not themselves? And what gives Democrats—even white ones—the authority to determine who is black and who is not?
The following videos have a common theme.
The pride/shame dynamic is what is on display here. This feature is used rein in members of a tribe who step outside of pre-defined tribal boundaries.
Black Americans are, for the most part, a tribe. Some will take offense to that opinion, but if we look into the specifics of our existence as Americans since the practice of enslaving imported Africans became widespread, we see that there is nothing else that we can be called.
Remember, our ancestors, of various West African tribes, were bought here, sold, and forcibly stripped of their various names, languages, cultures, and religions. That conditioning created a new tribe: the Negro. And even after the abolition of slavery, Americans of African descent were confined to a certain level of society. A few managed to break the barrier, but the vast majority remained in the legal, economic, educational social and tribal space into which the US Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson allowed state and local governments to pen them.
But along came the Civil Rights Era, really beginning in the 1940s and reaching its apex in the 1970s. The Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts heralded the end of our status as a tribe within a nation and they harkened to the objective ideals on which this nation was founded.
These landmarks of legislation stated that we belonged to the American “tribe” all along. But, concurrently, another idea—an ideology--was on the ascent as well: Black Pride.
Pride. When we hear the word, we interpret it in two ways.
So-called benign pride is represented in the following example: we are proud of ourselves when we achieve hard-won goals-- educational, personal, etc.; we are proudof cherished relatives and friends who do the same.
The not-so-good type of pride is that which the Bible warns against--"the high look," “the up-tilt of the chin.”
Recall that in the days before the Civil Rights Era, being a black American was a matter of shame and degradation, but the idea of “Black Pride" served to counter that. The concept of Black Pride, while initially a good thing, has, however, brought black Americans from one extreme mindset and deposited us into another. It took us away from the shame of being black to a place in which no one may criticize a black person who is deemed to be in good standing with the “tribe.” Many (most?) black Americans believe that blackness is a way of thinking and a political position and, stemming from these ideas, that any black person who deviates from the “black” mindset and political position—a black conservative--isn't really black. This idea stems further from the Left co-opting "black pride" and using it to keep anger and grievances alive long past their dates of pertinence. The purpose of this tactic is to keep the wedge open between black and white Americans, drive it wider, and produce violence. We've seen it happen many times. The ultimate purpose, taken together with many other tactics, is to destroy America.
Pride is what is always has been: inordinate high opinion of one's superiority and goodness; the preening to appear better than on-lookers. (My great-aunt calls it “floor-showing.") That we had to use pride--a sin--to “rid” ourselves of the mindset of shame and degradation is the problem. We went too far in the other direction, so far in that direction that the things which are destroying us--the things which we should be ashamed of--we have deemed inherent to blackness and called them good. We call the chains of the New Slavery--bastardy, illiteracy, mis-education, self-genocide, etc.—our due, our rights. And we believe that any of our number who breaks free ideologically and tries to tell their brethren how to be free is a traitor to the tribe. (Harriett Tubman would understand.) Shame is no longer an option, except as a cudgel for those who point this out. ii
In addition, we deem the New Slavers--the modern-day Democrat Party--to be our friends even though their forebears were always the perpetrators of overt black American slavery and oppression and they have lured all too many of us into contemporary bondage. This sort of tribal pride blocks the ability to see what's right in front of one’s face and the ability to accurately map out the future. It blocks reality.
Herman Cain was dead on when he called it brainwashing and it has been a decades-long process, coinciding with the Left's agenda to hollow out the institutions of this country.
Here’s the thing: I think that certain types of tribalism are beneficial to those within and even without some sets of tribal boundaries. Some years back, Bill Whittle famously expounded on the tribe of Sheepdogs, those rough men—and, sometimes, women--who make it their business to protect sheep from the wolves of this world. “You choose your tribe,” said Bill, and allowing oneself that choice is the province of rational actors. This isn’t to say that one should separate self from one’s racial, ethnic, national, or ideological tribe. However, it is to say that blindly following each one of the presumed norms of the tribe into which one was born is folly and it is the province of tribal actors. That is the place where into which all too many of my fellow black Americans find ourselves locked, mentally and emotionally.
Through this mindset, black Americans have become the organized Left's shock troops in latter’s war against America and all too many of us have become the Left's overseers, tasked to force the "deserters" back into formation using the tools of ridicule and shame. I almost said that the Left was at war with black people, but the Left doesn't esteem blacks enough to deem us as their enemies. We are merely tools to be used for the task at hand—to foment violent racial discord which will have to be put down using infinitely stronger government violence--and to be discarded when the task is completed, assuming that there will be any of us left after the New Civil War. And we let ourselves be used for one reason: tribal vengeance; for slavery and for oppression.
I submit that the Obama Administration, representing black Americans and no others, declared a tribal war against white Americans when Attorney General Eric Holder refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party after the latter's blatant violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Department of Justice’s inaction sent a message mirroring that of the US Supreme Court Dred Scott decision (1857): that the white man has no rights which the black man is bound to respect. Leftist ideology has been inculcated into black Americans for quite some time now and one of the strategies of this process has been to keep alive racial anger and the desire for tribal vengeance for past oppression. The Obama Administration's inaction in the above matter was merely a formal declaration, but the anger has long been simmering and, all too often, it boils over. Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so. And I think that many Americans have gotten the message.
Assuming that the above is true, let’s leave aside morality and conscience for a bit and look at this declaration strictly from a strategic point of view. Leaderless families and the resultant black-on-black killings are prevalent among black Americans and directly attributable to the lure of LBJ’s New Slavery Great Society programs. (I contend that these two features are merely the aforementioned ‘shame and degradation of being black’ re-packaged and internalized. If the leaders of a people—men—don’t love their progeny enough to marry the women who bear their children and/or remain in the lives of those children long enough to bring them into functioning adulthood, why would those children love themselves or those who look like them? And abortion is merely the black female method of black-on-black killing.)
So we black Americans murder ourselves within in womb and without, assert the former as our right, and ignore the latter. These methods of self-genocide have greatly thinned the “troops.” Taking this into account, one logically concludes that starting a war with a “tribe” that outnumbers us 12-1 and outguns us is pure folly.
It will bring the tribal suicide which we’ve been slowly committing, to a quick and devastating conclusion.
Turning back to conscience and morality, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob reserves vengeance to Himself, and instructs Jewish and Christian believers to forego it. But even if one does not believe in Him, it’s easy to see the chaos which is nearly always brought about by the unending cycle of human vengeance. You murder/enslave/oppress mine, then I take vengeance and murder/enslave/oppress yours. Then you take vengeance and murder/enslave/oppress more of mine. Then I…
Is this what you want, Americans? I do not.
Harris points out that rational actors can only live as rational actors if those around him—those in his society—continue to behave as rational actors as well. He also says that, when a rational actor finds himself surrounded by tribal actors—fanatics—it becomes rational for a rational actor to revert to being a tribal actor. The alternative is to perish.
We all tend to forget that all human beings are only a few steps away from reverting to the Law of the Jungle. Twentieth-century Europe demonstrated and the Muslim world still demonstrates the truth of this. Will we Americans—all of us--continue in the way of most of humanity? Everyday, I pray not.
[i] It’s interesting that Liberals think that black people have a certain way of thinking embedded in the DNA. White supremacists think this as well.
[ii] Until recently, I found it puzzling that some black Liberals hurl all manner of racial epithets at black Conservatives; but now I realize that it’s the pride/shame mindset. Those who use this tactic, however, don’t realize that it’s ineffectual on persons who recognize it for what it is.
(Re-edited.)
UPDATE: Lloyd Marcus: Democrats Responsible for Black Culture of Anger. More precisely, Leftists are. Read the comments, tremble for your country and, most importantly, pray to The Living God for mercy and deliverence.
Soul Food: it’s yummy stuff. The origins of what is known a Soul Food, however, are often forgotten. For very pertinent reasons, it can legitimately be called ‘Black Food.’
Foods such as rice, sorghum (known by Europeans as "guinea corn"), and okra — all common elements of West African cuisine — were introduced to the Americas as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Yams and watermelon are other examples.
Eventually, such fare became known as Southern Food. These days, Soul Food is considered a delicacy. (Personal note: I like the stuff very much, with the following exceptions. Yams and chitlins have crossed the threshold of my lips only once, respectively.) But, back in the bad old days, masters fed their slaves the type of food considered crap, and saved the choice meats, grains, and vegetables for themselves. Much of the fare called Soul Food consists of plantation throwaways.
European enslavers fed their captive workers as cheaply as possible, often with leftover/waste foods from the plantation, forcing slaves to make do with the ingredients at hand. In slave households, 'vegetables' consisted of the tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions. Soon, African-American slaves were cooking with new types of "greens": collards, kale, cress, mustard, and pokeweed. They also developed recipes which used lard, cornmeal, and offal; discarded cuts of meat such as pigs' feet, oxtail, ham hocks, chitterlings/"chitlins" (i.e., pigs' small intestines), pig ears, hog jowls, tripe, and skin.
The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
(All bolding mine.)
Rice and other Spartan grub. Hmmm.
One wonders how the OWS cooks know that the “freeloaders” are vagrants and criminals. After all, aren’t both the “professional homeless” and the “amateur homeless” (the OWS protesters) squatting on land that does not belong to them? I bet I know how they know: most of the amateurs are white and most of professionals are black. And both groups are freeloaders. After all it isn’t as if the OWS protesters bought the food.
I wonder why the OWS cooks don’t want to cook for the “professional homeless” aka “freeloaders.” And what are the “non-freeloaders” doing to help the cooks? Delivering the goods? Chopping the vegetables? Washing the dishes? Disposing of litter? Not according to reports. But, of course, the “non-freeloaders” are speaking “truth to power,” so, one assumes that counts.
But, oh wait! Some designated persons labored to prepare the food and want it to go to the hungry and downtrodden! Except not the actual hungry and downtrodden.
But, oh wait! The “freeloaders” are vagrant and criminals! But according to the Left, vagrants and criminals do what they do only because the rich won’t help them. So the OWS want to help them! Except they don’t.
But, oh wait! OWS cooks will still feed the “professional homeless”—just not the good stuff. Only the slave food.
But, oh wait! There are soup kitchens where the “vagrants, criminals, and freeloaders” can eat. Wonder who funds those places. No matter. The “vagrants, criminals, and freeloaders” have the soup kitchens--equal but separate facilities in which to chow down. They can “freeload” on someone else’s dime and time.
So, in one ill-considered decision, the Occupy Wall Street sorts manage to epitomize hundreds of years of slavery and government oppression against black Americans and, on top of that, managed to promote one of the principles in the Bible—that those who do not work, should not eat. In one fell swoop, they have become everything they say they are against.
Football star Chad Ochocinco recently got into a bit of Twitter heat for tweeting that he was reading conservative blogger Glenn Beck’s book “Broke.”
He tweeted the following:
“Gotten through 3 chapters in @glennbeck book and so far everything he’s said is either common or his opinion based off research.”
“I don’t agree with a lot of this s— but nonetheless its interesting reading the views n opinions from what I’d like to call the other side.”
(...)
Therefore upon sending out the tweets, Ochocinco was heavily criticized by followers—some even un-followed him.
One follower responded: “unfollowing [you] after two years because you’re a Beck fan. Disgraceful and disappointing.”
(...)
Since when did [black people] put a limitation on whose book we could read, or what types of books we are entitled to read? It is a very sad day in modern America when a Black man is ostracized for reading a book. Seems very reminiscent to the days of slavery when Blacks privately read (for purposes of knowledge) in hopes that the slave master wouldn’t catch them, or worse.
Right. In the days of American slavery, it was often legally forbidden to teach a slave to read and those who did so were punished with jail time or worse--along with their students. Refusing to follow the Twitter feed of an athlete who reads certain books is a response clearly not in the league of the legal proscriptions of the Bad Old Days. However, the mentality is identical. The person displaying either response has one goal in mind: control.
"Do what I want or I'll kill you."
"Do what I want or I'll ostracize you."
One wonders how many black people are no longer fans of Mr. Ochocinco due to his reading material. I'm sure that the number would blow the lid off the irony caldron.
Side note: I'm just happy to see a pro-athlete reading anything. I might send him a copy of my book; a little football, a little love--I'm sure he'd love it. :)
A great deal of commentary and comments has been generated which compares the horrendous situation in Japan to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Observers note that while New Orleans residents—and even police officers—took disaster’s opportunity to loot businesses and homes, the Japanese survivors of the 9.0 earthquake and the resultant tsunami have absolutely abstained from such behavior. People who know far more about Japan than I have concluded that the absence of such behavior is due to Japan’s singular, nearly undiluted culture—a thousand-year long tradition in which honor is the only thing one has and the loss of which is the greatest loss imaginable.
This makes sense. After all, most material things that are lost can be accrued again relatively quickly while one is still living. Lost honor, however, is very tough to regain and is, sometimes, gone forever.
Some of the comments have bordered on the racialist—that the Japanese don’t loot because it’s not in their racial make-up and that others—namely blacks—do so because it is part of our racial make-up. Leaving aside the insult, I think the difference goes deeper than that, even deeper than the concept of lost honor. There’s something that the Japanese understand which all too many black and other Americans used to understand but now do not: that what one does in public and how one treats his/her neighbor(s) affects not only the individuals involved but also the entire community. This concept applies to local communities and to the larger community; the nation. Not understanding that is the downside of individualism. (Of course, honor-shame cultures have their downsides as well; Japan has a very high rate of suicide.)
I submit that Katrina’s New Orleans was a manifestation of a people—namely black people—who have voluntarily given up their honor and their sense of shame. They have abandoned themselves.
Black Americans—specifically, the descendants of American slavery--are the most American of Americans; I said this before and I’m certainly not the first to make this observation. Unlike all other immigrants to America, our ancestors were forcibly cut off from all of the totems of their various West African tribes: names, languages, family structures, belief systems. These things have buoyed all other ethnic groups—including recent African immigrants—in their sojourn to this country and all of them had the choice to hold onto the elements of their cultures that fit into the American ideal and discard those which were incompatible. American slaves were granted no such luxury. Our ancestors were emptied of their identities and re-created in the image of what America had for them. And, up until roughly fifty years ago, much of that image was molded by oppression and scorn.
However, most black Americans held on tightly to the universal totems of personal and communal honor: love of God, family, love of community, industriousness, self-reliance--all of which also flow and follow from America’s founding document. (That America strayed away from those principles with respect to black Americans isn’t the point, that those principles even existed is. And, with those concrete principles in hand, black Americans were able to point to them and say to other Americans, “live up to your—to our-- principles.”)
We may stem from Africa, but we are not of Africa—not even me. Our character and (sub)culture are wholly American and, largely, our American ancestors fashioned these for themselves--appropriating most of the good things which America had to offer and which largely insulated them from the bad. That is the inheritance which all too many of us have repudiated.
What we saw in New Orleans after Katrina was a microcosm of the character disintegration of this most American of Americans. It wasn’t born of DNA nor of the historical effects of slavery; it was born of the wholesale abandonment of a character tried and refined by fire and of the principles which held black Americans together in prior times of adversity.
If mother and father don’t love child enough to at least try to create the most tried and true environment for the nurturing of that child, it follows that neither mother, nor father, nor child will love and respect neighbors or community. We declined en masse the prescriptions and proscriptions of God regarding the family and allowed government to usurp the place of the head of the family--the husband/father/leader/protector. We abandoned the identity which our forebears shaped for us and put chaos in its place. And when disaster strikes, it’s every man and woman for self. Multiply that times a few million.
In short, the average Japanese person loves his (Japanese) neighbor and does not covet that which belongs to that neighbor. It’s part of their culture—their belief system. And they’ve held to that system without Judaism or Christianity being a significant part of their society. They know who they are and from whence they’ve come.
The owners of YouTube, however, have blocked the account of John Alembillah Azumah--the man interviewed in the series and the author of the book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue. One can guess that some people were offended by the series--a state of affairs which often occurs when the truth is told.
This particular copy of the video, entitled "Muslim Black Slavery - Islam Slave History of Black Africa," is now posted at MetaCafe by a third party.
Here's Azumah's preamble:
The success of Mohammedan Islam in deceiving, misinforming, deforming and contorting both history and reality over a period of almost fourteen hundred years has been astounding--that is, until now.
The greatest tragedy about this particular subject is that most of the descendants of African slavery--the black people in the Americas, around the world, as well as among the African blacks--are totally ignorant of the actual facts.
Before we lose the concentration of our visitors, I would like to make the following statement and then prove it: that the worst, most inhumane and most diabolical of the black African Slave Trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and, later, aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.
I predict that, as usual, the two subcultures--those of denial of facts and of Political Correctness--will attack us without once disproving a single statement and/or conclusion that we make.
And here are some pertinent excerpts:
While the European involvement in the African Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the African Slave Trade has lasted fourteen centuries and, in some parts of the Mohammedan world, is still continuing to this day.
(...)
It should also be noted that black slaves were castrated based on the assumption that the blacks had an ungovernable sexual appetite.
(...)
A comparison of the Islamic Slave Trade to the American Slave Trade reveals some extremely interesting contrasts.
While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic Slave Trade: two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.
While the mortality rate of slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as ten percent, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans-Sahara[n] and East African Slave market was a staggering eighty to ninety percent.
(...)
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas--the millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the United States of today--very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survived.
While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.
Azumah pronounces the denial of the facts concerning the on-going Islamic Slave Trade as 'obscene.'
To those whose male ancestors survived American Slavery long enough to ensure that the former would be alive in the twenty-first century and, therefore, be able to refer to me as a House Negro for suspecting the motives of the putative builders of the "Ground Zero" Mosque, I feel pity.
That pity is mixed with a sense of astonishment, however, at this conclusion: that so many black people are so well indoctrinated with perpetual anger at the sins of America's past, that they would ignore the more egregious sins of Islam's present and desired future. Hurling epithets and pretending that the opponents of the "Ground Zero" Mosque want to stifle freedom of religion is a lot easier than gathering the pertinent facts, connecting them, analyzing them and coming to a cogent conclusion, it seems.
On the other hand, perhaps such people have indeed concluded that Islam would like to expand its decimation of those of African descent--with black men being the special and specified targets for annihilation. Perhaps the slinging of epithets, etc. is merely a smokescreen--an insurance for the future. Such people will be able to say to their future masters, "see? I stood up for the Ummah against that infidel, Ochieng."
Maybe such people are merely trying to protect their own testicles--such as they are.
Enslave a man's mind and the rest of him--including his testicles-- will follow; no more need for physical chains.
UPDATE: John Alembillah Azumah's bonafides: he is the Director of the Centre for Islamic Studies at the London School of Theology. I would imagine that he has competent security and, no doubt, he is in need of our prayers.
Yesterday, a blogger styling himself as the Field Negro dubbed me the "House Negro of the Day":
(JULIETTE OCHIENG) I SWEAR SOME OF YOU NEGROES
MUST GET PAID BY THE WORD TO SAY DUMB STUFF. THIS CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER
CALLS THE MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO A "SECURITY RISK". SAYING DUMB S#*T JUST
BECAUSE YOU CAN IS ALWAYS HNB
[Link added by me; don't worry--it leads to my post, "Beacon."]
Field Negro--may I call you Negro?--would it actually hurt you to expound on why you think my opinion is "dumb?"
Show your lack of "dumbness" by explaining to your readers how building such a mosque--set to be funded and "pastored" by a person who has continually called for the the implementation of Sharia law in the United States--is not a security risk. Take it step by step.
I can further defend my position. Are you capable of defending yours? I'd sure like to read it. You never know--if you're premises are sound and your conclusion follows logically from them, I would be compelled to change my opinion. In case you have never heard of this concept, it's called 'intellectual honesty.' Try it, you'll like it--eventually.
Ms. House Negro, you may call me whatever you like,
just as long as you don't call me collect. Now let me
"expound" -just a little-on why I think your opinion is dumb:
You argue that putting this Mosque two blocks from
Ground Zero would put Americans at risk because the leader of the Mosque
believes in a strict form of Islamic law. (Sharia) That, in of itself,
is ludicrous. Iam not connecting the dots between an interpretation of an
ancient religious philosophy and bombs dropping on suburbia.
And, just for argument sake, let's assume that
Faisal Abdul Rauf does believe in the most negative and
regressive form of Sharia law as you allege; what difference would it make if
he built his Mosque a block from Ground Zero or in Jersey City?
Just because you are unable to
connect the dots, it does not follow that my opinion is ludicrous. You may have a shortcoming or two. However, I will assist you.
Islam’s raison d’être is to convert the world to Islam, by force if
necessary.One of the tools of force is
fear.And inducing fear is the goal of
terrorism.
Of course, we know that many Muslims consider the Islamist attacks of September
11, 2001 to be one of Islam’s greatest victories against the United
States/Great Satan.Building a mosque
adjacent to what used to be the Twin Towers would be like planting a flag of
victory for Allah.This is not an
unprecedented concept; armies of Islam and many other armies use this sort of
symbolism to say to observers the equivalent of “we won; you lost.”In the eyes of others
wishing to spread Islam by the “sword,” such a statement would be a…Beacon, one drawing those of like desire; this beacon would encourage other Soldiers
for Allah to perpetrate further attacks in America in order to win more
victories for Allah, in order to win his blessings and in order to gain glory for
themselves.
Does that help?
But my rebuttal above assumes that you were right
about Rauf and his position when it comes Sharia Law. You were
not. Only a person whose mind has been poisoned by right wing ideology -A
poison that was inflicted by the likes of Newt Gingrich-
could view a man who has published writings such as
this in such spurious and mendacious manner. Parroting right wing talking
points to score "brownie points" with your ideological soul mates does
not make you a critical thinker, or, for that matter, someone
capable of "intellectual honesty". It makes you a fraud, and a fraud
of the worse kind: one whose sole purpose in life is to remain in the comfort
of a poorly constructed house.
Feisal Abdul Rauf is the
imam behind the “Cordoba Initiative” that is spearheading plans to build a $100
million Islamic center at Ground Zero, the site where nearly 3,000 Americans
were killed by jihadists on 9/11. He is also the author of a book called What’s
Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America.But the book hasn’t always been called that. It was called
quite
something else for non-English-speaking audiences. In Malaysia, it was
published as A Call to
Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America
Post-9/11.
Now it emerges that a “special, non-commercial
edition” of this book was later produced, with Feisal’s cooperation, by two
American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamic Society of North
America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought.
(…)
Both ISNA and IIIT have been up to their necks in
the promotion of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ruthless Palestinian branch,
which is pledged by charter to the destruction of Israel. In fact, both ISNA
and IIIT were cited by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators in
a crucial terrorism-financing case involving the channeling of tens of millions
of dollars to Hamas through an outfit called the Holy Land Foundation for
Relief and Development. For the last 15 years, Hamas has been a designated
terrorist organization under U.S. law.
(…)
The purpose of dawa, like the purpose of jihad,
is to implement, spread, and defend sharia.
(…)
In considering Imam Rauf and his Ground Zero
project, [Yusuf] Qaradawi [spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood] and the
Muslim Brotherhood are extremely important. Like most Muslims, Rauf regards
Qaradawi as a guide, and referred
to him in 2001 as “the most well-known legal authority in the whole Muslim
world today.”
(…)
Qaradawi regards the
United States as the enemy of Islam. He has urged that Muslims
“fight the American military if we can, and if we cannot, we should fight the
U.S. economically and politically.”
And why do you assume that my goal in saying the things I say is the accrual
of “brownie points.”Brownie points from
whom, consisting of what?I know the
history of Islamic conquest in Africa, how it weakened that continent, making it
ripe for further conquest by Europeans and how
its adherents continue to rape, murder and pillage on my father’s fragmented
continent.And I know what non-black
Muslims think about black people—even those in the latter number who are
foolish enough to convert. Which one of us is the "House Negro" and the "fraud" again?
A rapidly weakening USA is quickly becoming a target for those who would
like to remake it in their own image, whatever that image may be.Right now, this country is just a financial
target, but that could change. The giant is ailing and the wolves—like Russia,
China, and Islam—are waiting for it to fall.So you might say that the “brownie point” I wish to accrue is survival.
I hope you didn't trip over my steps.
Darling, I’m starting to get the feeling that you don’t like me. My heart is broken to be disliked by such a charming gentleman!:-}
However, I hope that you awaken and decide that you want to survive
also.Really. And I hope you save a little bit of that snarl for your real enemy.
What have Republicans/conservatives done for black Americans? I hear that question constantly when I disclose that I am a conservative Republican. Often I will provide the usual facts that seem to be missing from the historical lexicon these days: freed the slaves, were 90%+ in the majority in the votes for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, something about the question sets steel to my nerves and I’ve been meaning to articulate the reasons for it here for some time now.
Implied in the question is that a political party must “do something” for blacks. Not merely the usual “something” that a government entity does for all of its constituents, e.g. provide utilities, regulate commerce, etc., but something special.
That word ‘special’ has taken on a new meaning in recent years and I think that it applies to the special items that liberals/leftists believe that the government should provide for the ‘special’ people, the “congenitally retarded” folk.
Yes, we ‘special’ people--with ‘special’ needs--require special handling: special education and special employment. You can’t expect black people to live up to the standards of ‘normal’ people. Like paraplegics or the blind or the deaf or those afflicted with Down’s syndrome, singular accommodations must be made for the great handicap of being born with black skin. To liberals/leftists, black people are a crippled class that can never be made whole just as long as they can never be made not-black. What’s this notion called?
And if anyone tries to treat us as full, competent adults, the liberals/leftists will scream in righteous anger and protest about the unfairness of it all. And if some of us ‘handicapped’ verbally express the desire to be treated like full, competent adults and act in a manner that demonstrates that desire, we are deemed as traitors by those who share the same racial makeup, but buy into the ‘handicap’ philosophy. Yes, we are “traitors,” because if some of us refuse to take advantage of the special needs offered and succeed anyway, the vast majority of America will begin to think that we don’t really require the “handicap slot.”
The vast majority of Americans will begin to think that we’re not really inferior after all. (Optimistically speaking, I believe that the vast majority think this anyway.)
"You do not own, and you are not the arbiters of, African-American authenticity," said [Rod] Paige [to NAACP leaders], who rose from segregated Mississippi to become President Bush's education chief.
(Thanks to reader Wesley J.)
Or, as I might put it, who died and made you the head of the Brutha/Sista Card Registry?
This idea of our race-wide ‘handicap’ is so ingrained in the mindsets of some, however, that it has morphed into the very existentiality of black identity: a black person who believes that black Americans need extra help to succeed is “authentically black.” Conversely, one who doesn’t buy it “isn’t really black” and is, therefore, a traitor to black identity.
In short, blacks who believe in their own inferiority are the real deal and those who don’t, aren’t. How's that for twisted dogma?
(This is why Condoleezza Rice comes in for special scorn among the liberals/leftists, especially black ones. Having been born with not merely one, but the proverbial two strikes against her, her very existence gives lie to the entire notion of black inferiority: she has succeeded through innate intelligence, raw talent and hard work. I’m sure that white supremacists hate her just as much. Now there's a marriage made in...somewhere.)
So when some black people find out that Republicans don’t want to “do anything” for them except to encourage them to take part in the American dream of prosperity, stemming from work and ingenuity, they’re like, “WTF? Where’s my money?”
So it is that white Republicans/conservatives, those whose ideology purports to treat blacks as equals are considered Devils. We blacks who agree with this are merely the Devils’ minions.
Those that have wondered why the vast majority of the Republican party don’t spend time on “minority outreach” miss the point. Republicans do outreach already. They just don’t do handicapped outreach, not unless you're really handicapped.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the campaign trail in his native Nevada:
REID: "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, okay. Do I need to say more?"
How the Left stirs racial discord between Americans of Hispanic decent and other Americans is a topic I want to address in detail in the third part of my "Herding" series. But the assumptions in Senator Reid's short assertion need to be addressed right now.
Leaving aside the 2007 Republican establishment's push for amnesty for illegal aliens already living in the United States, most conservatives are for strict border enforcement first and decisions about illegal aliens already present afterward. In Harry Reid's statement lies the assumption that, Americans of Hispanic descent must naturally be in favor of
allowing any and all Hispanics from Mexico (and other Spanish-speaking
countries) into the USA without any controls at all--that, to Hispanic
Americans, it's better to have more Spanish-speakers in the country,
than it is to enforce the federal and state immigration laws.
A more important Reid assumption is this one: because conservatives want the borders of the country secure--because the Republican base does not want to give Hispanic Americans what he presumes they want-- Republicans and conservatives hate Hispanics.
My father [who had been political prisoner of Castro's Cuba] looked at the platform of the republican party that endorsed
small government, lower taxes, and strong defense, while the democrat
party embraced Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, murderers and tyrants, as
some sort of folk heroes, and endorsed larger governments taking power
away from the people.
...
Sweet justice for me, would be to see Marco Rubio enter the senate as you exist your way out to hand the keys to Sharron Angle.
Heh. I guess I'm so used to Democrats, Liberals and Leftists treating conservative non-whites, women, etc. like their intellectual runaways slaves, I don't even get mad at this stuff anymore. But it's nice to see Harry get a chewing. The only problem is this: I'm not sure that the senior Democrat senator from Nevada has enough marbles to comprehend what Cubachi or Marco Rubio or the good folks at African American Conservatives or LtC. Allen West are saying to him and his party.
Perhaps, in November, we will be able to explain in terms simple enough for even Senator Reid to understand.
Over at Ace’s,
there’s a commenter who continually tells Ace’s presumably mostly white
readership that it’s pointless to go on about the history of race relations in
this country and that white Americans should simply join the battle which the
Obama Administration and the organized Left are trying to provoke. When I
responded with a condensed version of how black American social and political
allegiance has been manipulated over the past ten decades, he stated that a
people who could be so easily (sic) manipulated must really be inferior.
This man
demonstrates the type of limited perspective that I sketched out in Part One
and, actually, his type could have furnished me with an additional bullet
point; not only is he unable to think strategically, he actually rebukes the
notion that such analysis has any value. Moreover, such a person is blind
to how his own thinking and emotional state have been shaped and molded
by Leftist ideology in a much shorter time span than was so for black
Americans.
In this second
part, my purpose is to detail another tactical weapon of the Left, the purpose
of which has been to instill a set of attitudes in the minds of the American
populace; in this case, the mindset is meant for white Americans.
If the Left has
been successful at keeping racial grievance in the forefront of black American
agenda—in indoctrinating black Americans into believing that retaining racial anger
at whites is inherent in being black and essential for black
survival--it has also been successful in later years of producing a certain
mindset in white Americans. Actually this seems to be two mindsets, but
it is really a singular one—a two-headed beast. The first is guilt-fear
and the second is unproductive anger.
The proper
purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this
tendency to plunder instead of work. The law should protect property and punish
plunder. The law, whether made by one man or one group of men, operates with
the sanction and support of a dominating force, and this force must be
entrusted to those who make the laws. Legal plunder occurs when the law takes
from one person and gives to another. The law benefits one citizen at the
expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without
committing a crime. If such a law is not abolished, it will spread, multiply,
and develop into a system.
Have you noticed that there are some
people—many people--who have no
concept of time?No, I’m not referring
to the chronically tardy, though I do suspect that many of them fall into the categories of which I’m about to outline.
Those to whom I’m referring do not
have a concept of the following; they are
Unable
to consider individual events from the past as anything but singular and
isolated occurrences, e.g. unable to connect those events with each other
and—further--with contemporaneous, on-going events,
Unable
to use known, available and pertinent information/ideas to analyze the sum
(or, to use a better mathematical term, the product) of events in order to
come to a plausible conclusion as to what is going, and
Unable
to take that conclusion and reasonably project what may happen in the
future.
The ability to do this is called strategic thinking—the ability to
recognize patterns and figure out what is true and what is false.Most of the time, this inability has nothing
to do with IQ and can be selective and temporary.I believe that, in the latter two types of
cases, the inability is due to a syndrome to which almost all of us are prone:
wishful-thinking.
Many do not want to or cannot put together the events which have lead this country to its present state, much less come to a reasonable conclusion. However, I don't fall into either category. Believe me, sometimes I wish I did.
But the more I learn about the history of
the twentieth century, the more I consider it against what is known about human
nature, the more I observe the state in
which this country finds itself in at present--the more I believe that the
peril anticipated by all too many observers, was planned by the Left.
I wrote the following op-ed for Pajamas Media on July 30, 2008. Since one still sees many asking this very same question, I think that a re-post is appropriate. It is slightly edited from the original version; I can't help myself.
********
A few weeks back, I lambasted prominent black conservatives for even thinking of voting for Barack Obama, a man who embodies only one part of the two-word description “black conservative.”
Several black conservatives were quoted in the article to which I was responding. However, the most revealing quote came from former U.S. Representative J.C. Watts:
J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he’s thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he’s still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.
“And Obama highlights that even more,” Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. “Republicans often seem indifferent to those things.”
Watts’ turnaround suggests one of three things to me: 1) that he has changed his political philosophy and should probably change parties; 2) that when he was running for office he was saying what he needed to say to get elected in conservative Republican Oklahoma, rather than saying that in which he believed; that is, he was never really a conservative Republican; or 3) that he realizes the futility of trying to attract most black Americans to his party on the basis of principle.
I don’t know which is the answer, but there’s a logic to Watts’ statement regarding Obama and that logic undergirds the astounding Democrat/liberal/Left success among the black electorate in contrast with the Right’s failure in the same area. The key to understanding lies in the assumptions inherent in the phrase “reaching out.” Who should reach out to whom on the basis of what? What smaller actions fall under the large umbrella of “reaching out”? Here are the blanks filled in:
Who: the Republican Party should do the reaching out.
To whom: the party should reach out to the black community, that is, to black people as a singular entity — a collective.
How: the outreach should be done on the same basis as it is performed by the modern Democratic Party.
Programs
Policies
In short, the Republican Party must “do things” for black Americans which it does not do for other citizens and which are identical to the things that the Democratic Party does. Or better. But the Republican Party can’t be what it isn’t.
The bottom line: Republicans want black Americans to pursue happiness and the Democratic Party wants to provide happiness to black Americans.
A party and its principles
The Republican Party that Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan (re)built has not been designed to reach out to a group on the basis of identity, but on the basis of a given group’s ideas and values. By the party’s very definition — its basic principles — this precludes reaching out to groups which have race, ethnicity, or gender as their sole criterion for coalescing as a political entity. So when some observers wonder what the Republican Party is going to “do for” the “black community,” most Republicans will have a certain look of puzzlement on our faces, as if someone just asked why we don’t offer attachable wings so that our prospective party members can fly.
Many black Americans cannot shake the notion that a political party is supposed to provide quid pro quo. That the Republican Party won’t do anything for them besides get off their backs, get other citizens off their backs, and get out of their way so they can pursue happiness just isn’t good enough. But where did the idea come from?
The idea that the government should step in when overt oppression is being practiced but should not help or hinder black American advancement certainly precedes Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan. And, in practice, as Bruce Bartlett (H/T Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred) and La Shawn Barber point out, before the Civil War and during the century that followed the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party was responsible for several federal measures designed to protect Americans of African descent from their fellow citizens and to punctuate the basic citizenship rights guaranteed to the freed slaves and to their progeny. Fact is, however, the Republican Party would not have had a leg to stand on had not the founders of the United States based the principles in the Constitution on certain philosophies.
Obviously, black Americans were happy to receive the protection. However, after the Republicans clamped down on the racists, they (mostly) removed themselves from the equation to allow the country’s black citizens to be free. But when they did that, the nemeses fell in, masquerading as friends.
It is here that black Americans found themselves attacked from the top and from the bottom. Forty years ago most black Americans were used to being physically and socially restrained to an extent. However, what happened to black Americans in the 60s is that their enemies found a way to accomplish what the physical barriers of slavery, the legal oppression of northern segregation, and the overt terror of Jim Crow could not.
The mental chains
At the top, President Lyndon Baines Johnson — a Democrat whose pre-Kennedy legislative career had been that of a typical Dixiecrat — put forth a set of programs and policies infamously known as the Great Society, actually giving a part of the public funding to those who qualified to receive it. The bottom line? Many of the programs amounted to life subsidy — “reward” for indolence, whoredom, and irresponsibility. At the bottom, liberals, leftists, and Democrats inserted themselves wholesale into the educational processes of the black poor. That education put forth a portrait of America as a full-scale villain, which made her history unneeded — except the parts necessary to understand the crimes perpetrated on her perennial victims. With that in mind, why would liberals, leftists, and Democrats teach their captive audience about the historical role that their political opponents played in setting and keeping them free? Between the manipulation of education and the government handouts by Democrats, the Left could even convince black Americans that it was the Republicans who had actually been black America’s oppressors — and that idea, that lie, would become far more useful to the Democrats than any Great Society program, as LBJ allegedly foresaw.
An even more serious deficiency has been nurtured by the systems dominated by leftist philosophies of education, and that deficiency leads us, finally, to the answer to our question.
Too few people put enough thinking into principles — their nature or, of utmost importance, their foundation. As a matter of fact, what many people call principles aren’t really that, but are commodities — items to be bought and sold. And it is one’s principles — or one’s commodities — that inform the decision as to whom one should give his/her allegiance.
Example: consider the admonition to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or is it “do unto others as you suspect they would do unto you”? Or “do unto others before they do unto you”? Or “do unto others as they’ve already done unto you and not one minute before they do”?
Like all other axioms, the Golden Rule has its origin in a way of thinking, a school of thought — a philosophy, in this case, biblical. One forms his/her principles from a philosophy, usually one or several taught at school and/or at home. Now I can’t speak for what is taught in all homes, only my own. However, I can authoritatively say that few bases for forming principles — as opposed to commodities — were taught at the public schools I attended in South Central Los Angeles. Barely were the particulars of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights covered. Of course we had heard the phrase “unalienable rights,” but what did that mean, really? And the men who formed these words, these ideas, and built a nation on top of them, where did they get these ideas about rights and government from? Did they just pop up, unbidden? Or were the men simply building on the philosophies of someone(s) else?
Who knew the answers to these questions? Not I; not then. Where I went to school, one was taught what to think, but not how and definitely not why. One was not taught how to build a foundation for one’s principles or that a foundation even needed to be built.
Into that vacuum jump many notions, but the one specific to the subject at hand is the idea that the party which is giving you the most things — the one that will “do something for you” — is the party to which you should belong. And if “principles” have no foundation, those “principles” — and their owners — can be purchased. And though there are a few black so-called conservative Republicans out there, all too many of them — like Watts — still find themselves reverting to the “do something for us” idea, a liberal Democrat ideal. No wonder some believe that conservative political persuasion is grounded in advantage rather than principle.
The Democratic Party has counted on this absence — of history taught/learned and of principles adhered to — in all of its members, but most especially has it counted on this dearth in black Americans, a dearth which has allowed too many black Americans to stick themselves to the Democratic Party like glue, or chain themselves to the party like …
The Democrats should take pride in a job well done.
...U.S. intelligence has indicated that al Qaeda leadership specifically
targets and recruits black Africans to become suicide bombers because
they believe that poor economic and social conditions make them more
susceptible to recruitment than Arabs," the [Obama Administration ] official said. "Al Qaeda
recruits have said that al Qaeda is racist against black members from
West Africa because they are only used in lower level operations."
By now, however, anyone who has been close observing what this administration says and does knows that nothing can be taken at face value--especially a statement which should produce a "duh" in the minds of anyone who is familiar with Islam's history in Africa.
So, what to make of such an unneeded statement? Here's what.
So, when President Obama calls al Qaeda terrorists racist (true, but who cares? dead is dead) and his minions in the NAACP call the Tea Party movement racist (untrue), they are attempting to plant seeds in the minds of the uninformed and still evaluating.
Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in
American history, died Monday at the age of 92, a spokesman for the
family said.
Byrd, a Democrat who served in the U.S. Senate since 1959, had been
plagued by health problems in recent years and was confined to a
wheelchair. He had skipped several votes in Congress in the past
months.
Jesse Jacobs, a family spokesman, said Byrd died peacefully at about 3
a.m. at Inova Hospital in Fairfax, Va.
So ends the life of Robert C. Byrd.
As Ted Kennedy was a symbol of the moral rot within the
modern Democratic Party, the career of Robert Byrd is a manifestation
of a distinctly American type of political corrosion. Much is made
of the fact that Byrd was the longest serving member of the Senate in US
history. Why is that such a magnificent accomplishment? It only means
he was able to win a bunch of popularity contests over the years. If
Darth Vader gave away $3.3 billlion in other
people's money to West Virginia, he'd be awfully popular with the
voters as well.
You know who else polls really well, year after year, without fail?
Santa Claus. Why? Because he gives away free toys and all you have to
do is behave yourself and you get a first class ticket on the Christmas
gravy train. Unlike jolly ol' Saint Nick, Robert Byrd's pork
masquerading as generosity came directly from the US taxpayers. It's
quite easy to be Mister Awesomely Popular when there is never some
federally subsidized boondoggle you'll say no to.
It would've taken real leadership for Senator Byrd to tell his
constituents that they can't have their cake (paid for by the other 49
states) and eat it too. He probably wouldn't have every left-wing
douche fighting to fellate him for the last 50 years. He might've lost
an election and go back into private life. Perhaps he would not have
been able to create a Senatorial fiefdom based on ring-kissing patronage
and barely concealed graft. Then again, he might instead be remembered
as a responsible steward of taxpayer money. It's not nearly as sexy as
'longest sitting Senator evah', but it would be a far more
respectable legacy.
Let us not forget the overarching American concern over racism and
Robert Byrd's role in the evolution of racial policies in the nation.
The Senator was a former member of the KKK, but continued to kiss their asses for
years after he supposedly left the group.
The ex-Klansman allegedly ended his ties with the group in 1943. He
may have stopped paying dues, but he continued to pay homage to the KKK.
Republicans in West Virginia discovered a letter Sen. Byrd had written
to the Imperial Wizard of the KKK three years after he says he abandoned
the group. He wrote: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am
anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia" and "in every state
in the Union."
...The ex-Klansman vowed never to fight "with a Negro by my side.
Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the
dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become
degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the
wilds."
Although he later denounced the Ku Klux Klan, his renunciation didn't
stop him from fillibustering the
1964 Civil Rights Act. He also had a habit of opposing black Supreme
Court nominations; both Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas got the
thumbs down from Senator Byrd, which makes his opposition to them seem
less about ideological differences and more about personal animus
towards African-Americans. Only in the soft-bigoted topsy-turvy bizarro
world of the American progressive movement can a man with that kind of
record of blatant racism rise to become the 'conscience of the Senate'.
The fact that such a rancorous bigot could soar to the heights of
political grandeur is a testament the 'power for power's sake' mentality
within the contemporary Left.
There will always be racists. There will forever be pockets of
bigotry in America. People are born flawed and unfortunately racism
is one of mankind's unwashable sins. Hatemongers will be with us in one
form or another till the end of time. But we don't have to elevate
racist dickbags like Senator Byrd to the pinnacle of American political
life.
Having said all that, surely Byrd's family is mourning the loss of a
towering figure in their lives. It is said that the Senator was a
devoted family man and a born again Christian. These things do not
erase his public legacy. But they are yet another sign that people are
complicated creatures, capable of magnanimity, generosity and love or
cruelty, selfishness and hate.
It should also be noted that the Senator was ailing for quite some
time. It is hoped that with his passing from this world, Mr. Byrd finds
the comfort and grace of his Creator.
Rest In Peace.
AWESOME UPDATE: If you are not charitably inclined towards
Senator Byrd...and I cannot say I blame you...take a spin over to Feed
Your ADHD. Snarky Basterd's byline? Hell.
Satan, [Ted] Kennedy’s rival for control of Hell, welcomed Byrd to
his kingdom of filth.
“It is with great honor that I bestow the title of KKK Grand Dragon
on Senator Byrd,” Satan said. “Only a true Democrat – and we’re all
Democrats down here in Hell – could have uttered the great statements he
has made over the years.”
Check that stuff out, yo.
ANOTHER AWESOME UPDATE: Nick Gillespie has a nice cold showerfor
the Byrd-o-philes. Oooof.
But it's Byrd's status as the Babe Ruth of pork-barrel spending and
taxpayer-funded narcissism that is his real legacy and the one we should
never forget or forgive. Here lies a man who pushed his home state to build a statue of him in defiance of a rule
that such honorees be dead for 50 years.
Back in 2006, Citizens Against Government Waste called Byrd the
"Emperor Palpatine of Pork" and gave him their lifetime achievement award...
STILL ANOTHER AWESOME UPDATE: Ed Driscoll has a sweet take down.
President Obama’s potential words of praise to a racial demagogue far
worse than even Rev. Wright himself should be
especially interesting to watch.
UPDATE (baldilocks): Byrd refused to serve in World War Two
due to blacks being a part of the force, even in their lowly status
before the desegregation of the US Armed Forces in
1948. I cited that here
using Wiki, but the reference has been cleaned up.
If, by some chance Byrd got to go to Heaven, I hope he gets to be Dorie Miller's
butler.
Marie and Sebastian Stroughter of
African American Conservatives and Kevin Jackson of The Blacksphere have collaborated to form the Black Conservative
Census, urging conservatives who happen to be black to “stand up and be
counted.”Of course, this is in response
to the Big Media-driven notion that racism is indicated in the facts that most
black Americans are liberal Democrats and that most of those who protest
in/sympathize with the Tea Party movement are white.
An absurd notion, is it not?As my friends Mike and Sonja T. mentioned, if all-white groups over two in number were
automatically racist, they became an official racist mob when their first-born entered
the fray.(They have four.I'm scared!)
Deeming a group 'racist' which labels itself by race/ethnicity or incidentally consists of mostly one race isn’t an idea exclusive to Big Media, however.I recall that, back in 2005, when Jay Tea of Wizbang! was
kind enough to publicize the efforts of another black conservative online alliance--the Conservative Brotherhood--a lot of assumptions were made regarding the nature of that group; assumptions which existed solely because we billed ourselves as a 'black' group. Many of us who belong to CB waded into
the comments section and tried to dispel erroneous notions about the group, some of which were astonishingly stupid and racist themselves.
As it often goes, however, when people are on the side of the angels, one of the most
eloquent defenders of the concept which produced the Conservative Brotherhood was Jeremy
Pierce—the husband of one of CB’s members, Samantha.Jeremy is white.
The point of the CB is so more
black people will be exposed to their ideas, because those are the people whom
these ideas will most directly affect and the ones most commonly ignoring the
CB members as Uncle Toms who are in Whitey's pocket.
(…)
It's a matter of connecting with
those who have similar views from the same background, a group who tends to be
ostracized and marginalized merely for being both black and conservative.
(…)
As they [band together], they
haven't isolated [themselves]. They've just taken note of each other and become
allies, with a central location that links to all of them. Then someone comes
along and calls them racist, and others say it's immoral and against
conservative principles. Why? Because they care about race. If we say it's
racist or immoral in some other way to care about race, then we're not going to
care about race, and that's going to feed into all the problems that come when
you ignore the real racial problems in this country. That's catering to
institutional and residual racism. It's thus part of the complex social forces
that perpetuate racial problems. It's thus racism.
One of the ways in which discord and distrust have been sown
for years by racists of all colors and persuasions is by accepting as valid the
perception in which any group which formed on the basis of ethnicity is
automatically racist, especially if the group is white—no if, ands or buts. So it is that Wizbang! guests applied the same standard to a black group--ignoring the nuance inherent in the adjective ‘conservative’
and ignoring the CB members' displayed words and actions up to that point in time. These people decided to see something sinister (no pun intended) in anything
labeled black or composed mostly of black people.
(It doesn’t feel too good, does it, fellow Tea Partiers? And now
you know why I posted the message
about my affiliation with the social network, The Professional
Black
Writer.)
It’s the flip side of identity politics. It replaces thinking. And in acknowledgment that some people don't want to think these concepts through, Jackson and the Stroughters have provided a not-black
affiliation field for the census. Understandable.
Admittedly, however, President Obama’s racialism—indicated both
before and after his election—has made mere “pride” in one’s heritage even more suspect.That racialism started on the very day of the
election and has been officially condoned by the Obama Justice Department. The Obama Administration has
planted and continues to plant the seeds of mistrust and discord among American
brethren.Simply put, it has painted a target on each of our backs.
I assert that it’s up to all of us to think things through and
to recognize the administration's strategy for what it is—a means to destroy the United States of America—and not
to buy into the mutually-assured destruction this president offers.
For those who pre-ordered the autographed copies, they
will arrive at my house this
week. I will email you when they get here, sign them and then get them
in the mail to you that same day or the following business
morning.
Domestic terrorists--including those who hate black people--always want to abridge the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of others. If Tea Party naysayers cannot prove that Tea Party Patriots want to abridge the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of others, then the former are engaging in lies and smear tactics and are attempting to hinder freedom themselves.
Among the many types of bilateral divisions among people, there
is this one: those who can come to a reasonable conclusion after stringing
together a pattern of cause and effect and those who cannot. Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman
Michael Steele has repeatedly
shown that he falls in the latter category.
RNC chair Michael Steele defended his spending practices
Monday morning, saying he has no plan to resign, and at one point suggesting
that criticism of his tenure may be rooted in racism.
(…)
Asked if “as an African-American” he has “a slimmer margin
for error than another chairman would,” Steele replied: “The honest answer is
yes.” Steele went on to explain that, like Barack Obama, he has had to contend
with racism as someone who is “not ole boy network.”
Since Steele was elected as RNC chair
over men more conservative than he is—including Ohio’s Kenneth Blackwell who is
also black—we’ve seen the following occur under his watch:
During an interview, Steele
mutely nodded his head after the interviewer--comedian D.L. Hughley-- asserted that the GOP Convention “looked like Nazi
Germany” simply because the Convention was mostly white.
He has
repeatedly tried to deflect criticism of his performance as RNC chairman by
saying that it is rooted in racism or in fear.
When one starts at a position, one
has a margin for error which is of a certain size.The fewer errors one makes as time goes on,
the greater the margin for error becomes.And the opposite is true: the more errors one makes, the smaller the
margin for error becomes.Mr. Steele’s
margin for error is smaller than it was when he first became RNC chair due
entirely to the fact that he has made so many errors and due to the fact that
he seems incapable of learning from them.In fact, I bet that he doesn’t even think that he has made any mistakes.
Does that mindset sound familiar?
When Steele came up as the
front-runner for RNC chair right after the election of Barack Obama as POTUS, it was obvious that the RNC wanted to counter
Obama’s blackness with Steele’s.I
opined at other blogs that if the RNC absolutely felt the need to engage in the
dubious practice of tokenism , that it could have at least elected Blackwell
who is more conservative than Steele.But, apparently the Committee also wanted to counter Obama’s media
stardom and Steele definitely had a much better carved-out media presence than
did Blackwell.The RNC went totally for
style over substance and look where it has gotten us.And almost predictably, Obama and Steele are
representing their respective organizations about equally as well.
If it weren’t for the total
full-tilt Juggernaut that is the Democrat Party’s socialist/fascist agenda and
the resulting push-back of the Tea Parties and unlikely candidates like now-Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), there would be no hope, if you’ll pardon the
expression.
One top RNC
fundraiser has
had enough. He’s not the only one.
UPDATE:Ouch! "Race is the Only Thing Helping Steele":
Steele is hapless, solipsistic, and incompetent. When he isn't embarrassing his party with his personal antics, or his
staff's, he's setting it up for failure by driving away its top
fundraisers and not keeping pace with Democrats.
Many observers are hypothesizing that Steele is a Democrat plant. Well, he couldn't do any better--or worse, depending on which side one resides--if it were true.
In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War and during what is known as
the Reconstruction period, sixteen black American men—several of them former
slaves--served in the US House of Representatives with most being from states
of the former Confederacy.All were
quite literate and some were self-educated.What is certain is that these men saw hardship and racism that most of
us 21st century brats of all colors cannot begin to conjure.
What is also certain is that each of these men were
Republicans and for a very good reason: the Democrat Party of that time was the
self-described Party of Slavery and remained the Party of Black Oppression long
after.(Arguably, this legacy continues.)
Linked here
are the fascinating biographies of each congressman and some of the speeches the
men gave during the debates for the Civil Rights Act of 1871—also known as the Ku
Klux Klan Act—and the Civil Rights Act
of 1875.
The site linked is called Neglected Voices and the voices of
these men have indeed been neglected but the title is so…weak.These men were anything but weak, hence the
title of this post.I’m sure, however,
that they’ve been spinning in their graves of late at the words and deeds
of those for whom they set precedent.
These men didn’t have to invent tales of racial epithets
hurled or of racial violence; such were their constant companions throughout
their lives.Yet they did more than
muddle through life, they soared.These were real men, not victims; our current
crop of representatives looks microscopic next to them
At any rate, here’s
an excerpt of a speech from Richard
H. Cain (pdf), in which he contradicts overt assertions by his white colleagues
regarding the black race’s alleged inferiority:
When
"arguing" with black conservatives, Leftists often describe us as
"self-hating." When you hate yourself, it is manifested when you do
yourself harm. What harm are black conservatives doing to themselves by
subscribing to the principles/ideology of conservatism?This is not a rhetorical question.
Change of subject: one of my new jobs is managing my friend's social network, The Professional Black Writer. So I have another question: when you saw the description 'black' in the title of the network, what was your immediate reaction?
described then-candidate Barack Obama during the
presidential campaign as a black candidate who could be successful
thanks in part to his “light-skinned” appearance and speaking patterns
"with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."
For as much respect
as I do not have for the senate
majority leader, I have to say this: he spoke the
truth.
I have met hundreds
of handsome black men--light-skinned and otherwise--who are able to speak with no
discernable “Negro” dialect and who are able to turn the dialect on and off—an
ability with which I have no problem.(Know your audience.)In fact,
many such men exist who are far more gifted in the two of the three stated areas
than is Barack Obama and in some areas which were not stated by the senator—demonstrable
leadership ability being the most important one.
However, I
think that many white voters were more familiar with the NBA player/Jesse
Jackson attitude and method of elocution as it applies to black American politicians.In short, liberal white voters (and even some
not-so-liberal ones) got fooled by Barack Obama's semi-slick surface.I’ve said so
before, others have said so. Even Obama himself has acknowledged that some white people can be fooled in the manner specified.
It was usually an effective
tactic, another one of those tricks I had learned: [White] People were
satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They
were more than satisfied; they
were relieved - such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black
man who didn't seem angry all the time.
Dreams
from My Father, pp.94-95
People
forget that the ‘effective tactic’ mentioned used by now-President Obama was
being used to calm the fears of his own mother on the occasion mentioned. (BTW, he shows particular contempt towards her in the passage.) Ann Soetero may or may not have been fooled by this
tactic--Obama was her son, after all.But,
many years later, a lot of other white Americans were.
Of course,
many are calling for Senator Reid’s political head in the wake of his telling of
this particular truth, especially in light of the statements
made by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) back in 2002 regarding the
retirement of the late Senator Strom Thurmond and the Democrat
reaction thereto.Former Senator Lott
was forced to resign as majority leader for saying that
...[w]hen Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him.
We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we
wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either.
Thurmond ran in 1948 and was an avowed segregationist at the time. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele wants the same fate that befell Senator Lott to befall Senator Reid.
While there is no question that Senator Reid did not select
the best word choice in this instance, these comments should not distract
America from its continued focus on securing healthcare or creating jobs for
its people [sic]. Nor should they detract from the unquestionable leadership role
Senator Reid has played on these issues or in the area of civil rights. Senator
Reid’s door has always been open on hearing from the civil rights community on
these issues and I look forward to continue to work with Senator Reid wherever
possible to improve the lives of Americans everywhere.
What does that mean? It means that those who align
themselves with the “correct side of history” are allowed leeway to say what’s
on their minds without having to pay a political price in public.
This is the deal: if you’re assisting in the redistribution of
wealth to its “rightful owners,” you get a pass on telling an unflattering racial truth.If you’re “doing something to for black people,” you get to let
a “racist” thought slip through your lips or out of your word processor.It’s why old Klansmen like Senator Robert
Byrd can even use phrases like “white n*gger” and still sit in the US Senate.
You're allowed to "abuse" black people with one hand if you’re giving them things out of the other.
And when the inevitable uproar from the other side is heard, you, a Democrat, are allowed to say “sorry”
and move on.The Republicans can’t do anything
about it, and, as the Reverend Sharpton implied, a few words are meaningless
when measured against the importance of the Juggernaut known as Hope-and-Change and its destination—even so-called
racist words.
So even though Senator Reid is telling the truth (for a
change), he won’t suffer for it.
Today is a busy day but I'll be posting more later on the fear of being labeled RWW (racist while white). Meanwhile, go read Robert Stacy McCain's take on Gone with the Wind (haha, that guy is fearless). Stacy and I talked on the phone yesterday about the fear and its origin.
I'm not taking this subject lightly; as a matter of fact I am galled by it. It is insidious.
UPDATE: I should have known that my political father, Shelby Steele, had gotten down to the root of the matter of what created this environment.
Just a cursory glance over the reviews reveals a gold mine.
Why are some of you so afraid of being called (called=labeled in this sense) 'racist' when you know that you aren't?
And careful, Dan Collins. You laugh but some Leftist is going to write a "real" proposal, submit some bogus studies and voilà! Your kid is graduating with a B.S.--and I do mean B.S.--degree in Cablinasian Studies--and you paid for it.
UPDATE: I knew that there was fear out there, but I didn't comprehend the breadth of it.
Fear breeds resentment and resentment breeds no good things.
I have to think about this topic some more.
UPDATE (December 18, 2009, 8:44 PM PST): I just now discovered that this post got linked by Glenn Reynolds. I'll have to feature parts of the comments in a later post.
What the flock is up with the Right side of the Blogosphere?
LGF is gone. Charles Johnson is gone. Face it.
He was never ours. How about we let him take his delusions and slanders and paranoias
and obsessions and falsehoods with him?How about we stop looking for racists under every bed or behind every computer screen the way he seems to? How about you
all stop flogging yourselves and each other for his loss and for being fooled by him?
Tiger Woods violates his marriage vows repeatedly and all people like Eugene Robinson care about is the race of of the near-dozen women not-his-wife with whom Tiger has allegedly had relations. Eugene's problem? None of these women are black.
Listen closely, black people: Tiger Woods' job here on Earth is the same as that of each individual person--to do what God wants him to do. What that probably does not entail: validating the attractiveness of black women via serial adultery, humiliation of Mrs. Woods and, possibly, tainting the relationship between him and his children.
Just a guess.
Listen closely again, black people: get over yourselves. Everything is not about you. Heck, my novel is about interracial relationships, but there are subjects that transcend this. As a matter of fact vows to God transcend everything.
But consider this: Tiger is a very blessed man, even in this situation. Don't think so? Consider the case of the late Steve McNair.
Sometimes God gets tired of your BS and removes his protection. God thinks Eldrick Woods is still teachable.
[W]e are interested because Tiger Woods,
who may legitimately be the best golfer ever, had been turned into an
all-purpose icon: a man of personal rectitude, a lovely smile, apparent
openness; a family man, with a lovely wife and two adorable babies. And
of course, he was our first living embodiment of the collective hope
for racial reconciliation. Who knew that the early reports of his
betrayed wife Elin swinging at him with a golf club constituted literal
icon-smashing?
We
are staring because we've been had. Betrayed. We see now that the image
was all a fraud. The talent was real. But the things that made the
public like Tiger personally -- the low-key demeanor, manners, and
sweet smile of countless sports-page photos, magazine covers, political
analogies, and most important, product endorsements, was an act. That
would be betrayal enough. But it wasn't just Woods' act. The
larger lesson here is about how much artifice -- sustained, deliberate
deception -- goes into the construction of a public persona when there
is profit to be made or power to be had.
Read the whole thing and note the parallels (however imperfect--hey, that's a joke!) to another demigod walking on clay feet.
[Rogers is] the intimate Chicago fund-raising crony
of Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett who was once married to fellow Obama
crony and frequent White House visitor John Rogers, chief executive of
multi-billion-dollar Ariel Capital Management. They both bundled
hundreds of thousands in donations for Team Obama before Desiree was appointed
to head the White House social secretary’s office — an office smack dab in the
middle of the Crasher-gate
scandal that is smellier than week-old Thanksgiving turkey.
Rogers and the other two mentioned at the beginning serve the Obama Administration in
roles great and small; all have demonstrated basic incompetence or committed
mind-bogglingly stupid blunders and/or venal acts within their fields of
operation in the Administration; and all are black. Then there’s Barack Obama
himself.
Are these factors significant for any reason besides the obvious? Yes and the
reason is the same one to which I’ve been pointing for a little while now.
There
are plenty of persons who are black and who are competent in law, medicine,
security, social planning, etc. But to hire any of them would deprive Obama of
wielding his (and/or his puppeteer’s) heretofore pretty successful tactic:
hurling accusations of racism. Thus are incompetents from Eric Holder to
Desiree Rogers installed into place to wreck havoc. And Leftists will fall for
the racism tactic every time. One might say that the tactic is part of the
Obama Doctrine.
This
whole brouhaha about the “security breach” is yet another of his methods of
sowing racial discord. But since it’s pretty elaborate, I don’t think that it
originated with Obama.
The fact that that Michaele
and Tareq Salahi managed to get themselves into last week's White House state
dinner, seemingly
without an invitation has caused many observers to upbraid the Secret Service.
And whether blame can legitimately fall on them or not, it's likely that it
will be stoically accepted by the organization in general and by its individual
members in particular. They don't whine.
But Michelle thinks that the blame
should fall on Rogers,
as do I. From the former link (Newsweek):
[Former White House Assistant
for Arrangements Cathy Hargraves] job duties included overseeing the
invitations for guests at state dinners and keeping track of RSVPs, she says.
On the evening of state dinners, she says, she physically stood at the East
Gate portico entrance and greeted each of the guests as they arrived, checking
their names off a computerized printout of those who had been invited.
But when she met with Rogers
last February and went over her job responsibilities, she says, the new social
secretary told her, “We don’t feel we have a need for that anymore.” Rogers’s
explanation, according to Hargraves: “In these economic times, I don’t think
we’re going to have very many lavish expensive dinners. It wouldn’t look very
good.”
And the latter (AP):
During
President George W. Bush's administration, it was standard procedure to have
someone from the White House social office at the gate for state dinners and
other events with large groups of visitors, according to a former senior Bush
aide who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to be seen as criticizing
the Obama White House.
The
social office is most knowledgeable about the guest list and could have been
called in case of any uncertainty, this official said.
White
House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, asked by The Associated Press on
Thursday whether personnel from her office were at the checkpoint said,
"We were not."
If President Obama merely wanted to give competent black Americans a chance in
these areas, he had a number from which to choose. Even one would suffice.
But that would defeat the purpose. Therefore, the president—and/or his
puppeteers—appoint incompetents or cronies. (Cronies are okay if greasing
the right palms isn’t all they know how to do.)
And when white people begin to call for the resignations of such people or begin to
speculate openly that maybe, perhaps black people really are inferior, the
accusation of racism can be hurled. And the anger, frustration and bitterness
gets upped yet one more notch.
I
don’t see how the rest of you keep falling for it.
UPDATE: The Anchoress wonders whether there is a power struggle going on between the White House and the Secret Service. Of course, she makes her case.
Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.
--Ecclesiastes 7:9 (KJV)
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.
--Romans 12:19 (NIV)
Black Cop: "If I told you once to take [poster with Obama-as-Joker] down and you put it back up then I can charge you with whatever I want to charge you with, okay?" [snip]
White Male Protester: "This used to be America."
Black Cop: "Well it ain't no mo', okay?"
When I asserted that the above-documented incident was evidence of racial discord that is being sown in the minds and spirits of Americans since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, some people didn’t believe me (and copped an attitude in their disbelief as well, which is always fun).
As the aphorism goes, there are some things that cannot be defined, but we know them when we see them. However, I will attempt to explain to my readers and guests why that incident was emblematic of the racial Sign of these Times. Fair warning: I’m thinking that this will take at least two posts.
Last year when those who were paying attention discovered the I-deology called “Black Liberation Theology,” many black Americans—including me--had the proverbial light bulb come on over our heads. You see, we had heard the rhetoric before. Not often in churches (though sometimes it is--as I’ll demonstrate below) and not holistically, but piecemeal--from various organizations within the communities in which we often live; organizations designed to “help” black people or “uplift” black/African heritage. (Side note: Often, the celebrators of this “African” heritage do not have the smarts or discipline to immerse themselves in the scholarship of any singular existing African culture. Knowing this to be a fact, a certain enterprising individual saw the value in fabricating a hybrid of African cultures and marketing that hybrid to a black populace who was mostly ignorant of what they were really embracing. Thus do we have Kwanzaa.)
Most black Americans have long been familiar with the Nation of Islam, their wacky theology, their assertion that the white race is Satan incarnate, etc. As a matter of fact, I’ve never hidden the fact that my immediate family--mother and stepfather--were members of the NOI when I was a teenager. (We’re all born-again Christians now.) But what most of us did not know was that smaller, almost unknown organizations had sprung up in the 1960s with its messengers and its rhetoric, most of it similar to that of the NOI; revolving around hatred of white people and the innate supremacy of black Africans--a counter to the white supremacy under which most black Americans were subject prior to that time—and predicting that the superior African would ultimate triumph over his “natural” enemy, the European/Caucasian/white.
Most black Americans did not join these organizations; most didn’t even know that they existed and if they did know, they held them in contempt. However, if the formal structure was unknown, the rhetoric was not. “God-d*mn Amerika,” “US of KKKA” and much worse ersatz curses could be heard coming out of the mouths of every father, uncle, brother, grandfather, etc. who had ever been stopped for the sin of Driving While Black or whose progenitor had been formally if unjustly executed by the state…or had disappeared into the night, only to be found in a river…or buried in a shallow grave. Such curses were often heaped upon a country that once adhered to the separate-but-equal legal doctrine and once looked the other way as local government entities heaped oppression on American citizens of African descent. (Side note: not part of the Lynching Narrative were those black Americans known as “crazy n*ggers”--that is, black Americans in the South who took their right to bear arms seriously. Those white Southerners inclined to terrorize blacks wouldn’t bother such men. I’m told that my great-grandfather, Lucius Jenkins, was such a man. Dr. Condoleezza Rice says that her father was yet another.)
In the fifties and sixties, things began to change—not all at once, but gradually, as is typical of societal upheavals. (In reality, the “gradual” change happened pretty quickly.) But by that time the anger was already brewing and the impatience with the work of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob had already caused many to abandon Him—as often happens when humans operate by their own time rather than God’s.
That’s an overview of why organizations like both the old and New Black Panthers exist. But there's something special about Black Liberation Theology: many if not most black Americans knew of its fabric but did not know that it existed as a coherent package of principles and tenets with a label. Black Liberation Theology has long walked covertly as underlying current snaking its way into the thinking of Americans who are black and who fail to keep up their spiritual guard. This previously unnamed ideology would pop up its head in various venues and unlikely sources. Example: several years ago, my great-aunt claimed that somewhere in the Bible there existed a prophecy predicting that “the black man would rule the earth.” Having read the Bible back and forth, I heatedly disputed this notion—not because I cared whether black people would rule the earth or not, but because I was disgusted that someone would lie to her about the Word of God. Of course, she couldn’t cite the quote.
Several years later—last year to be specific—after the name of Reverend Jeremiah Wright became infamous and the tenets of Black Liberation Theology became well-known, I asked my aunt to think about where she had heard about the notion of world-wide black rule. She didn’t have to think too long. She’s Catholic and the assertion had come from a priest who was visiting her church; a Liberation Theologian--one of Sowers of the currently and continuously sprouting sapling called Racial Discord.
So what does all this have to do with the incident that occurred on August 25, 2009? Hint: go back to the beginning.
So U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is pondering an investigation of the CIA and of Former Vice President Dick Cheney for some sort of crime when the man possibly directed the organization to even ponder making a direct hit on America’s enemies? And the particulars of said program were made public by the New York Times in 2002?
But didn’t this same Department of Justice decline to prosecute blatant voter intimidation perpetrated by the “New Black Panther Party” in Philadelphia—the exact same sort of voter intimidation which was practiced in the South against black Americans prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
I guess it really does come down to who is doing the crime with these people. Any sort of principle or morality is never even considered. Such must, of course, be grounded in truth.
And don’t forget the revenge motive, because these “inconsistencies” are always about that.
One more pattern observed: AG Holder pretends that his putative investigation is against the wishes of President Obama in the same manner that U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi pretends that her own crusade to show photos from the CIA’s Enhanced Interrogation Program and from Abu Ghraib are against the president’s wishes. Bull cookies. The two are merely acting on the president’s orders and taking the heat which he doesn’t have the stones to shoulder. These actions—and all the others—are done with President Obama’s approval, make no mistake about that. Delegation of authority isn’t part of a Leftist philosophy.
President Obama paid his respects to the Russian versions of Bergen and McCarthyand caused a small stir at the G8 by appearing to ogle the backside of a young
Brazilian girl (he didn’t but French President Nicholas Sarkozy definitely
did; ah, the French). Now the POTUS is on his way to Ghana after having taken a trip to the Vatican for an audience with Pope
Benedict XVI. The two allegedly discussed abortion and embryonic stem cell research—obviously from opposing viewpoints. As an opening salvo, the pope gave the president a book on bioethics.
...it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads.
(Emphasis mine.)
I wouldn’t doubt that this pope
just happened to slip his 1984 repudiation of Liberation Theologies in with
the gifts.
Speaking of Defenders of the Faith, my dad—the American one--is on a
mission. One might call it a Crusade.
Dad—a Methodist pastor—has made it his business to confront other black
Christian pastors on their generalized failure to instruct their flocks
regarding the evil of abortion and its role in the physical, moral and spiritual destruction of Americans who
happen to be black. Please pray for him.
What will you black conservatives tell your grandchildren?
It’s a question which I take to imply that, somehow, our grandchildren will presume to vilify us for voting against the man who will become the first black president of the United States. It’s a very easy question to answer, actually: we believe that political, social, moral and spiritual principles take precedence over ethnic tribalism and we followed through on that assertion. But I’m guessing that Steve needs things spelled out a bit more, so I’ll do it for him and for my great nieces and nephews and—perhaps—any grandchildren I might have through being a step-mother. Here goes.
When a voter picks a candidate to serve in an office, that voter is essentially saying “Of all the choices available, I think that this person will do a better job in that office that all of the other available candidates.” In this case we are, of course, talking about the office of President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces. We are talking about a person whose job it is to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, the American land and the American people.
In order to make that decision the American voters need information and during the campaign season we are presented with information designed to allow the voters to make an informed decision as to which of the candidates will be the most competent in fulfilling the objective particulars of that office. By November 4th, we are supposed to come to a conclusion about this matter and record that conclusion in the voting booth.
While we are evaluating all of the information which can indicate a candidate’s competency at supporting and defending the U.S. Constitution, the American land and the American people, we have to take the information we receive and decide whether that information is relevant to the particulars of the office in question. Additionally, we have to decide whether the positive information outweighs the negative. And on top of that, we have to decide which candidate’s positive-negative ratio is better than that all of the others.
I concluded that the things which I know about Barack Obama which are relevant to his possible abilities to adequately support and defend the U.S. Constitution, the American land and the American people —his political background, his expressed political/social ideas and his overall judgment were either of lower quality than John McCain’s or that those things would be overtly detrimental to the well-being of this nation. I also concluded that either man’s ethnicity/race/color was insignificant factor in making a judgment as who was able to better serve this nation and, therefore, was irrelevant to making that decision.
I made my decision by making judgments about the following:
• Barack Obama’s decisions about the Surge conducted in Iraq
• His words regarding the success of that Surge
• His words about the US Constitution in 2001
• His words to Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.
• His voting record in the Illinois Senate
• His voting record in the US Senate
• His words about his association with domestic terrorist William Ayers
• His adherence to Black Liberation Theology as formulated by James Cone and as articulated by Jeremiah Wright, Emeritus pastor of Trinity United Church of “Christ”
• His claim to not know the nature of Wright’s theological stance and to not have heard the latter’s more incendiary sermons after sitting in the pews of Wright’s church for twenty years.
• His stance on abortion and on the “Born Alive” provision in Illinois law.
• His stated intention to conduct presidential-level negotiations with rogue heads of state
• His promise to accept public funding for his campaign
There are many more factors but I hope that I have formed a picture---I did not like Barack Obama's words and/or subsequent actions regarding the above topics. And I would state such to the younger members of my family without hesitation. And if my sisters and my brother-in-law are doing their jobs properly, their children will understand that if a presidential candidate goes against every dearly-held ideology and principle in which you believe but is your same color, it’s a no-brainer to make the decision to vote against him/her.
Because if a candidate’s political, social and moral values are an anathema to a given voter but that voter chooses that candidate anyway solely because the voter shares race/ethnicity with the candidate and/or because of historical precedent, that voter has exchanged principle for emotion and for carnality. The voter has exchanged political, moral and spiritual values for pride of tribe (blacks) or to assuage tribal guilt (whites).
And that, good sir, is the very illustration of a selling-out.
However, if one’s “principles” are for sale, I guess that’s not such a big deal. And if one has no principles, we all know what’s being exchanged, what’s being sold: one’s very person. One's soul.
I’ll tell the kids that I retained mine.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, uptownsteve is banned. Pearls, swine, you know.
In an after-action report of the McCain Campaign’s excellent summer offensive, J.B. White warns black Democrats about their own “navel-gazing narcissism” when it comes to the elitism and bigotry hurled at Sarah Palin.
I keep asking black people, and will continue to do so, have you called George W. Bush a Hitler? A chimp? Stupid? Have you laughed at the outrageous slandering of Sarah Palin? Every far left liberal who has thrown out that kind of foolishness about the Governor of Alaska (the kindest thing many of them have grudgingly said is "empty suit") has telegraphed to black people exactly what they truthfully think of your grandmother, your aunt or your cousin, etc. Especially if they step off the [Democrat] plantation.
As I've tried to point out before, those who would allow the phrase "white trash" to easily roll off of their tongues with respect to a Republican white woman who didn't marry her way into high office would just as easily Photoshop a Republican black senate candidate in minstrel makeup. (And isn't it interesting that sociologist Max Weber described "white trash" as persons in the Old South who didn't own slaves?)
Read the whole thing—a deft attempt at “deflating the identity politics balloon.”
...on the Save Save Senator Obama Kogelo School, Inc. website and goals; also on an essay regarding the recent deployment of the race card by the school's namesake.
The total to supply and maintain the school so far is $2,300+! We've got a long way to go. I'm in and I hope that other will be as well.
UPDATE: [donation button stopped working; scroll down for one that works!]
In the meantime, I'll post my essay, "Why is the Black Vote in the Democrats' Pocket?" originally posted at Pajamas Media. I had a different title in mind--'Black Republicans: Who is Really Being Bought?'--but you know how that goes. Enjoy.
*****
Why do 90% of eligible black Americans vote Democrat and call themselves liberal?
A few weeks back, I lambasted prominent black conservatives for even thinking of voting for Barack Obama, a man who embodies only one part of the two-word description “black conservative.”
Several black conservatives were quoted in the article to which I was responding. However, the most revealing quote came from former U.S. Representative J.C. Watts (R-OK):
J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he’s thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he’s still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.
“And Obama highlights that even more,” Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. “Republicans often seem indifferent to those things.”
Watts’ turnaround suggests one of three things to me: 1) that he has changed his political philosophy and should probably change parties; 2) that when he was running for office he was saying what he needed to say to get elected in conservative Republican Oklahoma, rather than saying that in which he believed; that is, he was never really a conservative Republican; or 3) that he realizes the futility of trying to attract most black Americans to his party on the basis of principle.
Obama may have left Black Liberation Theology’s Trinity United Church of “Christ,” but it certainly hasn’t left him.
Obama continued: "And so the only way they [sic] figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. So what they’re saying is, ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he’s... doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, you know, he’s got a, he’s got a funny name.'
The candidate belonged to a church that subscribed to an ideology of racial vengeance and victory. He may have left the church, but he hasn’t left the racial combat notions behind, not by a long shot. So he must keep Sowing the racial Discord. Fortunately, for him, that isn’t difficult, since the idea that Republicans were the party of racists was planted long before Obama came on the scene.
So no matter how much McCain demonstrates that he is the very opposite of racist, he is at a disadvantage. It’s tough to fight forty years of indoctrination.
Obama’s purpose in keeping up this tactic of racist smearing is twofold: 1) to keep the troops stoked, and 2) to help the nation to forget that he allied himself with a set of racists for twenty years, the truth be damned.
My essay, 'Why is the Black Vote in the Democrats' Pocket?' is up at Pajamas Media. To those who take issue with the slavery metaphor as it relates to the relationship between black Americans and the Democrat Party: prepare to be offended.
UPDATE: Of course, some Liberals are "arguing" with the essay in the PJM comment section. The fun part about this is that they don't seem to realize that the op-ed's author is black and their condescension toward blacks is shining brightly through. Shhh! Don't tell them!
During a press conference featuring Barack Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy, CNN's notoriously obtuse Christiane Amanpour wants to know whether President Sarkozy is regretful for referring to his country's rioters and car-burners--most of whom were African immigrants--as scum back when he was France's Interior Minister, now that he has a actual scum person of African descent standing next to him.
Don't you love how Leftists project their own racism onto others?
Hey Christiane! Sarkozy's epithet 'scum' had nothing to do with France's rioters being of African descent. He called them scum because they were destroying other people's property and endangering lives. If Barack Obama starts burning cars or does something similar, he will become scum--he wasn't born scum, no matter how much you might believe it to be so. As a matter of fact, if you start burning cars you will have also become scum without having one bit (as far as I know) of African heritage. See how that works? Of course you don't, because, while you may not be scum, you are indeed an ideologue and not one bit of information which isn't on your approved ideology menu will penetrate that thick skull of yours.
No one should feel guilty about any crime they didn't personally commit, but whenever I read a post and a thread like this one regarding white guilt, I wonder whether such people are equally as fervent about distancing themselves from the laudable actions and legacies of our Founding Fathers--or that of the World War Two Generation--as they are about disassociating themselves from the country's distant slave-holding past and not-so-distant oppressive past (45 years ago).
If our good history is relevant to who we, as Americans, are today, then so is our bad history and there's nothing wrong with thinking about and acknowledging the truth about both. Our foundation is composed of both. However, it does not, or rather, it need not follow that blame be cast or guilt be felt as a result of admitting the truth. Think first; feel second, if at all.
Just saying.
Not being perfect, America and Americans have not and do not always reach the bar which we had set for us in the late eighteenth century. However, we should feel proud--not guilty--that our Founding Fathers gave us such a high bar to reach for in the first place. When we fall short we get up and try again. That's our heritage and to have the country wallow in both guilt and blame gives all of us an excuse not to get up.
PRETEND AS THOUGH THERE'S A SEGUE HERE: Christian doctrine maintains that we're all guilty of sin and deserve death and that Jesus Christ died for our crimes. But the doctrine of Black Liberation Theology changes the essential nature of Jesus Christ, holds white persons still culpable for their perceived sins and those of their fathers and--the most important part--ignores Jesus's purpose for being born, being crucified and being resurrected.
The founder of BLT and those who have been taking in by him want to hold onto the power of guilt over white Americans, but can't be brave enough to repudiate Jesus Christ as he actually is. His mercy is inconvenient. So they change him into someone else, a victim who requires earthly vengeance. It's a change--a lie--they can believe in.
Even though the Obamas have left TUCC, they have not refuted their belief in this religion of guilt and blame, this Black Liberation Theology. As a matter of fact Michelle is still selling guilt, white and otherwise, while her mate offers the sufferers of white-guilt the promise of redemption if only they would believe in him.
In her positions as [Howard] Dean’s top aid and the convention’s top official, Daughtry, who is 44 years old, is leading the Democratic Party’s new mission to make religious believers — particularly ardent Christian believers — view the party and its candidates as receptive to, and often impelled by, the dictates of faith. She sparked this crusade, both to transfigure the party’s image as predominantly secular and to take enough votes from the Republicans to win this year’s presidential election, in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s 2004 defeat of John Kerry. And in her vocation as a Pentecostal pastor she stands for faith in an extreme form. There is nothing equivocal about her belief. Hers is a religion not only of divine healing but of talking in tongues.
Behind her as she preached, a simple wooden cross hung on a brick wall in the vaulted and sizable sanctuary of the church, which is headed by her father, Herbert Daughtry. A prison convert who served time in his early 20s for armed robbery and passing bad checks, Herbert Daughtry — whose father founded the church and whose grandfather and great-grandfather were also ministers — became the church’s pastor 50 years ago, and today Leah was delivering the sermon as part of an anniversary celebration. Below the sanctuary, in the fellowship hall, a banner for slavery reparations proclaimed, “They Owe Us.” Fliers recounted Herbert Daughtry’s arrest, a few weeks earlier, as he led marchers protesting the not-guilty verdict in the police killing of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man. His ministry has always [sic] combined consuming spirituality with black liberation theology — the theology Jeremiah Wright invoked this spring to defend his controversial sermons — and zealous political activism. Leah holds these forces within her.
Four things:
• Daughtry’s church could not have been a BLT stronghold for 50 years, since BLT’s founder, James Cone, didn’t write the first BLT manual until 1969. The elder Daughtry simply led his flock astray.
• We certainly have religious freedom in this country, but I can’t help but wonder what the response would be if the Republican National Convention hired a pastor from the Christian Identity Movement; that is, another church which uses Christ-coating to (thinly) veil its racial superiority ideology.
• White Liberals must have a Debasement Wish.
• If an apostate church exists, this is it. Everyone seems to be intent on taking Christ’s place on the Cross. What they forget is that he’s not even there anymore.
He's correct but he better start wearing a cup when Jesse Jackson is around.
CINCINNATI - Democrat Barack Obama insisted Monday that blacks must show greater responsibility for their actions. In remarks prepared for delivery at the annual NAACP convention, the man who could become the first black president said Washington must provide greater education and economic assistance, but that blacks must demand more of themselves.[snip]
"I know some say I've been too tough on folks about this responsibility stuff. But I'm not going to stop talking about it. Because I believe that in the end, it doesn't matter how much money we invest in our communities, or how many 10-point plans we propose, or how many government programs we launch — none of it will make any difference if we don't seize more responsibility in our own lives."
Obama, who grew up without his father, has spoken and written at length about issues of parental responsibility and fathers participating in their children's lives. Yet a similar speech by the Illinois senator on Father's Day prompted an awkward rebuke from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a Democratic presidential contender in 1984 and 1988, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a fellow Chicago political activist.
At least he's talking about something of which he has some knowledge. How long did that take?
John McCain will also address the convention also.
This must be Identity Politics Pandering Week. Both candidates addressed the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) convention in DC last week and the National Council of La Raza convention in San Diego over the weekend.
Looks like Obama was wrong yet again. (Surprise!) Last time I checked, The New Yorker isn't run by Republicans.
It's the same old story--projection. Nice Afro on Michelle, though. (I mention this because white illustrators sometimes treat black hair in its natural state as if it's a mass of antennae on a space alien.)
Yes, it's tasteless and offensive, senator. So are you going to apologize to the Republican Party?
The National Black Republican Association is running a campaign down South to counteract the lie repeated by Obama--and originating from many others who came before him--that Republicans are the party of racists.
Orangeburg, SC at exit 145 of I-26
No guts, no glory.
UPDATE: Oh yeah. Then there's this: "Racist Democrats and Obama."
Thanks, interestingly enough, to The Huffington Post, where something "fun" can always be found:
This is really scaring [sic]! Swift-Boat Ni99ers !!!!
Question: when did Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing--written in the 1930s 1900 by Harlem Renaissance men James Weldon Johnson and his brother John Rosamond Johnson and sung at functions far and wide since then--magically become a "Leftist patriotism song" and/or something akin to a black power anthem?
Answer: when Barack Obama exposed the dark underside (no pun intended) of hate that exists among a minority of black people. The fact that so many didn't see (refused to see?) what he was has made all too many white persons suspect anything that has the label black on it, with respect to the American subculture in question.
Yes Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing has been known as the 'Black National Anthem' and it has had that unofficial label for far longer that Black Liberation Theology and Barack Obama have existed. That it has been dubbed such does not mean that it takes the place of the National Anthem and it never has meant that. And no, this woman should not have sung the song without including the actual National Anthem or without giving The Star-Spangled Banner precedence over Lift. But I'm seeing characterizations of Lift that are just plain BS--just like I've read out-and-out lies about the Luo tribe of Kenya, the ethnic group from which Obama and I stem.
Few white Americans cared about this song until now and that's understandable, but not because there's some wrong with the song. This is what's wrong: there's a spirit in the air and it's different from that which existed in the previous epoch of time during which the song was penned, sung and cherished. It's the Spirit of Fear and you who are Christian know that this spirit does not have God as its origin.
People, you are letting you prior failure to recognize a charlatan and your fellow citizens' ongoing failure in this area make you even more blind. Open your eyes and recognize that this what Obama's purpose is; to Sow Discord between brethren. Stop making his job easier.
UPDATE: Have you ever apologized to someone else for taking out your frustrations on them and getting impatient with them because they wouldn't do something you asked them to do?
And then have you had that same person require you to apologize for something that you did not do? That was someone else's fault? Readers of the Hot Air comment thread will understand what I'm talking about.
UPDATE: In the comments, doubleplusundead (I just love that handle) asks:
I think what Baldi is trying to explain to people is that they need to tread gingerly [with the song], because not having a grasp on what exactly you're attacking can lead to problems.
Black Americans don't automatically associate Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing with the sort of radical, aggro ideology of a Rene Marie, note again, in the 60's and 70's, and remember, Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing was sung after the Star-Spangled Banner. What she did has not the norm by any means. Undoubtedly, many black American probably just associate it with the civil rights movement itself, or the fight to end segregation law in the early 20th Century, not the ridiculous Black Power characters we see dragged onto cable TV shows for the hosts to feign outrage and kick around every once in a while.
As I said in the Hot Air comments, I'm getting tired of having the subcultural totems of Americans who happen to be black 1) used by the haters of America and 2) held up by other Americans as "proof" that we're some sort of Fifth Column in our own country.
Yeah those "Republicans" are O So Racist, aren't they?
I haven’t heard [Obama] have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.
---Ralph Nader
What? What's that I hear you say? Ralph Nader's not a Republican? He's a Liberal? Wait, wait. He's not a Liberal, but a hard core Leftist? Hmm.
Interestingly enough, Nader seems to be attacking Obama for at least giving lip service (and we know what that's worth) to addressing the needs of all Americans, not just the black ones. The fact that Obama would be the president of all Americans is something which I must repeatedly remind many of my fellow black Americans.
But Nader's view is so skewed by his Leftism, he thinks that there's something wrong with this. And his view is equally as adversely affected by his stereotypes of black people; he thinks that "ghetto issues" are of chief concern among blacks. 'Cause he thinks we all live in a ghetto where our kids are breathing asbestos and eating lead-based paint chips.
[Obama] wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.
But wait, Ralph. Didn't you just imply that he's not appealing enough to white guilt?
Dementia, I say.
(Thanks to Memeorandum)
UPDATE: Protein Wisdom's Karl points out that Obama has indeed talked about predatory lending and notes other areas addressed to which Nader obviously hasn't been paying attention. I still say it's dementia. ADD is one of the symptoms.
The real interesting thing about Obama running is that just by being himself, he has managed to draw out into the light the different strains of racism that has always implicitly hovered around the Democratic Party and the Left in general. [SNIP]
Nader presumes to tell a black person what that black person is supposed to be talking about.
Obama's opening salvo against his adversaries in the opposing party has yielded a measure of victory. Merely tossing the race grenade into the enemy camp allows the foot soldiers to wade in and that they do. Accordingly, tbogg of FireDogLake does a round-up of conservative outrage at the remarks and merely asserts in the title that the "denial" is a "Telltale Sign of a Guilty Conscience." He even adds the black conservative to the list--the one whose father is of the same tribe as Obama's father--and he does so without the faintest hint of how absurd that is, adding a vintage photo of the Klan for good measure.
Click to Enlarge
One has to admire such brazenness.
Always remember: to those who would gain power by any means, making sense is a mere luxury, not a requirement.
UPDATE: If you click on the screen capture, you'll see that the round-up of bloggers posting about Obama's racist remarks includes Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter Larry Johnson. Johnson's name has been mentioned around the blogosphere quite a bit in the last few weeks due to some unproven assertions that he had been making about Michelle Obama (I won't repeat them here).
I just wanted to point that out and note that, in the Identity Politics playbook, when a Democrat gets branded as a racist, he/she automatically becomes a Republican. Neat trick, no?
What I said in the last post is still true, but and it's due to be exacerbated by the following racist demagoguery. This is just pathetic.
[The Republicans are] going to try to make you afraid of me. 'He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?' [SNIP]
That old stuff just divides us," he said.
Obama, born to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, has cast himself as a candidate who can bridge divides within the country, including those involving race.
Most people couldn't care less about your name and your color, Senator Obama. They fear being lead by you because you have no substantive legislative record, you're a chronic liar and, after explicitly stating that you choose your friends carefully, you have repeatedly and systematically made friends with people who hate this country.
You would "bridge the divide," Senator, by burning that bridge.
Folks, don't let this Sower of Discord shut you up.
Hundreds of Spike Lee fans began lining up as much as two hours before his appearance Thursday night at the Silverdocs film festival in Silver Spring. After running the gauntlet of cameras on the red carpet, Lee was treated to a montage of his own work before settling in to a chat with Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy.
An expert on Hurricane Katrina thanks to his film “When the Levees Broke,” Lee said the same problems are affecting Missouri right now.
“The money’s going to other things,” he said. “That’s going to change though.” As applause escalated, he added, in a clear reference to Barack Obama, “We’ll have a real chocolate city.”
And, as a result, the Washington Examiner runs this headline, "Obama would make D.C. a ‘chocolate city,’ Lee says." In turn, Glenn Reynolds (where I got the story from) links with this:
Folks, don't you think that you're being a little misleading? DC is already a "Chocolate City."
But when I read Glenn's blurb and the WT headline, I got visions of white people being turned out of Our Nation's Capital en masse, like thousands of Adams and Eves from the Garden of Eden.
R&B singers, bands and black people in general have been referring to DC as "CC" for quite some time--due to the racial composition of the city's population, outside of most of the politicians. And while I think that Spike Lee is a mediocre director and, generally, a poor excuse for a human being, I don't think he means anything by this other than the probability that even more black people would arrive in the city as a result of an Obama presidency.
Obama's chronic dissembling has some of my white brethren nervous about everything. But if you want to pick on something Lee said, pick on the idea that more black people in DC would mean better management of disaster preparedness. If that concept were true, there would be no whining about Katrina in the first place.
BTW, the American Red Cross needs your help in aiding the flood victims. The organization has less than 5 million dollars in its coffers.
Red Cross
UPDATE: Joseph Phillips ended up not voting for Barack Obama.
ORIGINAL POST: One of today's Yahoo News headlines informs us that 'Black conservatives [are] conflicted on Obama campaign.' Armstrong Williams, Rep. J.C. Watts, General Colin Powell, Senator Edward Brooke and, sadly, my friend Joseph C. Phillips may be falling into the trap which I have repeatedly described--one lined with pride and with fear: pride of race and fear that Obama is the last chance for a black president to be elected. (GOPAC chairman Michael Steele isn't going for the okey doke, however; but that may be only due to his position.)
People say that women have problems thinking objectively and strategically. Well, I'm seeing a whole group of men who are having that problem. Friends, you're letting the nearness of a dream's seeming fulfillment blind you to what will likely come after that ephemeral happiness is dissipated, after the novelty has worn off: the nightmare.
And guess who will get blamed for that short-sightedness? Not just you.
With 90+ percent of black Americans voting Democrat regardless of who the candidate is, it will be bad enough as it is. But I, for one, expect you, black conservative Republican men to have enough balls to stand on principle, not on your emotions. You've shown your testicular fortitude by being publicly conservative against a tide of Identity Politics. Don't start behaving like castrati now.
Stop thinking selfishly. We're not choosing a President of Black American Dream Fulfillment; we're choosing a President of the United States.
. One can guess that some people were offended by the series--a state of affairs which often occurs when the truth is told.
Yes, they took mine away. Good riddance.
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