Obama and Race: Don’t Criticize him or you’re a Racist! — Let’s have that race dialogue that Obama has called for.
Obama and Race: Don’t Criticize him or you’re a Racist! — Let’s have that race dialogue that Obama has called for.
ByKen Eliasberg
In a previous column I commented on Obama’s effort to avoid any criticism (in his terms, “swift boating”; in mine, offering up legitimate criticism). In his comment at the time, he was suggesting that any reference to his inexperience, “feisty” wife, and/or race would be part of the Republicans “fear and smear” campaign. In that previous column I dealt with his “feisty” (again, his term, not mine; mine would be very angry and very ignorant) wife. In this and ensuing columns I want to address race, an incredibly delicate issue, made more delicate by virtue of limitations placed on any such discussion as the result of “political correctness” — a euphemism for not saying what you mean and only feeling free to saying what some elite or sheltered group tells you it is “safe” to say. Obama wants a dialogue on race, so let’s have one.
As I suggested, political correctness has greatly inhibited any such discussion, so let’s see if we can cast off the cloak of political correctness and have an honest discussion about race.First of all let me make it clear — I believe that an Obama presidency would be a disaster. And this has absolutely nothing to do with his race. In fact, I think America would profit from having a black president and/or a woman president. Again, I am not opposed to a black president; I am opposed to this black being our president.
Why? For many reasons — e.g. his politics (he’s not a “new” politician at all; actually, if you check the record, he’s your typical Chicago political hack); his philosophy (I believe that he’s a Marxist); his experience (virtually none); and his essential dishonesty (he lied about his relationships with Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Reverend Phleger, Tony Rezko, etc., etc. — these were his close associates, not some casual connections as he would have you believe. And, oh yes, his approach to race (I believe that, like his preacher and his wife, he’s a racist) — but here I just want to deal with race. And, for purposes of this column, I just want to introduce the topic of race and establish what I consider to be the ground rules for any fair and balanced discussion of the subject, i.e. one that is not so fundamentally diluted by political correctness considerations as to make the entire effort worthless.
I recently spoke to a Republican Women’s group, and one of the ladies informed me that a previous speaker had been a black pastor. And he opened his discussion by asking the question — do you know what’s wrong with White folks? The lady advised me that you could feel the group brace for an attack on white racism. Instead, the pastor, to his great credit, informed his audience that the problem with white people is that they are afraid of being called a racist. And he is so right. If you disagree with a black or what appears to be a black position in any discussion, you can — with good reason, I might add — expect to be labeled a racist. As a consequence, most whites will either avoid a discussion of race or approach it in an excessively timid, if not downright dishonest, manner. Political correctness doth make cowards of us all. So let me state for the record that I have always been a staunch defender of civil rights, asking only that they be accompanied by a willingness to assume the corresponding burden of civil responsibilities, i.e. don’t hide behind racism to avoid accepting responsibility for an obvious transgression having nothing to do with race.
So again, let’s start the “race dialogue” that Obama has suggested America really needs to have. And, to be perfectly frank — and “frank” is what this is all about (or it’s about nothing but drivel, which is usually what it’s about) — I agree with Obama. We need a real dialogue on race — a serious dialogue, not just the usual guilt-driven nonsense where a black comes out and beats the white over the head with slavery as an explanation for everything that’s wrong in the black community, e.g. illegitimate births, high crime rate, an overly large drug population, failure to take education seriously, etc., etc. The standard black response to any effort at dialogue, let alone a response to legitimate criticism, is that we are a racist (or “mean” in the words of Michelle Obama) society, and that the blacks have no problem that is not the direct result of our being such a society.
We do not need another dialogue of that nature. What we do need is for blacks to start looking for an explanation rather than an excuse — an excuse for so many of them falling behind other racial and ethnic segments of our society. Because the simple reality of the alleged problem that blacks indicate that they have experienced and are experiencing is that no outside element is seriously standing in the way of their making progress — they are!! Are there bigots, racists, and other forms of assorted knuckle draggers? Of course! There always have been, and there always will be. But these are types who operate at the margins of our society — or, for that matter, any society. And, interestingly enough, relatively speaking, there are more of them in the black community than in the white, i.e. racism is a more vehement and vicious force within the black community than it is in the white, notwithstanding the absurd argument that blacks can’t be racists because they are a minority; racism is about an emotion (hate), not about a numerical count of those engaged in the practice.
It is extremely important that this be cleared up at the outset - that is that racism is not a one-way street, i.e. whites against blacks. It is very much a two-way street, i.e. hatred of whites by blacks. For some time now many in the black community wanted us to believe that only they could be victims of race hatred. You saw this argument made clearly by Sister Souljah in 1992, a photo op that Bill Clinton sought to take advantage of at a meeting of the Rainbow Coalition — one of your typical Clintonian efforts to create the illusion of objectivity while at the same time displaying faux courage.
Along these lines I very much commend to the readers’ attention an article by Linda Chavez in the June issue of Commentary (an excellent magazine), entitled Let Us by All Means Have an Honest Conversation About Race. In it Ms. Chavez points out that, while it is true that there is still a residue of racism by whites — as noted, you will never entirely purge the world of knuckle draggers — there is far more hostility emanating from the black community toward whites. Based on a survey taken in the mid-1990’s, Ms. Chavez puts the numbers at 10% white hostility toward blacks and“[A]saginst the 10 percent or fewer of American whites who hold negative views of blacks, the same mid-1990’s survey of intergroup attitudes cited above registered over three quarters of blacks holding negative views of whites.”
These same numbers also show up in another excellent column by Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, 2 authorities on the subject of race, entitled Obama in Black & White — Candidate as inkblot, at nationalreview.com on 8/29/08
While shocking, I don’t find that determination the least bit surprising.Blacks have been using discrimination as a crutch; an excuse, if you will to explain failure, rather than as motivation for change, growth, and success. If we are to get passed that approach, then greater honesty is in order — plus a willingness to accept responsibility for some black failures. Greater progress might also be made if the black community picked leaders rwho really cared about them and not con men like Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan, and Wright — shepherds who really wished to lead their flock rather than just fleece it. Inthis regard, it is worth noting that whenever such leaders appear — e.g. Bill Cosby, Juan Williams, etc. — who counsel greater personal responsibility, they are excoriated, rather than welcomed. to be continued).