Obama has worked very hard to label whites as "typical" racists, throwing his own grandmother under the bus... twice. According to this story, that HASN'T made much of a splash in national media, Obama's chiding of white America appears to be a case of the pot calling the kettle "WHITE."
How will Obama heal a nation this sick? This racially diseased? Especially when he defends race-bashing pastors?
He won't. Having Obama as our nation's first black president will not make this nation less racially charged. I suspect things will only get worse.
We have our first black Supreme Court Justice in the Honorable Clarence Thomas, despite Democrats. We have had our first Black Secretary of State in General Colin Powell, followed by Condolezza Rice. But for many Democrats AND blacks these two aren't "black enough."
Liberal media, and Al Sharpton leveled that charge on Barack when it looked like he had no chance. The LA Times even called him "Barack the Magic Negro." Sharpton said Barack wasn't "down for the struggle." But now that he looks like he could win it's "how dare you make racist slurs against our man Barack!" What hypocrites!
And now Barack gets a pass on calling his grandmother a "typical white person," to mean: racist... to mean the typical white person is a racist. But please pay no attention to Jeremiah Wright or those middle school children who brutally beat Sarah Kreager. How dare us!!!
[...us white folk, that is...]
Now Media, Democrats, AND Barack Obama want us to believe that finally THE man has arrived who can change the face of race and the nature of racial discourse in America?
Just six-months ago Barack wasn't black enough.... according to Blacks!
There's just too much hypocrisy in Left Field, and unless Barack makes a sincere and honest effort to stop calling kettles white, there can be no sincere and honest easing and healing of racial tensions in America.
No we can't.... Not this time....
Not with Barack.
I'm not saying that only black men commit this kind of crime, but surely whites have some reason to be fearful. Is racism the primary reason behind why so many black men end up in prison? There is certainly something wrong in the hearts of ALL men [Jeremiah 17:9], but you can't blame whitey for every young black man who takes a gun into a liquor store, night club, drive-by auto, fast food restaurant, on "whitey." At some point in their lives they chose to exemplify the worst of not just their humanity, but every stereotype honest blacks desperately want to be loosed from in the public eye.
Whitey commits plenty of crime of his own. Even racist crimes. James Byrd, Jr. can attest to that.
Nevermind the deaths attributed to Al Sharpton's bigotry over the 1995 Freddy's Fashion Mart fire.
Nevermind Jesse Jackson's 1984 referral of Jews as "Hymies" and New York City as "Hymietown".
Bigots come in all stripes and ALL COLORS. It's not just Jeremiah Wright. It's Barack as well, labelling whites as "typically" racist.
He gives a good speech. He's an inspiring speaker. But he has his own demons to wrestle with. There's still that beam in his eye that needs to tending to.
I guess you could say I'm a bit touchy on this subject-- I don't take kindly to being called a bigot. Especially by people who think they know who I am by the articles I write... [kudos to ER for realizing the truth in this]
But for those of you who don't know where I'm coming from, check out the next comment. I posted a private journal entry from ten years ago at ER's place that still reflect how I feel about this subject. And just so's you know, the private journal I keep is in the form of letters to a young woman I deeply loved as a young man.
May 1998 12:37am
Dearest Mary Angel,
When we younger and learning to love and care for one another, our minds were yet filled with the views and dogmas handed down to us by our parents. Regardless of what we may believe to the contrary we were nonetheless guided by the ideals of those who raised us. For good or ill we were what our parents made us. For most people these belief systems will be with them their entire lives; very few can honestly say that they have broken away and learned to think for themselves.
When I was young and growing up as a military brat, I was not, for the most part, exposed to people of different skin colors, nor was I taught to call black people 'Niggers.' Regardless of my parents personal opinions, color was a non-issue-- The military demanded it. That's just the way it was. I would have been beaten if that word had slipped past my lips, and rightly so.
Upon entering Jr. High, I was suddenly surrounded by black children. If I was frightened at all by this it was because of its strangeness. Suddenly I was among people who hated me; not because I stuttered, but because of the color of my skin! By the time I graduated from High School I had picked up a measure of prejudice, and the measure acquired was of equal parts peer pressure, and retaliatory.
It's easy to hate someone who hates you. It goes back to what is taught in the bible; you reap what you sow. Well, I don't want to be burdened by another person's perceptions of what the color of my skin means to them... It isn't fair to me. It isn't fair to them.
I can somewhat understand the black man's point of view and, to that point, reluctantly share it, for our nation has not been kind to him, and how black perceives white is understandable, if not wholly justified. I tell myself I can't look at persons of African descent and say 'Nigger,' and yet I have, to my own shame. Neither he nor I deserve to be judged by the color of our skin.
I have never owned a slave, but I'm blamed for it every day. I've never deliberately tried to hold a black person back from achieving his dreams, but I am blamed for it nonetheless; and made to feel guilty for what I am innocent of.
He and I are both helpless to change it. I will try my damnedest not to teach my children prejudice but they will learn it anyway. No matter how hard he tries to do the same, his children too will learn. It is in our nature to demonstrate prejudice, for each of us carries within us that seed of propensity, 'Evil' if you will...
Today, I can thankfully say that I don't dislike blacks anymore than I do whites, or anyone else for that matter. I am an equal-opportunity despiser; trash is trash regardless of it's origin, or its coat of paint, and in my own defense, I am only human.
I have a seed of goodness within me as well. But it all boils down to this: "Which seed do I nurture?" The yin or the yang?
The world isn't getting any smaller and with racial tensions as they are, what chance do any of us have at living full, productive, and genuinely loving lives when we, by our very natures, pass our fears on to our children... for which they pay the price.
With all my love, sweet Mary Angel,
Eric
And then there's the Liberal whites, who, for some reason, are infected with white guilt because many white people owned black slaves 150 years ago. They propagate the division between the races, too.
I treat blacks with the same respect I treat anyone. The only blacks I don't respect are the thugs and the racial dividers like Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright, and any white person who insist that I should feel guilty over something someone whose only similarity with me is that their skin is the same color treated blacks badly centuries ago.
If drug crime is overpunished in black neighborhoods, violent crime is underpunished....The bottom line is as simple as it is awful: When whites are robbed, raped, beaten, and killed, their victimizers are usually punished. When the same crimes happen to blacks, the usual result is: nothing. No arrest, no prosecution, no conviction. That is one reason why black neighborhoods are so much more violent than white ones.
In other words, the kinds of criminal punishment that do the most good are undersupplied in black America, and the kinds that do the LEAST good — so far as I know, there is no evidence that the level of drug punishment has any appreciable effect on the level of drug crime — are oversupplied. African Americans live with the worst of both worlds: unfathomably high crime rates, coupled with truly horrifying levels of criminal punishment."
There are still racial inequalities in this country. The neighborhood I live in has one black family. The neighborhood Eric lives in is predominantly black. Why is that? Because of economic inequalities? Because of soft racism? There is some reason.
Whenever I speak about race, I have to say that I am inordinately proud of my country. A generation still lives who grew up with segregation. In less than a century, though, we have gone from a segregated society to a mostly, equal society. I do not discount such gains. But we have challenges to overcome still as we struggle toward a land in which all men (and women) are equal.