[It's time for another episode of, "Stuff That I'm Printing in My College Newspaper at the Risk of My Life and Academic Career"!]
There is no charge more powerful or damaging in American politics than the accusation of racism. Though sometimes warranted, allegations of racism are far too common and serve little more than to shut down all civil debate.
When such an assertion is false, it becomes the equivalent of asking a man whether he still beats his wife and demanding a yes-or-no answer. The accused is forced either to ignore the charge, which will be seen as an implicit admission of guilt, or to rebut his accuser, veering the current discussion off-course into an unrelated matter – which was the exact intent of the one who made the racism declaration.
That having been said, it stands to reason that the election of the first black President would infuriate those who harbour serious malice towards minorities, and it also stands to reason that those people would oppose him and his agenda every step of the way. But there are far more Americans who have serious disagreements with the President’s policies and would be just as opposed to those policies were he white. In fact, it would be a form of racism for those opponents to support Obama’s agenda, since making an exception to their own ideology merely to celebrate the milestone of the first black President would amount to affirmative-action politics.
The opposing-Obama-is-racist line has most recently been levelled by former President Jimmy Carter, who said that the “overwhelming” portion of animosity towards Obama is racist.
This is the same Jimmy Carter whose Democratic Party primary for Georgia Governor, as noted in Stephen F. Hayward’s book, The Real Jimmy Carter, was marked with Carter’s anti-black race-baiting, including distributing grainy photographs of his opponent standing arm-in-arm with two black men in order to depress his share of the white vote; producing a leaflet noting his opponent had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.; declaring that he had “no trouble pitching” for votes of both supporters of segregationist George Wallace as well as black votes, only to later boast, “I can win this election without a single black vote”; and releasing a radio commercial in which he said he would never be the tool of any “block” vote, slurring over the word “block” so that it could be mistaken for “black.”
And this is the same Jimmy Carter whose anti-Israel best seller, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, recently received a ringing endorsement by… Osama bin Laden.
Carter’s behaviour speaks to the Left’s own insecurity on the issue of race. Many – but certainly not all – liberals feel an undeserved guilt for the sins of the past and feel an obligation not merely to defend the oppressed but to make themselves the chief – if not exclusive – defenders of those oppressed people, to the point of lambasting their detractors as illogical and bigoted.
Their guilt manifests itself in the form of a modern-day White Man’s Burden, an obligation to use government as a means of achieving some semblance of equality, even if that means sacrificing the liberty of those with the misfortune to be born into the dominant group, regardless of any lack of bigotry on those individuals’ part.
Janeane Garofalo – who once said, “If I don’t have my self-loathing, what do I have?” and whose production company is aptly called I Hate Myself – engaged in even more of her own projection when she said that Michael Steele, the current and first black Chairman of the Republican Party, “suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, which means you try and curry favour with the oppressor…. Any female or person of colour in the Republican Party is struggling with Stockholm Syndrome.”
That served as cover for her next assertion that the anti-government, anti-tax Tea Party protests are “about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea bagging rednecks.” Garofalo’s proof of her allegation was supposedly a single sign reading, “Whatchyoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
To be fair, there were multiple signs at Tea Party rallies with racial overtones – if not outright racist sentiments – in reference to the President. But that is the downside of any protest, especially one as grassroots as the Tea Party protests: You always run the risk of having a small but vocal minority who say things that make your movement look bad. By Garofalo’s logic, every anti-war protestor is an avowed Communist who believes that 9/11 was an inside job, George Bush is Hitler and Israelis and Jews are Nazi, Zionist devil pigs Hell-bent on controlling the world. And those are some the milder extremists on the extreme Left and Right.
And yes, most Tea Partiers are white, but since most political conservatives are white – for reasons there is not space to get into here – it makes sense that most of the protestors are, in fact, white. It is because of this that the notion of a black conservative, or a female conservative, or an Hispanic conservative, or an Asian conservative, or – GASP! – a gay conservative runs contrary to the Leftist narrative, for their ideology is the pinnacle of tolerance and societal equity.
Garofalo also said that “there is almost no liberal outlet for news commentary or editorialising.” Right, just like when MSNBC, being the far-Right propaganda outlet that it is, showed footage of an armed Tea Party-goer as evidence that racist white people want to do harm to the President. There was just one problem: The protestor in question was black. But MSNBC, desperate to prevent the shattering of the Leftist narrative, cut away from the footage so viewers could not see the race of the man in question.
But now, I’m belabouring the point. The fact is, not all opposition to the President is racist, and perhaps more important, not all support of him isn’t racist. By framing a non-racial debate, be it over taxes, health care or the size of government, in racial terms, the Left is engaging in both hyperbole and logical fallacy, which is precisely what racism is.
Racism – or any other form of bigotry, for that matter – is the ultimate societal hyperbole because it attempts to make all members of a group into one faceless, homogeneous mass. There has always and will always be bigots, and often, the accuser doth protest too much, revealing his own deep-seated hatred towards those different from himself, as well as his deficient intellectual capacity.
I would be remiss to point out that despite my many qualms with this President, I do believe that we can find common ground. Obama’s recent off-the-record comment that rapper/fish stick lover Kanye West is a “jackass” is probably one of the smartest things he has ever said.
Of course, I am loath to say that the pot called the kettle black, lest I be labelled a racist.
There is no charge more powerful or damaging in American politics than the accusation of racism. Though sometimes warranted, allegations of racism are far too common and serve little more than to shut down all civil debate.
When such an assertion is false, it becomes the equivalent of asking a man whether he still beats his wife and demanding a yes-or-no answer. The accused is forced either to ignore the charge, which will be seen as an implicit admission of guilt, or to rebut his accuser, veering the current discussion off-course into an unrelated matter – which was the exact intent of the one who made the racism declaration.
That having been said, it stands to reason that the election of the first black President would infuriate those who harbour serious malice towards minorities, and it also stands to reason that those people would oppose him and his agenda every step of the way. But there are far more Americans who have serious disagreements with the President’s policies and would be just as opposed to those policies were he white. In fact, it would be a form of racism for those opponents to support Obama’s agenda, since making an exception to their own ideology merely to celebrate the milestone of the first black President would amount to affirmative-action politics.
The opposing-Obama-is-racist line has most recently been levelled by former President Jimmy Carter, who said that the “overwhelming” portion of animosity towards Obama is racist.
This is the same Jimmy Carter whose Democratic Party primary for Georgia Governor, as noted in Stephen F. Hayward’s book, The Real Jimmy Carter, was marked with Carter’s anti-black race-baiting, including distributing grainy photographs of his opponent standing arm-in-arm with two black men in order to depress his share of the white vote; producing a leaflet noting his opponent had paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.; declaring that he had “no trouble pitching” for votes of both supporters of segregationist George Wallace as well as black votes, only to later boast, “I can win this election without a single black vote”; and releasing a radio commercial in which he said he would never be the tool of any “block” vote, slurring over the word “block” so that it could be mistaken for “black.”
And this is the same Jimmy Carter whose anti-Israel best seller, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, recently received a ringing endorsement by… Osama bin Laden.
Carter’s behaviour speaks to the Left’s own insecurity on the issue of race. Many – but certainly not all – liberals feel an undeserved guilt for the sins of the past and feel an obligation not merely to defend the oppressed but to make themselves the chief – if not exclusive – defenders of those oppressed people, to the point of lambasting their detractors as illogical and bigoted.
Their guilt manifests itself in the form of a modern-day White Man’s Burden, an obligation to use government as a means of achieving some semblance of equality, even if that means sacrificing the liberty of those with the misfortune to be born into the dominant group, regardless of any lack of bigotry on those individuals’ part.
Janeane Garofalo – who once said, “If I don’t have my self-loathing, what do I have?” and whose production company is aptly called I Hate Myself – engaged in even more of her own projection when she said that Michael Steele, the current and first black Chairman of the Republican Party, “suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, which means you try and curry favour with the oppressor…. Any female or person of colour in the Republican Party is struggling with Stockholm Syndrome.”
That served as cover for her next assertion that the anti-government, anti-tax Tea Party protests are “about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea bagging rednecks.” Garofalo’s proof of her allegation was supposedly a single sign reading, “Whatchyoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
To be fair, there were multiple signs at Tea Party rallies with racial overtones – if not outright racist sentiments – in reference to the President. But that is the downside of any protest, especially one as grassroots as the Tea Party protests: You always run the risk of having a small but vocal minority who say things that make your movement look bad. By Garofalo’s logic, every anti-war protestor is an avowed Communist who believes that 9/11 was an inside job, George Bush is Hitler and Israelis and Jews are Nazi, Zionist devil pigs Hell-bent on controlling the world. And those are some the milder extremists on the extreme Left and Right.
And yes, most Tea Partiers are white, but since most political conservatives are white – for reasons there is not space to get into here – it makes sense that most of the protestors are, in fact, white. It is because of this that the notion of a black conservative, or a female conservative, or an Hispanic conservative, or an Asian conservative, or – GASP! – a gay conservative runs contrary to the Leftist narrative, for their ideology is the pinnacle of tolerance and societal equity.
Garofalo also said that “there is almost no liberal outlet for news commentary or editorialising.” Right, just like when MSNBC, being the far-Right propaganda outlet that it is, showed footage of an armed Tea Party-goer as evidence that racist white people want to do harm to the President. There was just one problem: The protestor in question was black. But MSNBC, desperate to prevent the shattering of the Leftist narrative, cut away from the footage so viewers could not see the race of the man in question.
But now, I’m belabouring the point. The fact is, not all opposition to the President is racist, and perhaps more important, not all support of him isn’t racist. By framing a non-racial debate, be it over taxes, health care or the size of government, in racial terms, the Left is engaging in both hyperbole and logical fallacy, which is precisely what racism is.
Racism – or any other form of bigotry, for that matter – is the ultimate societal hyperbole because it attempts to make all members of a group into one faceless, homogeneous mass. There has always and will always be bigots, and often, the accuser doth protest too much, revealing his own deep-seated hatred towards those different from himself, as well as his deficient intellectual capacity.
I would be remiss to point out that despite my many qualms with this President, I do believe that we can find common ground. Obama’s recent off-the-record comment that rapper/fish stick lover Kanye West is a “jackass” is probably one of the smartest things he has ever said.
Of course, I am loath to say that the pot called the kettle black, lest I be labelled a racist.
5 praise(s):
Damian, the one thing that I keep thinking about is the racial make-up of the political parties. Blacks are less than 12% of the population, and vote 300% for Democrats. What is the percentage of WHITES in the Party of the Idiots?
People need to judge him the same way as the other 43 presidents before him. Back in 1988, when Doug Williams led the Washington Redskins to the Super Bowl, someone asked him, "How long have you been a black quarterback?" Now, after the Redskins won that Super Bowl, there are no more "black quarterbacks", just quarterbacks that happen to be black. Obama should not be judged by the color of his skin, but judged on his policies and leadership skills.
Since Obama's mother is white (allegedly) and her family raised him, I think that we can all agree that he IS white.
Please drop the racism "WOLF!"
History Nerd Fun Fact: There were 42 Presidents before Obama. Grover Cleveland messed up the order by serving two non-consecutive terms.
Double correction, there WERE 43 presidents before Doofus McMoronface, but 42 MEN.
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