Year: 2010

I have been trying to avoid having to write an article like this; but I must.  It seems that race and racism has become the common topic in the conversation of politics as of late; and both sides have been exploiting the topic in horrible ways.  This is not to say that there are not true, bona fide racists out there; there are, as I have pointed out in the past.  Contrary to what some more partisan bloggers might believe, there are racists in both camps; black and white.

First up, is on the black liberal side of the fence.  An article that I happened to see posted over at Gateway Pundit Blog; some opinion person, by the name of Courtland Milloy writes this over at the Washington Post, I will quote just a portion of it:

White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.

– Racial definition from the U.S. Census Bureau

With all the talk lately about “white vote,” I thought it would be helpful to know what a white person is. As the census definition makes clear, who knows? It’s a biological fiction, a figment of the pigment beneath which all human beings are the same.

And yet, with midterm elections just a few months away, the so-called white vote looms large, an angry and vindictive political force. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday showed that President Obama’s approval ratings have reached “a new low among whites, at 40 percent, with his positive marks dipping under 50 percent for the first time among white college-educated women.”

Does race have anything to do with it? You betcha.

…To hear whites tell it, what really bothers them is a growing federal government that they fear will intervene in their lives — unless there’s an oil spill along the Gulf Coast, of course, in which case their complaint is too little intervention. Budget deficits are a worry, too, unless it’s George Bush running up the red ink.

…Whites, for instance, are overwhelmingly in favor of Arizona’s immigration law, according to most polls. And virtually none of the surveys has shown any concern for the rights of nonwhite Hispanics who would be subject to racial profiling and illegal search and seizures. These are the same people who like to wave copies of the U.S. Constitution and claim Obama is curtailing their freedoms.

“The differences between whites and nonwhites on [the Arizona immigration law] are very stark,” Matthew Kerbel, a political scientist at Villanova University, told the Christian Science Monitor. “The numbers seem to reflect that among white American voters, there is something that needs to be done about illegal immigration and that the Arizona law addresses that. But among blacks and Hispanics, the law is viewed as a strong form of racial profiling, and so there is strong sentiment against it.”

Amazing, really, how people from German, Irish, English, Italian, Polish, French, Welsh, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and Russian backgrounds can land on American shores and coalesce around a racial category concocted solely to exploit others.

You do not think that he is just a little bit bigoted towards white people do you?

Sad thing is, it is not, contrary to what some more partisan bloggers might want to report; limited to just black liberals.  The racist mentality can be found on the so-called “Right,” amongst some whites as well.  Just yesterday, I removed someone as a friend and blocked someone on facebook for referring to President Barack Obama as “Oboingo” or something to that effect.  To be clear here, I dislike socialism and President Barack Obama’s polices as much as the next “Right of Center” person does.  However, when you use terms like that, to describe the President, you lose any sort of legitimacy that you might have.  Those sorts of “nick names” are just rooted in racism.

Another little gem that I stumbled across this morning was a link posted on facebook to this video here, along with the following message:

Will You Recognize a Real Threat, Even if You Get Called ‘Racist’ For Doing So?

To which I replied, and I apologize for the language, as I was a bit angry:

I do believe this is where I get off the bus. You think White people cannot be gangsta? Shit. I’ll show you some. I grew up in Southwest Detroit and I know white people with the same fucking mentality. Craig, You’re nothing more than a fucking racist. I can’t deal with that man.  See ya.

-Pat

With that, I went ahead and removed myself from people that liked that page on facebook.  You see, I thought that the man that made that video was an honest broker; turns out, he is no better than the man that wrote the article above. He is, in fact, just another bigot trying to stir the pot.  However, the real kicker is this little reply from one of his friends:

“grew up in Southwest Detroit and I know white people with the same fucking mentality.”
hmmmm, now I wonder if black culture could have, I don’t know…influenced those young white men? Antiracism is just code for antiwhite..

One would only have to change a few words around and he would sound just like Al Sharpton.  Bigotry is bigotry, and it is wrong; not matter if it is black against white or white against black.  It is still wrong and it is still narrow-minded and extremely stupid. Now is it fair to say that the Democratic Party enables the bigotry on the left?  Absolutely!  Just as it is fair to say that there are Conservatives and yes, some Republicans who, in fact, wink and nod at the bigots on the right.

The bottom line is this; as long as there are these outliers around who want to continue and stir up hatred and fear of the races on both sides of the political and racial aisles, we will have to contend with this sort of nonsense.  What is the solution?  The solution is to stop giving these outliers a platform, ignore them, and learn to trust each other, instead of capitalizing on fear and exploiting it.  But then again; if we did do that, people like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Craig Bodeker would be out of a job — and that my friends would be the best thing ever.