Every so often, an African comes along and tells us once again what we know so well about the many countries on that continent. Here is economist George Ayittey sounding the alarm for the umpteenth time. (See here and here.) In "Soiled African Continent Needs Purging," on the African Executive website, he writes:
Africa's creaky statist interventionist behemoth needs to be de-wormed, de-tribalized, and thoroughly cleansed. Bloated bureaucracies, packed with cronies and tribesmen, reek of graft, venality and inefficiency. The state sector or "government" has become the arena of self-enrichment. Everybody who wants to be rich heads straight into government. The richest people in Africa are heads of state and government ministers. Quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself.
These ruling vampire elites suck the economic life-blood out of the country to deposit in overseas accounts. Because they benefit enormously from the rotten status-quo, they are not interested in reform, PERIOD. If you exert pressure on them to reform, they would perform the "Babangida boogie" -- one step forward, three steps back, a flip and a side-kick to land on a fat Swiss bank account. Much ado about nothing. . . .
They care less about reliable supply of electricity, clean water and medical care for the people as long as they (the politicians) have access to them. When they need medical care, they go abroad. Their food is imported. They send their children abroad for education. As for the people, they can eat grass. . . .
The chicanery of these ruling vampire elites knows no bounds. As a result, the reform process across Africa has been stalled by strong-arm tactics, vaunted acrobatics, vexatious chicanery and willful deception. But without reform, more African countries will implode or remain stuck in the mud.
Okay, so now that we're informed again of the perfidy and greed of African elites, do you think there's a chance for a semblance of reform -- this year, next decade, or in a hundred years? Won't enlightened Africans, five decades from today, be writing the same critical commentaries as the indomitable George Ayittey?
Read more!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Whites not allowed
In a column in the New Pittsburgh Courier, black columnist William Reaves once asked, "Can any progress be made without settling the concerns of white people who want to insure a future for their white posterity?" Reaves asked his question back in 1998, emphasizing those blacks and whites who were "uncomfortable" about sorting out the actual reasons for what he called "the true motivation for white supremacy."
He then described events from one of the conferences sponsored that year by Bill Clinton's President's Advisory Board on Race, where the white Robert Hoy, an audience observer, took the initiative, from a floor microphone, to point out that no one on the discussion panels were speaking for white people. This conference, billed as an "honest discussion on race" and part of a year-long symposium, turned out to be just another assembly for the airing of minority grievances, and was completely controlled by activist blacks and their white partisans.
Reaves claimed that the whole year-long forum was "conspicuously lacking one thing, the opinions of white people." Since Hoy had followed the formal rules of the meeting, and was perfectly polite in his presentation, Reaves asked, "Why did Hoy get escorted out of the President's forum on race, given that the Constitution is generally interpreted to allow for free speech?" He called the ouster of Hoy "sadly predictable."
Do you think that those blacks who today are calling for an "open discussion on race" have any more intention to allow for honesty on all sides than they did ten years ago? If Reaves did not know it before, he learned that day that whites are not allowed in on the dialogue. They're just expected to be window dressing – listen and make nice. And, most of all, be ready to go along with whatever demands emanate from the camp of the coloreds – from more quota-driven policies, to more intrusions into other people's lives, to another Federal holiday for a black hero.
Read more!
He then described events from one of the conferences sponsored that year by Bill Clinton's President's Advisory Board on Race, where the white Robert Hoy, an audience observer, took the initiative, from a floor microphone, to point out that no one on the discussion panels were speaking for white people. This conference, billed as an "honest discussion on race" and part of a year-long symposium, turned out to be just another assembly for the airing of minority grievances, and was completely controlled by activist blacks and their white partisans.
Reaves claimed that the whole year-long forum was "conspicuously lacking one thing, the opinions of white people." Since Hoy had followed the formal rules of the meeting, and was perfectly polite in his presentation, Reaves asked, "Why did Hoy get escorted out of the President's forum on race, given that the Constitution is generally interpreted to allow for free speech?" He called the ouster of Hoy "sadly predictable."
Do you think that those blacks who today are calling for an "open discussion on race" have any more intention to allow for honesty on all sides than they did ten years ago? If Reaves did not know it before, he learned that day that whites are not allowed in on the dialogue. They're just expected to be window dressing – listen and make nice. And, most of all, be ready to go along with whatever demands emanate from the camp of the coloreds – from more quota-driven policies, to more intrusions into other people's lives, to another Federal holiday for a black hero.
Read more!
Stuff and white folks
By now, most people have caught up with one of the funniest blogs on the Internet – Stuff White People Like. Although designed to be pointedly satirical, some of the responses to the blogger's posts can be quite serious -- like this comment in response to post #20 - "Being an expert on YOUR culture." The responder deals with Europeans' past history of colonization, and the pretentiousness of many whites to counter their guilty feelings about this history, by trying to become "experts" on other people's cultures. The writer also suggests some of the inner drives that keep whites from standing up for themselves as European-Americans.
• • •
Comment posted by: About as White as it gets (2/15/08)
This is [the] most obnoxious part about being white. But it's important to understand that this “expertise” is based on white people's own self-hatred.
White people are so ignorant of history they actually believe that they’re the only people in history ever to have "oppressed" other people. They are also totally convinced that no people have ever "oppressed" white people. The invasions and untold slaughters into Europe by the Mongols, Moors, Arabs, Turks, Huns, and other assorted Asian or North African peoples is one big blank of history. Even more comical is the idea that places like "the New World" were like great big Grateful Dead concerts, before Europeans arrived. Never mind the Aztecs wiping out the Incas or sacrificing over 20,000 babies so the sun would rise in the morning, white people don’t want to hear it.
Don’t tell a white person that the Arab slave trade consumed 10 times more black Africans compared to their own slave trade, as the white will explain that the Arabs treated their slaves much better. And NEVER bring up the fact to a white person that the Muslims also enslaved an untold number of white slaves out of Europe during the “Dark Ages.”
This is a form of White supremacism that is very misunderstood. It's basically telling the world "Well, we expect you to slaughter, invade, colonize people but we’re white, so its very bad if we do it, and not so much if you do." It's basically telling the world that they're a bunch of animals, who, of course, act like animals, but only whites should be held accountable because they’re white (read: Human).
The reason whites become "experts" in other cultures is to suppress the hate they feel towards their own feelings of superiority. It sounds confusing but it's kind of like letting your little niece win in checkers to make her feel good and afterwards feeling bad about it. A white person must never show any positive feelings towards anything accomplished by a white person, but must always point out that when a non-white accomplishes something that they were the "first" fill-in-the-blank, to do so. At the same time, if a white person accomplishes something, it's for "humanity" or for "mankind." To you non-whites reading this, I know this must sound confusing as hell, but we’re a very strange people. Read more!
Comment posted by: About as White as it gets (2/15/08)
This is [the] most obnoxious part about being white. But it's important to understand that this “expertise” is based on white people's own self-hatred.
White people are so ignorant of history they actually believe that they’re the only people in history ever to have "oppressed" other people. They are also totally convinced that no people have ever "oppressed" white people. The invasions and untold slaughters into Europe by the Mongols, Moors, Arabs, Turks, Huns, and other assorted Asian or North African peoples is one big blank of history. Even more comical is the idea that places like "the New World" were like great big Grateful Dead concerts, before Europeans arrived. Never mind the Aztecs wiping out the Incas or sacrificing over 20,000 babies so the sun would rise in the morning, white people don’t want to hear it.
Don’t tell a white person that the Arab slave trade consumed 10 times more black Africans compared to their own slave trade, as the white will explain that the Arabs treated their slaves much better. And NEVER bring up the fact to a white person that the Muslims also enslaved an untold number of white slaves out of Europe during the “Dark Ages.”
This is a form of White supremacism that is very misunderstood. It's basically telling the world "Well, we expect you to slaughter, invade, colonize people but we’re white, so its very bad if we do it, and not so much if you do." It's basically telling the world that they're a bunch of animals, who, of course, act like animals, but only whites should be held accountable because they’re white (read: Human).
The reason whites become "experts" in other cultures is to suppress the hate they feel towards their own feelings of superiority. It sounds confusing but it's kind of like letting your little niece win in checkers to make her feel good and afterwards feeling bad about it. A white person must never show any positive feelings towards anything accomplished by a white person, but must always point out that when a non-white accomplishes something that they were the "first" fill-in-the-blank, to do so. At the same time, if a white person accomplishes something, it's for "humanity" or for "mankind." To you non-whites reading this, I know this must sound confusing as hell, but we’re a very strange people. Read more!
Still the third rail in politics
Imagine, writes Leonard Fein, that the U.S. candidates for the presidential nomination were asked for their views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, instead of coming up with the usual formulaic answers, one of them replied that, "Israel’s occupation of the West Bank must end, that the illegal outposts must be removed, that all settlement expansion must end, that Israel should help rather than hinder the modernization of the Palestinian security apparatus, that the status quo is simply not acceptable."
In "Better Safe Than Sorry for Candidates on Israel" (The Forward, 1/16/08) Fein claims that if you can imagine such a scenario ever taking place, then "employment awaits you at the Fantasy Channel." He explains that candidates, whether Congressional or otherwise, must stay put "within the walls of pro-Israel orthodoxy. Open a door to the outside of that house, and you’ll find yourself in never-never land, and not the fun kind either. Open just a window, and you will spend weeks, months, explaining, apologizing, repairing the damage. The Israeli-Arab conflict is to foreign policy what Social Security is to domestic policy -- a third rail."
Read his complete, candid article here.
And to the same subject, Taki adds his voice on Takimag.com. Claiming to be no fan of former President Jimmy Carter, Taki nevertheless defends him against the attack of the neocons, who express outrage over Carter's discussions with Palestinian leaders. Taki accuses all three current presidential candidates of a "crippling and chronic reluctance to let Israel feel the rough edge of their tongue."
He writes, "Utter a word against Likud policy and retire to your farm for the duration. This applies to all politicians in the United States – remember Charles Percy and William Scranton, two long ago politicos who dared to criticize and retired to their farms in turn." Read more!
In "Better Safe Than Sorry for Candidates on Israel" (The Forward, 1/16/08) Fein claims that if you can imagine such a scenario ever taking place, then "employment awaits you at the Fantasy Channel." He explains that candidates, whether Congressional or otherwise, must stay put "within the walls of pro-Israel orthodoxy. Open a door to the outside of that house, and you’ll find yourself in never-never land, and not the fun kind either. Open just a window, and you will spend weeks, months, explaining, apologizing, repairing the damage. The Israeli-Arab conflict is to foreign policy what Social Security is to domestic policy -- a third rail."
Read his complete, candid article here.
And to the same subject, Taki adds his voice on Takimag.com. Claiming to be no fan of former President Jimmy Carter, Taki nevertheless defends him against the attack of the neocons, who express outrage over Carter's discussions with Palestinian leaders. Taki accuses all three current presidential candidates of a "crippling and chronic reluctance to let Israel feel the rough edge of their tongue."
He writes, "Utter a word against Likud policy and retire to your farm for the duration. This applies to all politicians in the United States – remember Charles Percy and William Scranton, two long ago politicos who dared to criticize and retired to their farms in turn." Read more!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Still castigating whites
"So it’s not surprising then," said Mr. Obama, "that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Oops! Careful, Barack, or your own bitterness might begin to show. And how would that look coming from a "post-racial" man, a brother who has risen above bitterness? You just might yet expose the typical black notion that only people who look like you (more or less) should be moved to express grievances – be they social or political.
No matter how hard these benighted American whites have tried to make amends, for at least the last 40-odd years, they still bump into the castigation of old Zeke clinging to his guns and religion, as a display of his antipathy to the Other.
It has long been determined by people like you, Barack, that whites have no legitimate self-interests. Apparently, whites cannot have real gripes, like not wanting to live in high-risk neighborhoods; or having their country overrun with aliens; or being stuck with the consequences of free trade or the outsourcing of the country's industries. No, these are not real grievances, so whites obviously must be suffering from something else – their own personal frustrations, which, needless to say, are unreasonable. Therefore, they must be racists against "people who aren't like them."
Barack, you implied such sentiments in your recent Great Speech. The dreamers just weren't listening closely, or did not want to hear. You then claimed that whites should not mistake "distractions" for real grievances. Although you won't come out and say it, you know you think as typical blacks do that, given all the evil things done by their ancestors, whites should look only to solve the problems of the coloreds, i.e., those folks with the "real" grievances.
It could be, Barack, that your recent diatribe will be smoothed over, and you will continue to be feted by most whites, who believe they deserve any disparagement that comes from a black. Author Tom Wolfe, in his devastating satires, describes scenes in 1960s New York of white audiences voluntarily coming to events, where they were denounced and literally cursed by black nationalist rhetoricians, who became celebrities for their "eloquent" rantings. The whites ate it up and couldn't get enough.
Rightwing pundits claim that your off-the-cuff remarks reflect "elitist contempt." But we blacks know that's only the half of it. Read more!
Oops! Careful, Barack, or your own bitterness might begin to show. And how would that look coming from a "post-racial" man, a brother who has risen above bitterness? You just might yet expose the typical black notion that only people who look like you (more or less) should be moved to express grievances – be they social or political.
No matter how hard these benighted American whites have tried to make amends, for at least the last 40-odd years, they still bump into the castigation of old Zeke clinging to his guns and religion, as a display of his antipathy to the Other.
It has long been determined by people like you, Barack, that whites have no legitimate self-interests. Apparently, whites cannot have real gripes, like not wanting to live in high-risk neighborhoods; or having their country overrun with aliens; or being stuck with the consequences of free trade or the outsourcing of the country's industries. No, these are not real grievances, so whites obviously must be suffering from something else – their own personal frustrations, which, needless to say, are unreasonable. Therefore, they must be racists against "people who aren't like them."
Barack, you implied such sentiments in your recent Great Speech. The dreamers just weren't listening closely, or did not want to hear. You then claimed that whites should not mistake "distractions" for real grievances. Although you won't come out and say it, you know you think as typical blacks do that, given all the evil things done by their ancestors, whites should look only to solve the problems of the coloreds, i.e., those folks with the "real" grievances.
It could be, Barack, that your recent diatribe will be smoothed over, and you will continue to be feted by most whites, who believe they deserve any disparagement that comes from a black. Author Tom Wolfe, in his devastating satires, describes scenes in 1960s New York of white audiences voluntarily coming to events, where they were denounced and literally cursed by black nationalist rhetoricians, who became celebrities for their "eloquent" rantings. The whites ate it up and couldn't get enough.
Rightwing pundits claim that your off-the-cuff remarks reflect "elitist contempt." But we blacks know that's only the half of it. Read more!
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
Some stark observations from the American Thinker website. Contrary to what we are urged to believe, is Obama really the most overtly racial candidate?
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
By James Edmund Pennington
The current agony of the Democratic Party, which grows more acute every day, is laden with an unspoken truth. As the unending Clinton-Obama struggle drags on, the core unutterable reality for Democrats is simply this: because of the composition of the Party's domestic coalition, its continued electoral viability makes absolutely necessary perpetual capture of 90+% of the black vote.
Because of this grim fact -- of the Party's own making -- the Clinton/Obama fight is over. Obama has won, and every leading Democrat knows it. In short, because of his race, Obama must be awarded the Democratic nomination. So much for the myth of America's first major post-racial candidate.
Read complete article here. Read more!
The Democrats' cul-de-sac
By James Edmund Pennington
The current agony of the Democratic Party, which grows more acute every day, is laden with an unspoken truth. As the unending Clinton-Obama struggle drags on, the core unutterable reality for Democrats is simply this: because of the composition of the Party's domestic coalition, its continued electoral viability makes absolutely necessary perpetual capture of 90+% of the black vote.
Because of this grim fact -- of the Party's own making -- the Clinton/Obama fight is over. Obama has won, and every leading Democrat knows it. In short, because of his race, Obama must be awarded the Democratic nomination. So much for the myth of America's first major post-racial candidate.
Read complete article here. Read more!
How quickly "conservatives" changed their tunes
Following is a compelling excerpt from "The Reality of Red-State Fascism," by Lew Rockwell. It sure didn't take long to learn to love the state.
In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences. In 1994, Christians widely saw that Leviathan was the main enemy of the faith; today, they see Leviathan as the tool by which they will guarantee that their faith will have an impact on the country and the world.
Paul Craig Roberts is right: "In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush." Again: "Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy."
In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about. Read more!
In 1994, the central state was seen by the bourgeoisie as the main threat to the family; in 2004 it is seen as the main tool for keeping the family together and ensuring its ascendancy. In 1994, the state was seen as the enemy of education; today, the same people view the state as the means of raising standards and purging education of its left-wing influences. In 1994, Christians widely saw that Leviathan was the main enemy of the faith; today, they see Leviathan as the tool by which they will guarantee that their faith will have an impact on the country and the world.
Paul Craig Roberts is right: "In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush." Again: "Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy."
In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about. Read more!
It's about power
It's not about "social justice," it's about power. It's not about doing what's morally right for the underdog, it's about power.
Wherever two or more groups live in proximity to one another, the men are going to jockey and compete for power. The bunch on the bottom of the social-economic ladder will seek ways to usurp power from those at the top. The prevailing conditions will be unique in every instance, but it's still the same old story.
The less powerful men will work at devising whatever tools or methods they can, to defeat the dominant men, who usually are the ones with greater weaponry and manpower. For the black man in this country, it was unrealistic to think he could succeed against his opponents' armaments, so other means had to be found. Beginning with a little help from his white Abolitionist friends, continuing onward with the help of his white Communist friends, and carried forward with the help of his white liberal friends, race, and the endless ramifications that could be derived from his degraded past history, became the weapon of choice.
The pose of anger and indignation over past humiliations must be nurtured, since this has proven to be the most effective club in the black man's arsenal. Whites, who have all but given away the store to blacks, in terms of the abandonment of constitutional principles, required nothing more than the threat of public disorder and mayhem. That blacks should be appeased, by granting the never-ending demands of their elites, was hardly questioned by the establishment whites.
Once appeasement became the norm (a Federal holiday for a preacher?), the die was cast for the future. Those whites and blacks who protested many of the strategies of the civil rights movement, because they understood where it was leading, were marginalized, and are still exiled to the fringes of decent society.
The initial reaction of blacks to Barack Obama, who seemed to come from nowhere, was a sense that power was being taken from the hands of "real" American blacks, those who could count many generations of black grandfathers and great grandfathers born here in the States. How could they bring themselves to support a semi-foreigner of dubious antecedents?
This visceral objection did not last long, however, as black men quickly realized the benefits that can accrue from the presence of a black in the White House, who owes his very station in life primarily to his racial group. It dawned on them that no matter which black man got there first, it will not only mean power over Whitey, but ownership of the most prestigious base from which to expand that power. How can it get any better than that?
Deborah Mathis, writing on BlackAmericaWeb, speaks for many blacks, when she obliquely references those "eyes on the prize." She can hardly control her exuberance at the prospect of a black becoming "the most powerful being on the entire planet," and declares, "This is the prize."
Obama's "Great Speech" makes it clear that if he wins the Presidency, he will encourage blacks to continue wielding the same weapon of power that has served them so well, that is, the victim's call for "social justice" and an "end to racism." Because the nation's institutions, for decades, have complied with the race game as established by blacks and their political compatriots, white men have nowhere to go -- except to continue the pretense that the conflict with black men is a moral issue, not one of power. It's embarrassing to admit that you've been complicit in your own dispossession. Read more!
Wherever two or more groups live in proximity to one another, the men are going to jockey and compete for power. The bunch on the bottom of the social-economic ladder will seek ways to usurp power from those at the top. The prevailing conditions will be unique in every instance, but it's still the same old story.
The less powerful men will work at devising whatever tools or methods they can, to defeat the dominant men, who usually are the ones with greater weaponry and manpower. For the black man in this country, it was unrealistic to think he could succeed against his opponents' armaments, so other means had to be found. Beginning with a little help from his white Abolitionist friends, continuing onward with the help of his white Communist friends, and carried forward with the help of his white liberal friends, race, and the endless ramifications that could be derived from his degraded past history, became the weapon of choice.
The pose of anger and indignation over past humiliations must be nurtured, since this has proven to be the most effective club in the black man's arsenal. Whites, who have all but given away the store to blacks, in terms of the abandonment of constitutional principles, required nothing more than the threat of public disorder and mayhem. That blacks should be appeased, by granting the never-ending demands of their elites, was hardly questioned by the establishment whites.
Once appeasement became the norm (a Federal holiday for a preacher?), the die was cast for the future. Those whites and blacks who protested many of the strategies of the civil rights movement, because they understood where it was leading, were marginalized, and are still exiled to the fringes of decent society.
The initial reaction of blacks to Barack Obama, who seemed to come from nowhere, was a sense that power was being taken from the hands of "real" American blacks, those who could count many generations of black grandfathers and great grandfathers born here in the States. How could they bring themselves to support a semi-foreigner of dubious antecedents?
This visceral objection did not last long, however, as black men quickly realized the benefits that can accrue from the presence of a black in the White House, who owes his very station in life primarily to his racial group. It dawned on them that no matter which black man got there first, it will not only mean power over Whitey, but ownership of the most prestigious base from which to expand that power. How can it get any better than that?
Deborah Mathis, writing on BlackAmericaWeb, speaks for many blacks, when she obliquely references those "eyes on the prize." She can hardly control her exuberance at the prospect of a black becoming "the most powerful being on the entire planet," and declares, "This is the prize."
Obama's "Great Speech" makes it clear that if he wins the Presidency, he will encourage blacks to continue wielding the same weapon of power that has served them so well, that is, the victim's call for "social justice" and an "end to racism." Because the nation's institutions, for decades, have complied with the race game as established by blacks and their political compatriots, white men have nowhere to go -- except to continue the pretense that the conflict with black men is a moral issue, not one of power. It's embarrassing to admit that you've been complicit in your own dispossession. Read more!
Fantasy has taken over
A dissection of today's American journalism doesn't get any better than Sean Wilentz's thoughtful column, "The Delusional Style in American Punditry" (The New Republic, 12/19/07). He zeroes in on the inanity of editorialists and pundits, as demonstrated by their gentle, even romantic treatment of Barack Obama's candidacy. Here is an excerpt:
• • •
The Boston Globe, in an ideal specimen of the delusional style, ran an editorial that endorsed Obama because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity" that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness. Let us hold aside that the book the Globe relied on in discovering these singular Obamaesque virtues, Dreams From My Father, contains composite characters and other fictionalized elements--not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity. What is especially delusional is the Globe's confidence that its own projections about Obama's character and personality, as well as the mystical conclusions it draws from his ethnicity, are serious grounds for endorsing any candidate for any office, much less the presidency. . . .
There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship, the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one.
Complete article here.
• • •
EW Note: Not until I read the dozens of responses to Wilentz's article in The New Republic did I learn the depths of adoration for this man Obama. The angry retorts to Wilentz's very sensible description of the irrational acceptance of Obama's bidding to trust his "intuition" were ludicrous. Where do such loopy people come from? Below is one of the rare, sensible insights offering agreement with Wilentz's thesis:
• • •
Posted by jpwink -- I think that the responses to Prof. Wilentz's post seem to have missed his point. I started to listen to Obama's speech at Oprah's Iowa rally last weekend, and I decided to try an experiment. I shut off my TV and listened to the speech without the video. It would have been better if I had read a transcript.
What I heard was a series of rather tired Democratic Party platitudes, delivered in a religious-revivalist style. Most effective, but when you read or listen to it cold, you know that he is clearly adept at selling the sizzle, not the steak. Prof. Wilentz cuts through the multi-racial, multi-cultural blather that has so infatuated the pundits, all while missing the ultimate irony.
At the end of the day, whatever his "multi-cultural" inner self, we know that Obama was raised by three white midwesterners. As far as I am concerned, he can find his "identity" on his own time.
The pundits need to understand that the next President will come with instincts, knowledge, experience and character, and he/she will undoubtedly be lacking in any or all of them. The pundits do not know them well, and Prof. Wilentz simply points out that they should not fawn all over the candidates when the pundit's track record in this area is clearly lacking.
• • •
If you want to experience genuine sentimentalism, read author Scott Turow's love poem to his friend Obama, where he injects excuses and rationalizations, even for the senior Obama's abandonment of his family. Oh, the pressures of living in an age when miscegenation was still frowned upon! We are to remove from memory what we have learned about Senior's own personal ambitions, which did not include the families he left behind.
Turow, who held fundraisers in his Illinois home for Obama, when he ran for the Senate, speculates over Obama's prospect to become a "pivotal American leader," compares him to "a walking Statue of Liberty, holding up the torch 24 hours a day," and sees him as "the embodiment of one of America's most enduring dreams." Turow writes like Obama talks.
See his complete article here on Salon.com. Read more!
The Boston Globe, in an ideal specimen of the delusional style, ran an editorial that endorsed Obama because he is biracial and grew up in "multi-ethnic cultures"--adequate substitutes, by the editorial's lights, for serious background and expertise in foreign affairs. Obama, according to the Globe, has engaged in "a search for identity" and taken "a roots pilgrimage to Kenya," all of which supposedly displays a "level of introspection, honesty, and maturity" that the newspaper longs for in a president. "Obama's story is America's story," the Globe intoned--a sentence that comes as close as any distinguished newspaper ever has to perfect emptiness. Let us hold aside that the book the Globe relied on in discovering these singular Obamaesque virtues, Dreams From My Father, contains composite characters and other fictionalized elements--not exactly a portrait of sterling honesty or authenticity. What is especially delusional is the Globe's confidence that its own projections about Obama's character and personality, as well as the mystical conclusions it draws from his ethnicity, are serious grounds for endorsing any candidate for any office, much less the presidency. . . .
There are many possible explanations for this latest outbreak of the delusional style. An ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship, the more sentimental the better, may finally have overwhelmed precincts of political commentary. (Obama's sidekick, Oprah Winfrey, is, after all, the reigning master of that cult.) Democrats may simply be so battered after what the Globe calls "seven desolating years" that they are looking for a man on a white horse to deliver them from despair--and so they have invented one.
Complete article here.
EW Note: Not until I read the dozens of responses to Wilentz's article in The New Republic did I learn the depths of adoration for this man Obama. The angry retorts to Wilentz's very sensible description of the irrational acceptance of Obama's bidding to trust his "intuition" were ludicrous. Where do such loopy people come from? Below is one of the rare, sensible insights offering agreement with Wilentz's thesis:
Posted by jpwink -- I think that the responses to Prof. Wilentz's post seem to have missed his point. I started to listen to Obama's speech at Oprah's Iowa rally last weekend, and I decided to try an experiment. I shut off my TV and listened to the speech without the video. It would have been better if I had read a transcript.
What I heard was a series of rather tired Democratic Party platitudes, delivered in a religious-revivalist style. Most effective, but when you read or listen to it cold, you know that he is clearly adept at selling the sizzle, not the steak. Prof. Wilentz cuts through the multi-racial, multi-cultural blather that has so infatuated the pundits, all while missing the ultimate irony.
At the end of the day, whatever his "multi-cultural" inner self, we know that Obama was raised by three white midwesterners. As far as I am concerned, he can find his "identity" on his own time.
The pundits need to understand that the next President will come with instincts, knowledge, experience and character, and he/she will undoubtedly be lacking in any or all of them. The pundits do not know them well, and Prof. Wilentz simply points out that they should not fawn all over the candidates when the pundit's track record in this area is clearly lacking.
If you want to experience genuine sentimentalism, read author Scott Turow's love poem to his friend Obama, where he injects excuses and rationalizations, even for the senior Obama's abandonment of his family. Oh, the pressures of living in an age when miscegenation was still frowned upon! We are to remove from memory what we have learned about Senior's own personal ambitions, which did not include the families he left behind.
Turow, who held fundraisers in his Illinois home for Obama, when he ran for the Senate, speculates over Obama's prospect to become a "pivotal American leader," compares him to "a walking Statue of Liberty, holding up the torch 24 hours a day," and sees him as "the embodiment of one of America's most enduring dreams." Turow writes like Obama talks.
See his complete article here on Salon.com. Read more!
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Obama, the visionary, disappoints again
There I was, listening to Barack Obama's Great and Eloquent speech, but I had not yet learned from the Anointed Wise Men that it was Great and Eloquent. Since I was not yet privy to this information, I just continued listening, while doing my own spontaneous evaluation of his message. About three-quarters into his speech, it occurred to me that this was simply the same old, same old. It sounded like the standard boilerplate liberal stuff to me.
How stunned I was to learn a couple of hours later that my evaluation of the speech had been all wrong, that I had, instead, heard one of the Greatest Speeches of the century. By then the Anointed Wise Men, in the form of media pundits, politicians and various self-professed philosophers had weighed in, and were explaining to us simpletons the deeper meanings and nuances that I guess people like me were just too dense to catch.
It seemed to me that he was delivering just another black grievance wail. “You don't know what it's like to walk in my shoes.” Another litany of black sorrows. I thought, Isn't that taking us 10 steps back? Here I thought I was sensing a growing mood among blacks in the country, where the messages of people like Booker T. Washington were getting a hearing in places where such messages previously had been disdained. Even younger blacks seemed to be picking up on some of the themes of responsibility.
People identified with the political left, like Bill Cosby and Juan Williams, who were making strong cases for black introspection and the need to put an end to blame, were getting widespread media play. Include with them forthright speakers like authors John McWhorter and Shelby Steele, who were constant voices on the radio and TV talk circuit, exposing the airwaves to heavy doses of Do-for-self and Clean-up-your-act themes. These, and other such prominent voices, I hoped, could not be ignored forever by the general black public.
Over these past couple of years, I sometimes believed that promising inroads were being made. But Obama set me straight. It's still a horrible world out there for a black man. That persecuted soul is still standing out there, on that street corner, trying to catch that elusive taxicab. And he still faces the indignity of all those mean white folks who pass him in public with fear in their hearts.
Obama also reminded me that whites still are not off the hook. No, they have plenty of work yet to do with respect to blacks. They've got to do something about those resentments that some of them harbor over all those special programs set up for the coloreds. Since their grievances are intangible ones, mere “distractions” (in Obama's words), unlike those of blacks that are real, whites must learn to direct their anger to the proper places. And, yes, they must still concern themselves with providing “ladders of opportunities” for blacks, as well as worry over any “current incidents” of discrimination.
According to the Anointed Wise Men, Obama came up with many original ideas. Like, let's all have a discussion about race. But didn't President Clinton initiate a year-long discussion sponsored by the President's Advisory Board on Race, which featured lots of conferences, forums and panels, that met in all parts of the country? What happened to all that talking? Don't those discussions count?
At any rate, Obama has taught us that blacks can settle back into their old grooves, assured that their troubles cannot be resolved until we all “come together” and engage in an “honest dialogue” on race. This re-hash is all we get from the inspirational candidate? From the Visionary? Read more!
How stunned I was to learn a couple of hours later that my evaluation of the speech had been all wrong, that I had, instead, heard one of the Greatest Speeches of the century. By then the Anointed Wise Men, in the form of media pundits, politicians and various self-professed philosophers had weighed in, and were explaining to us simpletons the deeper meanings and nuances that I guess people like me were just too dense to catch.
It seemed to me that he was delivering just another black grievance wail. “You don't know what it's like to walk in my shoes.” Another litany of black sorrows. I thought, Isn't that taking us 10 steps back? Here I thought I was sensing a growing mood among blacks in the country, where the messages of people like Booker T. Washington were getting a hearing in places where such messages previously had been disdained. Even younger blacks seemed to be picking up on some of the themes of responsibility.
People identified with the political left, like Bill Cosby and Juan Williams, who were making strong cases for black introspection and the need to put an end to blame, were getting widespread media play. Include with them forthright speakers like authors John McWhorter and Shelby Steele, who were constant voices on the radio and TV talk circuit, exposing the airwaves to heavy doses of Do-for-self and Clean-up-your-act themes. These, and other such prominent voices, I hoped, could not be ignored forever by the general black public.
Over these past couple of years, I sometimes believed that promising inroads were being made. But Obama set me straight. It's still a horrible world out there for a black man. That persecuted soul is still standing out there, on that street corner, trying to catch that elusive taxicab. And he still faces the indignity of all those mean white folks who pass him in public with fear in their hearts.
Obama also reminded me that whites still are not off the hook. No, they have plenty of work yet to do with respect to blacks. They've got to do something about those resentments that some of them harbor over all those special programs set up for the coloreds. Since their grievances are intangible ones, mere “distractions” (in Obama's words), unlike those of blacks that are real, whites must learn to direct their anger to the proper places. And, yes, they must still concern themselves with providing “ladders of opportunities” for blacks, as well as worry over any “current incidents” of discrimination.
According to the Anointed Wise Men, Obama came up with many original ideas. Like, let's all have a discussion about race. But didn't President Clinton initiate a year-long discussion sponsored by the President's Advisory Board on Race, which featured lots of conferences, forums and panels, that met in all parts of the country? What happened to all that talking? Don't those discussions count?
At any rate, Obama has taught us that blacks can settle back into their old grooves, assured that their troubles cannot be resolved until we all “come together” and engage in an “honest dialogue” on race. This re-hash is all we get from the inspirational candidate? From the Visionary? Read more!
The downside of integration
How confusing it must have been back then for the black bourgeoisie. What to do, what to do! On the one hand, it's the 1960s, and the gates have been opened to the world of whites, to jobs created by white men, to entry into places only once dreamed of. Here is the desegregation-integration so yearned for.
But on the other hand, what to do about the downside? Is there a downside? Well, yes, according to none other than Dr. Andrew Brimmer himself, who for years served as a leading economist and was on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank. Certainly, there was no more bourgeois, eager integrationist than Brimmer, the Harvard doctoral graduate, who taught at the Wharton School of Business and was appointed to public offices by three Presidents. Yet, here he was, in 1965, admitting that segregation had provided a kind of "protective tariff" when it came to black businesses, which, for years had met the needs of the black communities their entrepreneurial owners had helped develop.
And, he confessed, "The process of desegregation is already affecting adversely some of the key segments of the Negro middle class," referring to business and property owners. But wasn't this the very class for whom integration was invented, for whom black institutions, including school systems, were being scrapped?
Brimmer then went on to offer statistics showing the demise of black businesses, as owners were unprepared to compete with the more advanced enterprises of whites, which the black masses were now being encouraged to patronize. Go help the other guy prosper! Needless to say, as black businesses tanked, so did the communities around them. He cited the deaths of "restaurants, barber shops, hotels, hardware stores and mortuaries."
Brimmer also cited the impact of integration on a large black professional class, such as black teachers, most of whom were dismissed whenever a community's schools were merged, due to integration mandates. He pointed to such trends in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Florida and Oklahoma.
Brimmer, the good civil rights advocate, and promoter of affirmative action, did not want anyone to get the wrong idea about what he was saying concerning the glories of integration, and clarified, "Obviously, I am by no means suggesting that the process of desegregation should be slowed down in order to lessen the effects on the Negro middle class." Wouldn't want to suggest anything like that.
Instead, he offered suggestions of what black entrepreneurs could now do with themselves. Instead of reaching for the large capital that would be required to create manufacturing enterprises or retail outlets like department stores in black neighborhoods, he claimed blacks should try to enter into joint ventures with "willing" whites. Find agreeable white owners of corporations who would grant franchises for sale of their products. And Brimmer just happened to have such a list in his pocket, a "sizable list," as he called it, compiled by the U.S. Commerce Department.
Brimmer, the good government functionary, assured one and all that Uncle Sam was on the case. Those former entrepreneurs might be losing their base in their own neighborhoods, but the government was looking out for minorities and had, in fact, established the Small Business Administration, which "has made numerous loans to Negroes under a new program."
Earlier economic-oriented black leaders, like businessman S.B. Fuller, banker Richard Wright, and educator Booker T. Washington, had always encouraged blacks with financial resources to develop capital in the manner of their counterparts in other ethnic groups; blacks were especially encouraged to emulate the entrepreneurial patterns of the country's immigrants. But under the guidance of the civil rights leadership, blacks were led towards finding government alternatives, as internal economic initiatives were abandoned. A great many left the path of business enterprise on which fathers and grandfathers had prospered.
Now, fast forward to 1991, and take a look at remarks made by New York millionaire businessman Percy Sutton. In a speech he presented as a participant on a “race relations” panel, he excoriated whites for still not doing enough. The dapper Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and an owner of Inner City Broadcasting, was renowned for his ability to use race and politics to build his financial empire. Yet here he was cleverly whining about how New Yorkers lived in two worlds. “You live in your world and I live in my own world,” Sutton whimpered, as he attempted to depict “his world” in a pitiable light. Here he was, a leading figure in a city which at that moment had a black Mayor, a black Police Commissioner, and dozens of other black officials, playing white guilt to the hilt.
And then he capped off his speech with the saddest lament of all, the one that always wins the sympathy of those white folks, the one that stops all criticism in its tracks: “It doesn't make any difference what money I gather. I will always remain black.” Of course, the response to such a remark should be, So what? And a Chinese will always remain Chinese. But, instead, the ardent listeners usually imagine all manner of daily insults and social snubs. Was there some country club in which Sutton wasn't welcome, and should we care? His being black had not prevented his huge financial successes. In fact, skin color had not prevented blacks who lived in far more dire circumstances from achieving comparable success. Being black had not stopped those enterprising souls during the segregation era, who managed to found banks, along with endless varieties of businesses, schools, and acquired millions of acres of land.
This is because blacks have never been prevented from amassing capital among themselves, not even during the worst of times. A significant result of research, conducted separately by economic historians John Sibley Butler and Juliet Walker, is the evidence of the many blacks who, even before slavery ended, made the connection between the ownership of businesses and property and the ability to have greater control over what happened in their lives. Walker observes that "In pre-Civil War America, even the absence of political freedom did not preclude the business participation of blacks as creative capitalists. . . . Antebellum blacks developed enterprises in virtually every area important to the pre-Civil War business community."
She makes the case that the very principle that protected property rights in general, including slave ownership, was what protected the rights of blacks to own personal property and develop wealth, and writes, "It was the very sanctity of private property in American life and thought that allowed blacks, slave and free, to participate in the antebellum economy as entrepreneurs."
In her many articles and in her book, The History of Black Business in America, she offers examples of the hundreds of black entrepreneurs who, long before segregation ended, took advantage of a system where even an ex-slave with limited means could start a small business. Butler, in his book, Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans, also traces the development of business among blacks in pre-integration times and its significance in providing stable communities where generations were able to provide their children with higher education and professional training.
The naysayers like to exaggerate the extent and degree of white resentment when it came to black property. They would have you believe that whites spent most of their time in torching black businesses, in vengeance for some real or imagined infraction, as if this were the norm, instead of the exception. As so many blacks have pointed out again and again, it is not white malevolence that killed black businesses and the potential for further economic expansion. It is blacks themselves who did that. Once the doors were opened for black elites to integrate among whites, the elites rushed out, and made it clear that they were not about to take risks with their own resources, when they could now coerce such resources from the white man. There were blacks who went so far as to openly discourage enterprising blacks from initiating businesses or founding institutions such as schools, lest their successful ventures result in whites thinking that blacks were not, after all, in quest of integration.
Back in 1965, Andrew Brimmer sagely suggested, "While it may be embarrassing to view our own image in the mirror of change, we should look critically at ourselves and be instructed by what we see." Although it's a few decades too late, it was not a bad idea. Read more!
But on the other hand, what to do about the downside? Is there a downside? Well, yes, according to none other than Dr. Andrew Brimmer himself, who for years served as a leading economist and was on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank. Certainly, there was no more bourgeois, eager integrationist than Brimmer, the Harvard doctoral graduate, who taught at the Wharton School of Business and was appointed to public offices by three Presidents. Yet, here he was, in 1965, admitting that segregation had provided a kind of "protective tariff" when it came to black businesses, which, for years had met the needs of the black communities their entrepreneurial owners had helped develop.
And, he confessed, "The process of desegregation is already affecting adversely some of the key segments of the Negro middle class," referring to business and property owners. But wasn't this the very class for whom integration was invented, for whom black institutions, including school systems, were being scrapped?
Brimmer then went on to offer statistics showing the demise of black businesses, as owners were unprepared to compete with the more advanced enterprises of whites, which the black masses were now being encouraged to patronize. Go help the other guy prosper! Needless to say, as black businesses tanked, so did the communities around them. He cited the deaths of "restaurants, barber shops, hotels, hardware stores and mortuaries."
Brimmer also cited the impact of integration on a large black professional class, such as black teachers, most of whom were dismissed whenever a community's schools were merged, due to integration mandates. He pointed to such trends in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Florida and Oklahoma.
Brimmer, the good civil rights advocate, and promoter of affirmative action, did not want anyone to get the wrong idea about what he was saying concerning the glories of integration, and clarified, "Obviously, I am by no means suggesting that the process of desegregation should be slowed down in order to lessen the effects on the Negro middle class." Wouldn't want to suggest anything like that.
Instead, he offered suggestions of what black entrepreneurs could now do with themselves. Instead of reaching for the large capital that would be required to create manufacturing enterprises or retail outlets like department stores in black neighborhoods, he claimed blacks should try to enter into joint ventures with "willing" whites. Find agreeable white owners of corporations who would grant franchises for sale of their products. And Brimmer just happened to have such a list in his pocket, a "sizable list," as he called it, compiled by the U.S. Commerce Department.
Brimmer, the good government functionary, assured one and all that Uncle Sam was on the case. Those former entrepreneurs might be losing their base in their own neighborhoods, but the government was looking out for minorities and had, in fact, established the Small Business Administration, which "has made numerous loans to Negroes under a new program."
Earlier economic-oriented black leaders, like businessman S.B. Fuller, banker Richard Wright, and educator Booker T. Washington, had always encouraged blacks with financial resources to develop capital in the manner of their counterparts in other ethnic groups; blacks were especially encouraged to emulate the entrepreneurial patterns of the country's immigrants. But under the guidance of the civil rights leadership, blacks were led towards finding government alternatives, as internal economic initiatives were abandoned. A great many left the path of business enterprise on which fathers and grandfathers had prospered.
Now, fast forward to 1991, and take a look at remarks made by New York millionaire businessman Percy Sutton. In a speech he presented as a participant on a “race relations” panel, he excoriated whites for still not doing enough. The dapper Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and an owner of Inner City Broadcasting, was renowned for his ability to use race and politics to build his financial empire. Yet here he was cleverly whining about how New Yorkers lived in two worlds. “You live in your world and I live in my own world,” Sutton whimpered, as he attempted to depict “his world” in a pitiable light. Here he was, a leading figure in a city which at that moment had a black Mayor, a black Police Commissioner, and dozens of other black officials, playing white guilt to the hilt.
And then he capped off his speech with the saddest lament of all, the one that always wins the sympathy of those white folks, the one that stops all criticism in its tracks: “It doesn't make any difference what money I gather. I will always remain black.” Of course, the response to such a remark should be, So what? And a Chinese will always remain Chinese. But, instead, the ardent listeners usually imagine all manner of daily insults and social snubs. Was there some country club in which Sutton wasn't welcome, and should we care? His being black had not prevented his huge financial successes. In fact, skin color had not prevented blacks who lived in far more dire circumstances from achieving comparable success. Being black had not stopped those enterprising souls during the segregation era, who managed to found banks, along with endless varieties of businesses, schools, and acquired millions of acres of land.
This is because blacks have never been prevented from amassing capital among themselves, not even during the worst of times. A significant result of research, conducted separately by economic historians John Sibley Butler and Juliet Walker, is the evidence of the many blacks who, even before slavery ended, made the connection between the ownership of businesses and property and the ability to have greater control over what happened in their lives. Walker observes that "In pre-Civil War America, even the absence of political freedom did not preclude the business participation of blacks as creative capitalists. . . . Antebellum blacks developed enterprises in virtually every area important to the pre-Civil War business community."
She makes the case that the very principle that protected property rights in general, including slave ownership, was what protected the rights of blacks to own personal property and develop wealth, and writes, "It was the very sanctity of private property in American life and thought that allowed blacks, slave and free, to participate in the antebellum economy as entrepreneurs."
In her many articles and in her book, The History of Black Business in America, she offers examples of the hundreds of black entrepreneurs who, long before segregation ended, took advantage of a system where even an ex-slave with limited means could start a small business. Butler, in his book, Entrepreneurship and Self-Help Among Black Americans, also traces the development of business among blacks in pre-integration times and its significance in providing stable communities where generations were able to provide their children with higher education and professional training.
The naysayers like to exaggerate the extent and degree of white resentment when it came to black property. They would have you believe that whites spent most of their time in torching black businesses, in vengeance for some real or imagined infraction, as if this were the norm, instead of the exception. As so many blacks have pointed out again and again, it is not white malevolence that killed black businesses and the potential for further economic expansion. It is blacks themselves who did that. Once the doors were opened for black elites to integrate among whites, the elites rushed out, and made it clear that they were not about to take risks with their own resources, when they could now coerce such resources from the white man. There were blacks who went so far as to openly discourage enterprising blacks from initiating businesses or founding institutions such as schools, lest their successful ventures result in whites thinking that blacks were not, after all, in quest of integration.
Back in 1965, Andrew Brimmer sagely suggested, "While it may be embarrassing to view our own image in the mirror of change, we should look critically at ourselves and be instructed by what we see." Although it's a few decades too late, it was not a bad idea. Read more!
She got her black symbol
When listening to the strange, lame argument that blacks deserve another symbolic “First,” as justification for electing Barack Obama President of this country, I am reminded of a heated discussion I had with a well-known white libertarian here in New York. It was the late 1980s, and New Yorkers faced the prospect of electing David Dinkins as Mayor.
My libertarian friend was full of enthusiasm for Dinkins. After she conceded the fact of his unremarkable performances as a borough president and city clerk, I asked her why on earth she would want to hand over the city to such a lightweight. And then she came up with a response I would have expected from any New York liberal, but not from her. It went something like this: Look at all the cities that have had black mayors; it's past time for New York to have one.
After gulping in disbelief at such an irrational remark coming from someone I had known to engage in sound, logical reasoning, I asked, “So, you would hand over this city to the empty suit Dinkins, in order to keep up with the trends in other places? Dinkins represents something symbolic to you? That's it?”
But, of course, that wasn't really it entirely. Her real quest was to keep Dinkins' political opponent from winning the office, and that man was Rudolph Giuliani. With street crime through the roof in the city, and homeless vagabonds in your face, with their open palms, at the doors of almost every storefront, subway token booth, and public and private accommodation, New Yorkers were at their wit's end, trying to deal with those daily indignities, as well as with the burglaries, street assaults, and general mayhem. Yet, here was this woman elated over the symbolic gesture of electing a black man to office.
But that was not all. The “libertarian” confessed to harboring a hope then being expressed by many in the city, and which is at the core of why so many whites have conceded ground to undeserving black politicians. Maybe, she speculated, as a black man, Dinkins can get a handle on the criminals; maybe they will listen to him. I laughed as I envisioned the drug dealers, myriad gangsters, and petty thieves, who then virtually ruled life in the city, identifying with and taking orders from the dainty, dandified, bourgeois Dinkins. For all her erudition as an economics scholar, the woman was as clueless as they come.
When I suggested that if crime was of concern to her (as it was to every New Yorker), then Giuliani would be a better prospect for Mayor, she was appalled and exclaimed, “Oh, my God, he'll lock up half the city!” At that point in time, such a notion sounded almost sensible. Although I had railed against Giuliani's grandstanding, bullying tactics, when dealing with those young Wall Street brokers, who were simply engaging in long-established practices for which others were not punished, I certainly preferred him over the docile Dinkins.
I shared the exasperation of most in the city, who were tired of either being victims of the felons, or consoling friends, relatives and co-workers after they were victimized. It had almost become a ritual when arriving at work on a Monday morning to learn whether your co-workers had all made it safely through the weekend.
I asked the libertarian lady what difference it would make if the city got its first black Mayor ten years from now, or in twenty years. She thought I was being “ridiculous.” (Actually, I always thought what the city needed was a good Chinese Mayor.)
Well, Dinkins won that electoral round, but not the next one. During his one-term tenure (God is merciful!), never had the city experienced a more indecisive chief executive, as he bumbled from one crisis to another. His term started out with a bang, with him and the media ignoring a wave of harassments and persecutions by black thugs against Korean greengrocers. For three months, word-of-mouth and radio talk shows were the only sources of information about this ongoing outrage. The city's newspapers declined to cover the story, in an effort to keep Dinkins from looking bad.
In watching today's Mayor Michael Bloomberg run the city, with his crisp, no-nonsense, I'm-on-top-of-it expertise, it's hard to believe that voters ever allowed the namby-pamby Dinkins to get anywhere near City Hall. Throughout Dinkins' tenure, the criminals, of course, continued their crime spree, as merrily as ever. We even endured a riot in Brooklyn. But the good libertarian lady got her black symbol.
Read more!
My libertarian friend was full of enthusiasm for Dinkins. After she conceded the fact of his unremarkable performances as a borough president and city clerk, I asked her why on earth she would want to hand over the city to such a lightweight. And then she came up with a response I would have expected from any New York liberal, but not from her. It went something like this: Look at all the cities that have had black mayors; it's past time for New York to have one.
After gulping in disbelief at such an irrational remark coming from someone I had known to engage in sound, logical reasoning, I asked, “So, you would hand over this city to the empty suit Dinkins, in order to keep up with the trends in other places? Dinkins represents something symbolic to you? That's it?”
But, of course, that wasn't really it entirely. Her real quest was to keep Dinkins' political opponent from winning the office, and that man was Rudolph Giuliani. With street crime through the roof in the city, and homeless vagabonds in your face, with their open palms, at the doors of almost every storefront, subway token booth, and public and private accommodation, New Yorkers were at their wit's end, trying to deal with those daily indignities, as well as with the burglaries, street assaults, and general mayhem. Yet, here was this woman elated over the symbolic gesture of electing a black man to office.
But that was not all. The “libertarian” confessed to harboring a hope then being expressed by many in the city, and which is at the core of why so many whites have conceded ground to undeserving black politicians. Maybe, she speculated, as a black man, Dinkins can get a handle on the criminals; maybe they will listen to him. I laughed as I envisioned the drug dealers, myriad gangsters, and petty thieves, who then virtually ruled life in the city, identifying with and taking orders from the dainty, dandified, bourgeois Dinkins. For all her erudition as an economics scholar, the woman was as clueless as they come.
When I suggested that if crime was of concern to her (as it was to every New Yorker), then Giuliani would be a better prospect for Mayor, she was appalled and exclaimed, “Oh, my God, he'll lock up half the city!” At that point in time, such a notion sounded almost sensible. Although I had railed against Giuliani's grandstanding, bullying tactics, when dealing with those young Wall Street brokers, who were simply engaging in long-established practices for which others were not punished, I certainly preferred him over the docile Dinkins.
I shared the exasperation of most in the city, who were tired of either being victims of the felons, or consoling friends, relatives and co-workers after they were victimized. It had almost become a ritual when arriving at work on a Monday morning to learn whether your co-workers had all made it safely through the weekend.
I asked the libertarian lady what difference it would make if the city got its first black Mayor ten years from now, or in twenty years. She thought I was being “ridiculous.” (Actually, I always thought what the city needed was a good Chinese Mayor.)
Well, Dinkins won that electoral round, but not the next one. During his one-term tenure (God is merciful!), never had the city experienced a more indecisive chief executive, as he bumbled from one crisis to another. His term started out with a bang, with him and the media ignoring a wave of harassments and persecutions by black thugs against Korean greengrocers. For three months, word-of-mouth and radio talk shows were the only sources of information about this ongoing outrage. The city's newspapers declined to cover the story, in an effort to keep Dinkins from looking bad.
In watching today's Mayor Michael Bloomberg run the city, with his crisp, no-nonsense, I'm-on-top-of-it expertise, it's hard to believe that voters ever allowed the namby-pamby Dinkins to get anywhere near City Hall. Throughout Dinkins' tenure, the criminals, of course, continued their crime spree, as merrily as ever. We even endured a riot in Brooklyn. But the good libertarian lady got her black symbol.
Read more!
The frantic imperative to sell
Does the mind-boggling consumerism that engulfs our society urge us to hold onto the childish things that the Bible told us to put away? In “A Nation of Shoppers: Spent Youth” (The American Conservative, 5/7/07), Benjamin Barber claims that the goal of those who guide the global marketplace is to create a world of adolescents, that is, children with consumer power and adults with the appetites of spoiled kids. Barber speaks not only of the drive to capture the loyalties of children from the youngest ages, but of a determined effort to shape the tastes of the adult consumer, to keep him in a state of “perpetual childishness.” The aim is to dumb down the adult's taste to the level of an adolescent. He writes:
Barber calls this new epoch one where “the needy are without income and the well heeled are without needs,” where economic inequality leaves capitalism with a dilemma: “the overproducing capitalist market must either grow or expire.” Hence, if the poor of the Third World cannot be enriched enough to become consumers, “then grown-ups in the First World, with vast disposable income but few needs, will have to be enticed into shopping.”
Barber quotes the observations of a 1930s entrepreneur, who understood the dilemma even then: “Not the overproduction of merchandise, but its nondistribution was the problem. From the point of view of business people, they were not producing too much, consumers were buying too little.” Barber continues:
Astute manufacturers have learned that on the international scene, where hunger and destitution still prevail in abundance, “there is little profit in selling to those in need.” So, merchandisers must not only “create homogeneous global products aimed at the wealthy young,” but must also vigorously engage in the “consumerization of the child.”
Barber reminds us of the time when conservatives pilloried welfare statism for creating childlike dependency. He says,
Whatever happened to those days when we were exhorted by the Church to guard against gluttony and greed in our daily lives and were warned against falling into the consumer trap of “keeping up with the Joneses?” Barber suggests that a new ethos has overtaken American culture.
Benjamin Barber is the author of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (Norton), from which the above essay was excerpted. Read more!
These avatars of consumer capitalism are seeking to encourage adult regression, hoping to rekindle in grown-ups the tastes and habits of children so that they can sell the useless conucopia of games and gadgets for which there is no discernible “need market” other than the one created by capitalism's frantic imperative to sell. ...
In capitalism's more creative and successful period, a productivist capitalism prospered by meeting the real needs of real people. Creating a synergy between making money and helping others – the Puritan Protestant formula for entrepreneurial virtue – producers profited by making commodities for the workers they employed, a circle of virtue that benefited both classes and society at large. Today consumerist capitalism profits only when it can address those whose essential needs have already been satisfied but who have the means to assuage invented needs.
Barber calls this new epoch one where “the needy are without income and the well heeled are without needs,” where economic inequality leaves capitalism with a dilemma: “the overproducing capitalist market must either grow or expire.” Hence, if the poor of the Third World cannot be enriched enough to become consumers, “then grown-ups in the First World, with vast disposable income but few needs, will have to be enticed into shopping.”
Barber quotes the observations of a 1930s entrepreneur, who understood the dilemma even then: “Not the overproduction of merchandise, but its nondistribution was the problem. From the point of view of business people, they were not producing too much, consumers were buying too little.” Barber continues:
I am arguing that many of our primary business, educational, and governmental institutions are purposefully engaged in infantilization. For this is how we maintain a system of consumerist capitalism no longer supported by the traditional market forces of supply and demand.
Astute manufacturers have learned that on the international scene, where hunger and destitution still prevail in abundance, “there is little profit in selling to those in need.” So, merchandisers must not only “create homogeneous global products aimed at the wealthy young,” but must also vigorously engage in the “consumerization of the child.”
Rather than employ schools to help children grow out of their toys, we import toys into the schools – video games and computers as “edutainment” teaching aids, as well as ad-sponsored TV in the classroom. ... In high school classrooms, this commercialization is supported by outfits like Channel One Network that offer in-school soft “news” television complete with advertisements that sell at rates that rival the Super Bowl. In higher education, colleges and universities that once acted as a counterpoint to commercial culture have gone prostrate before corporate sponsors of research that administrators have neither the will nor the independent funding to oppose. ...
Exit sensitive writers like J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll, who capture children in literature to free the imagination. Enter those whose aim is to capture children's imagination in order to indenture them to the marketplace: enter Super Mario Bros., Britney Spears, “American Idol.” Kiddie consumerism dressed up as consumer cool. ...
Barber reminds us of the time when conservatives pilloried welfare statism for creating childlike dependency. He says,
Totalitarian states historically were thought to act as overweening authorities that infantilized their subjects to keep them in line. Yet if paternalistic states create top-down forms of infantilization, markets today are creating bottom-up forms – less visible because they arise from supposedly pluralistic and competitive markets that turn out to be coercive in intractable ways as they seek to inspire childlike dependency in consumers.
Whatever happened to those days when we were exhorted by the Church to guard against gluttony and greed in our daily lives and were warned against falling into the consumer trap of “keeping up with the Joneses?” Barber suggests that a new ethos has overtaken American culture.
Capitalism ... once allowed energetic risk takers to prosper by serving the growth and welfare of emerging nations. It did so with the succor of a Protestant ethos that lent moral weight to hard work, far-sighted investment, and ascetic self-denial – the very qualities productivist capitalism needed to thrive. Today its productive capacity has outrun the needs it once served even as its distributive capacity has been stymied by the growing global inequalities it has catalyzed. Depending for its success on consumerism rather than productivity, it has generated an ethos of infantilization that prizes the very attributes the Protestant ethos condemned.
Benjamin Barber is the author of Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (Norton), from which the above essay was excerpted. Read more!
Brainwashing whites
Issues & Views – The Website is chockful of reports on and praise for the work of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Founded in 1999 by civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate and Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history, this organization was the first to focus specifically on defending the constitutional rights of students and faculty at American colleges and universities.
For many people, FIRE's revelations about a dark side of campus life, was their introduction to the mad world of brainwashing that is the American college system. Academic course work no longer suffices as the primary function of academic institutions. For years now, mandatory “re-education” sessions, designed to divest the student participants of their own beliefs and convictions, have become ritual.
Make no mistake about it, although these workshops, orientation sessions and “sensitivity training” include participants from all races and backgrounds, this elaborate attempt at reprogramming individuals was contrived primarily to recalibrate whites, most especially young whites.
It was not long before this reprogramming began to filter down into the lower grades of high school and earlier. Soon it spilled over from the campus and class room into the work force, as businesses, under pressure from multicultural enforcers, strove to obey the demands of these now powerful social engineers, in order to avoid entanglements in “race” troubles. And so a new industry was born – one made up of phony race “experts,” “consultants,” and “diversity facilitators.” Companies learned that if they paid the right price now, they could fend off possible trouble later.
In his article, "Thought Reform 101," Professor Kors cites a “multicultural educator,” who quite candidly professed, “White students need help to understand what it means to be white in a multicultural community. For the white heterosexual male who feels disconnected and marginalized by multiculturalism, we've got to do a lot of work here.”
So, young whites were given that “help” through such diversity vehicles as “Blue Eyed,” a so-called racism awareness workshop in which, says Kors, whites were “abused, ridiculed, made to fail, and taught helpless passivity.” Passivity is the operative word here. Turning whites into passive, fearful fraidy cats, uncertain of how to safely navigate the turbulent racial waters in their own country, is essential to the multiculturalist agenda.
With their fixed notions of how whites perceive the world, the stated goal of these social crusaders is to alter the values and attitudes of these young people. Using diversity orientations to probe into the most private experiences and thoughts of students, the aim is to convince the white to remold his inner life, until it is consistent with the multicultural vision. This is Thought Reform at its crudest – an attempt at mind cleansing under the guise of achieving “social justice” for society's underdogs.
Even without the heavy-handed indoctrination cited above, the white youth learns what is expected of him before he ever sets foot in school. He is taught the rules from the minute his young eyes view a TV screen and when his ears are subjected to the socially trendy platitudes of the day. The real propaganda starts long before kindergarten, but once he enters the school system, there is never any let up in the indoctrination. The impressionable child begins to learn early on the importance of becoming a “good white person” in the multicultural sense of goodness.
Sometimes, the comic nature of this movement makes one's head spin. Last year, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for instance, Kent County high school students began a “diversity and cultural sensitivity” program featuring workshops in “healing racism.” As reported in the Grand Rapids Press, conductors of these sessions were the Center for Ecumenism Racial Justice Institute, the Woodrick Diversity Training Center, and the Grace Racial Justice Institute. That so many organizations were involved demonstrates the lucrative industry that has been spawned around this profitable sham.
In a stunning example of double talk, or Newspeak, Rev. David May, a “trainer,” claimed that, while some kids might be practicing racism “unaware,” other kids might be victims of said racism and not even know it. Hence, the need to assist these youths to see the offenses that exist, even though unperceived by the youngsters themselves. Imagine these kids, getting on with their daily lives, not feeling in any way offended by the behavior of their school chums – and along come the “Diversity” folk, bringing their special brand of enlightenment.
Not surprisingly, Rev. May clarified, for anyone who didn't know it, just who were the targets of all this attention. It happened to be those “suburban kids,” he said, who must be brought to understand what they have “in common” with the ethnics.
This decades-long inundation of propaganda by the social engineers has proven wildly successful. Coupled with the almost total acceptance of pernicious feminist ideology, which has taken its toll on the male character, and helped along by the writings of authors like Shelby Steele, whose treatises on white shame and guilt have permeated academia, it is not surprising that so many whites spend a good part of their day striving to prove their “purity of heart.”
Although Steele's books have won acclaim for his premise that whites should not carry the burden of guilt for this country's past history, he seems to consider it perfectly appropriate that whites live with shame. Guilt, it seems, is worthless, because it leads nowhere. Harboring shame, however, shows that the person recognizes the need for some form of repentance. Shame offers a reminder of past offenses for which the individual can compensate by transforming his inherent attitudes and, perhaps, behavior. This is obviously something that Steele believes whites should work to do.
Since, in Steele's world, whites can have no legitimate “white” interests, notions of racial identity should be shunned. Whites are not to indulge in thinking in terms of the “group,” which conceivably could lead to notions of “superiority,” a vice from which whites must flee. Asserting special regard for the group demonstrates “atavistic” thinking, which excludes others and, therefore, is injurious to “our democracy of individuals.”
Steele stands ready to paint with a broad brush those whites who deviate from this neutral (or might one say neutered) stance as “white supremacists.” The European imperialist who reached across the seas and colonized foreign lands demonstrated his white supremacist hubris, and the white who today strives to preserve the racial and cultural uniqueness of his group, according to Steele, demonstrates the same “white supremacist” tendencies. Whites do not possess the option to operate in their own self-interest.
Sensitivity sessions, diversity workshops, re-education programs, ceaseless media propaganda via films and television, along with the cleverly disguised anti-white writings of scholars like Steele, and the not-so-disguised biases of academics like Noel Ignatiev, have taken their toll on white confidence, backing whites into a corner, where their defensiveness often looks like downright surrender.
Proving their “goodness” has now become a preoccupation with a great many whites. Such people are beside themselves with joy at this moment, now that the candidacy of Barack Obama gives them the chance to vote for a black man. Open advocacy for Obama is the route to proving that one is not a racist. Such an act should prove, once and for all time, that “good” whites are no longer in need of sensitivity sessions or diversity workshops, or other vehicles to teach them lessons in racial justice.
But don't for a minute think that this is a fixation from which only white liberals suffer. Listen to those self-professed conservatives calling talk shows, and proudly proclaiming, “I would like to see Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell run for President, so I could vote for them and prove I am not a racist.” Those exact words have been expressed on the airwaves over and over again. In making this proclamation, the callers seem so proud of themselves. These whites consider it perfectly rational to live one's life in anxiety over how they might be perceived by invisible race monitors. The political ideologue seeks out “our blacks” as opposed to “your blacks.”
I have had whites voice this Rice-Powell scenario to me, in an obvious bid for my approval. I dare not inform them that, at that moment, I am contemplating whether to feel contempt or pity for them. I ponder the distressed white guy who wanders the earth every day worrying about whether someone, somewhere, might not know what a good person he is. I imagine such a man, during initial introductions of himself to strangers, announcing, “Hi, I'm John Smith, and I am NOT a racist!” Such people should wear a button or tag on their clothing, or, better yet, wear a sandwich board that declares, on both sides, “I am NOT a racist!” This troubled soul seems to believe that when he proves his love and total acceptance of the coloreds, and pointedly rejects all initiatives pertaining to his own white self-interest, he proves his worth as a human being.
With news of China's current incursions into Tibet, it's not unusual to turn on the TV or radio and encounter pundits and scholarly experts frankly supporting Tibet, whose “unique culture deserves to be protected,” as one academic recently put it. Europeans and Euro-Americans are granted the right to no such protection, and are looked upon with suspicion for even voicing such heresy.
As Steele has written, “Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.” And, “For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers.”
Millions of whites seem determined to prove him right. The brainwashing is, indeed, complete.
See also:
The everlasting quest: To transform whites
It's about power
Read more!
For many people, FIRE's revelations about a dark side of campus life, was their introduction to the mad world of brainwashing that is the American college system. Academic course work no longer suffices as the primary function of academic institutions. For years now, mandatory “re-education” sessions, designed to divest the student participants of their own beliefs and convictions, have become ritual.
Make no mistake about it, although these workshops, orientation sessions and “sensitivity training” include participants from all races and backgrounds, this elaborate attempt at reprogramming individuals was contrived primarily to recalibrate whites, most especially young whites.
It was not long before this reprogramming began to filter down into the lower grades of high school and earlier. Soon it spilled over from the campus and class room into the work force, as businesses, under pressure from multicultural enforcers, strove to obey the demands of these now powerful social engineers, in order to avoid entanglements in “race” troubles. And so a new industry was born – one made up of phony race “experts,” “consultants,” and “diversity facilitators.” Companies learned that if they paid the right price now, they could fend off possible trouble later.
In his article, "Thought Reform 101," Professor Kors cites a “multicultural educator,” who quite candidly professed, “White students need help to understand what it means to be white in a multicultural community. For the white heterosexual male who feels disconnected and marginalized by multiculturalism, we've got to do a lot of work here.”
So, young whites were given that “help” through such diversity vehicles as “Blue Eyed,” a so-called racism awareness workshop in which, says Kors, whites were “abused, ridiculed, made to fail, and taught helpless passivity.” Passivity is the operative word here. Turning whites into passive, fearful fraidy cats, uncertain of how to safely navigate the turbulent racial waters in their own country, is essential to the multiculturalist agenda.
With their fixed notions of how whites perceive the world, the stated goal of these social crusaders is to alter the values and attitudes of these young people. Using diversity orientations to probe into the most private experiences and thoughts of students, the aim is to convince the white to remold his inner life, until it is consistent with the multicultural vision. This is Thought Reform at its crudest – an attempt at mind cleansing under the guise of achieving “social justice” for society's underdogs.
Even without the heavy-handed indoctrination cited above, the white youth learns what is expected of him before he ever sets foot in school. He is taught the rules from the minute his young eyes view a TV screen and when his ears are subjected to the socially trendy platitudes of the day. The real propaganda starts long before kindergarten, but once he enters the school system, there is never any let up in the indoctrination. The impressionable child begins to learn early on the importance of becoming a “good white person” in the multicultural sense of goodness.
Sometimes, the comic nature of this movement makes one's head spin. Last year, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for instance, Kent County high school students began a “diversity and cultural sensitivity” program featuring workshops in “healing racism.” As reported in the Grand Rapids Press, conductors of these sessions were the Center for Ecumenism Racial Justice Institute, the Woodrick Diversity Training Center, and the Grace Racial Justice Institute. That so many organizations were involved demonstrates the lucrative industry that has been spawned around this profitable sham.
In a stunning example of double talk, or Newspeak, Rev. David May, a “trainer,” claimed that, while some kids might be practicing racism “unaware,” other kids might be victims of said racism and not even know it. Hence, the need to assist these youths to see the offenses that exist, even though unperceived by the youngsters themselves. Imagine these kids, getting on with their daily lives, not feeling in any way offended by the behavior of their school chums – and along come the “Diversity” folk, bringing their special brand of enlightenment.
Not surprisingly, Rev. May clarified, for anyone who didn't know it, just who were the targets of all this attention. It happened to be those “suburban kids,” he said, who must be brought to understand what they have “in common” with the ethnics.
This decades-long inundation of propaganda by the social engineers has proven wildly successful. Coupled with the almost total acceptance of pernicious feminist ideology, which has taken its toll on the male character, and helped along by the writings of authors like Shelby Steele, whose treatises on white shame and guilt have permeated academia, it is not surprising that so many whites spend a good part of their day striving to prove their “purity of heart.”
Although Steele's books have won acclaim for his premise that whites should not carry the burden of guilt for this country's past history, he seems to consider it perfectly appropriate that whites live with shame. Guilt, it seems, is worthless, because it leads nowhere. Harboring shame, however, shows that the person recognizes the need for some form of repentance. Shame offers a reminder of past offenses for which the individual can compensate by transforming his inherent attitudes and, perhaps, behavior. This is obviously something that Steele believes whites should work to do.
Since, in Steele's world, whites can have no legitimate “white” interests, notions of racial identity should be shunned. Whites are not to indulge in thinking in terms of the “group,” which conceivably could lead to notions of “superiority,” a vice from which whites must flee. Asserting special regard for the group demonstrates “atavistic” thinking, which excludes others and, therefore, is injurious to “our democracy of individuals.”
Steele stands ready to paint with a broad brush those whites who deviate from this neutral (or might one say neutered) stance as “white supremacists.” The European imperialist who reached across the seas and colonized foreign lands demonstrated his white supremacist hubris, and the white who today strives to preserve the racial and cultural uniqueness of his group, according to Steele, demonstrates the same “white supremacist” tendencies. Whites do not possess the option to operate in their own self-interest.
Sensitivity sessions, diversity workshops, re-education programs, ceaseless media propaganda via films and television, along with the cleverly disguised anti-white writings of scholars like Steele, and the not-so-disguised biases of academics like Noel Ignatiev, have taken their toll on white confidence, backing whites into a corner, where their defensiveness often looks like downright surrender.
Proving their “goodness” has now become a preoccupation with a great many whites. Such people are beside themselves with joy at this moment, now that the candidacy of Barack Obama gives them the chance to vote for a black man. Open advocacy for Obama is the route to proving that one is not a racist. Such an act should prove, once and for all time, that “good” whites are no longer in need of sensitivity sessions or diversity workshops, or other vehicles to teach them lessons in racial justice.
But don't for a minute think that this is a fixation from which only white liberals suffer. Listen to those self-professed conservatives calling talk shows, and proudly proclaiming, “I would like to see Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell run for President, so I could vote for them and prove I am not a racist.” Those exact words have been expressed on the airwaves over and over again. In making this proclamation, the callers seem so proud of themselves. These whites consider it perfectly rational to live one's life in anxiety over how they might be perceived by invisible race monitors. The political ideologue seeks out “our blacks” as opposed to “your blacks.”
I have had whites voice this Rice-Powell scenario to me, in an obvious bid for my approval. I dare not inform them that, at that moment, I am contemplating whether to feel contempt or pity for them. I ponder the distressed white guy who wanders the earth every day worrying about whether someone, somewhere, might not know what a good person he is. I imagine such a man, during initial introductions of himself to strangers, announcing, “Hi, I'm John Smith, and I am NOT a racist!” Such people should wear a button or tag on their clothing, or, better yet, wear a sandwich board that declares, on both sides, “I am NOT a racist!” This troubled soul seems to believe that when he proves his love and total acceptance of the coloreds, and pointedly rejects all initiatives pertaining to his own white self-interest, he proves his worth as a human being.
With news of China's current incursions into Tibet, it's not unusual to turn on the TV or radio and encounter pundits and scholarly experts frankly supporting Tibet, whose “unique culture deserves to be protected,” as one academic recently put it. Europeans and Euro-Americans are granted the right to no such protection, and are looked upon with suspicion for even voicing such heresy.
As Steele has written, “Mr. Obama's extraordinary dash to the forefront of American politics is less a measure of the man than of the hunger in white America for racial innocence.” And, “For whites, here is the opportunity to document their deliverance from the shames of their forbearers.”
Millions of whites seem determined to prove him right. The brainwashing is, indeed, complete.
See also:
The everlasting quest: To transform whites
It's about power
Read more!
He's at it again
In a previous critique of columns by Thomas Sowell, I spoke of his role as apologist for the War Party, and of his put down of young Americans who refuse to do their “duty” by offering up their lives for the useless wars concocted by the special interests who have usurped the federal government.
Now here is the erudite scholar turned warmonger complaining about the media's failure to give us the Iraq story that we ought to be seeing on television. Why aren't they showing what “heroes” our soldiers are through the actions they engage in every day?, he demands to know. And why are they displaying all those “pictures of badly wounded and disfigured military veterans?” Why didn't they report on the incident where a soldier fell on a grenade to protect his buddies, “smothering the fatal blast with his body, so that those around him might live when he died.” Sowell laments that this story “never made the front cover of Newsweek.”
Well, now, wise Dr. Sowell, what would you make of the following scenario? Two men break into a neighbor's home while he is away, with the intent of taking his stuff. Unexpectedly, the neighbor shows up, armed with a shotgun, which he points at one of the invaders. The second invader throws himself between the shot and his friend. I would say that was a brave, courageous act. Individual acts of courage can happen anywhere, and giving over your life for another, no matter the circumstances, is, indeed, an act of bravery.
But do you mind, Dr. Sowell, if we ask what the hell those two invaders were doing in that man's home in the first place? Who asked for their acts of bravery? Who needed those “courageous” actions? Why not have our soldiers engage in heroics right here at home, like on the borders of California and Arizona? Rightwing apologists like Sowell would like to change the subject from one of questioning U.S. policy of intervening where we don't belong, to one of “bravery, honor and loyalty” of the poor men who must carry out these ill-contrived missions.
The perceptive Sowell believes that the media is “filtering and spinning” the news. He doesn't like the idea of networks “parading casualties.” Can you beat that? It's all right that these unfortunate young men, some of whom will never see their 21st birthdays, are used as tools who disappear from earth, acknowledged and mourned only by their few relatives and friends. The country at large should not be subjected to the fact of their deaths, and most important, they must not become an embarrassment to the administration in Washington.
According to Sowell, the media's use of such terms as “honoring the dead” is “part of the general corruption of language for political purposes.” Honoring the dead? And this is the man who taught us so much about how the leftwing manipulates society and plays with our heads through the use of politically correct terminology.
Apparently, only stories about soldiers who throw themselves on grenades should be broadcast to the world. However, the media should remain mute about their comrades, who are regularly blown apart by IEDs. After all, there's no grandstanding that can be done with those run-of-the-mill stories.
The demonstration of contempt for all these lost lives is palpable among these rightwing partisans, who sometimes sound deranged. Maybe it's time for Sowell to leave his keyboard and take his big derriere off to Iraq, to do battle. Surely, the military can make a special dispensation for age for this intrepid warrior. Read more!
Now here is the erudite scholar turned warmonger complaining about the media's failure to give us the Iraq story that we ought to be seeing on television. Why aren't they showing what “heroes” our soldiers are through the actions they engage in every day?, he demands to know. And why are they displaying all those “pictures of badly wounded and disfigured military veterans?” Why didn't they report on the incident where a soldier fell on a grenade to protect his buddies, “smothering the fatal blast with his body, so that those around him might live when he died.” Sowell laments that this story “never made the front cover of Newsweek.”
Well, now, wise Dr. Sowell, what would you make of the following scenario? Two men break into a neighbor's home while he is away, with the intent of taking his stuff. Unexpectedly, the neighbor shows up, armed with a shotgun, which he points at one of the invaders. The second invader throws himself between the shot and his friend. I would say that was a brave, courageous act. Individual acts of courage can happen anywhere, and giving over your life for another, no matter the circumstances, is, indeed, an act of bravery.
But do you mind, Dr. Sowell, if we ask what the hell those two invaders were doing in that man's home in the first place? Who asked for their acts of bravery? Who needed those “courageous” actions? Why not have our soldiers engage in heroics right here at home, like on the borders of California and Arizona? Rightwing apologists like Sowell would like to change the subject from one of questioning U.S. policy of intervening where we don't belong, to one of “bravery, honor and loyalty” of the poor men who must carry out these ill-contrived missions.
The perceptive Sowell believes that the media is “filtering and spinning” the news. He doesn't like the idea of networks “parading casualties.” Can you beat that? It's all right that these unfortunate young men, some of whom will never see their 21st birthdays, are used as tools who disappear from earth, acknowledged and mourned only by their few relatives and friends. The country at large should not be subjected to the fact of their deaths, and most important, they must not become an embarrassment to the administration in Washington.
According to Sowell, the media's use of such terms as “honoring the dead” is “part of the general corruption of language for political purposes.” Honoring the dead? And this is the man who taught us so much about how the leftwing manipulates society and plays with our heads through the use of politically correct terminology.
Apparently, only stories about soldiers who throw themselves on grenades should be broadcast to the world. However, the media should remain mute about their comrades, who are regularly blown apart by IEDs. After all, there's no grandstanding that can be done with those run-of-the-mill stories.
The demonstration of contempt for all these lost lives is palpable among these rightwing partisans, who sometimes sound deranged. Maybe it's time for Sowell to leave his keyboard and take his big derriere off to Iraq, to do battle. Surely, the military can make a special dispensation for age for this intrepid warrior. Read more!
He took it like a man
New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch compares the manner in which New York's Governor Eliot Spitzer handled his recent troubles to the way Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is handling his similar woes:
Spitzer at last took it like a man, or an adult caught with his hand under the wrong dress. Spitzer blamed no one, resigned and went home to await what should be an avalanche of charges. Kilpatrick, who formerly referred to himself as "the hip hop mayor," seems determined to live up to qualities shared by many who fuse self-pity and a sense of entitlement. He has cast himself as a victim, used the N-word in his most recent state of Detroit speech and went on to exploit his wife and two children as victims of allegedly bigoted language and threats. I would not be surprised if the threatening calls were made under Kilpatrick's orders. That might sound cold, but we are not in a bar so I cannot tell readers what I actually think about this man. Let's just leave it at this: Playing the race card to cover up one's own dumb actions is an insult to every single person who ever suffered actual bigotry in this land. It is one of the most despicable actions and one of the most criminal. Read more!
Spitzer at last took it like a man, or an adult caught with his hand under the wrong dress. Spitzer blamed no one, resigned and went home to await what should be an avalanche of charges. Kilpatrick, who formerly referred to himself as "the hip hop mayor," seems determined to live up to qualities shared by many who fuse self-pity and a sense of entitlement. He has cast himself as a victim, used the N-word in his most recent state of Detroit speech and went on to exploit his wife and two children as victims of allegedly bigoted language and threats. I would not be surprised if the threatening calls were made under Kilpatrick's orders. That might sound cold, but we are not in a bar so I cannot tell readers what I actually think about this man. Let's just leave it at this: Playing the race card to cover up one's own dumb actions is an insult to every single person who ever suffered actual bigotry in this land. It is one of the most despicable actions and one of the most criminal. Read more!
Can politics transcend Nature?
Who are these conservatives who call for the break-up of families and children's homes, and have been doing so ever since they hunted and hounded Bill Clinton? These are the creatures who were so quick to advise Hillary to leave her husband, are gleefully taking bets that Silda Spitzer will do so, and now, I guess, Michelle Paterson will be targeted for their advice on how to ditch a marriage.
When the dam broke and the earlier prototype of Swift Boaters descended on Bill Clinton, whom they despised with visceral intensity, I accepted the reality of the politics. Just thinking of all those presumptuous Executive Orders of his was enough to make my blood boil. But I was flabbergasted when, throughout those ugly years, spokesmen for these Republican bloodhounds -- the pundits in the press and especially the talk show hosts -- continually expressed their hopes that the Clinton family would go bust, that Bill deserved to be punished into everlasting damnation where he should suffer all alone. Some of them sounded like they were actually sending up prayers to their peculiar version of God, to effect such an end. (I grew up believing that the angels sing in heaven, whenever a marriage is saved.) “Why doesn't she divorce him?” they impatiently demanded, as if Hillary's failure to do so was evidence of some flaw in her character.
In each of these cases, there are children involved, but with or without children, why would anyone want to see a couple break their vows “for better or for worse?” Why not, instead, take satisfaction in seeing them remain intact, no matter who they are, and no matter how hard they have to work at it?
For today's conservative fanatic, politics rule over even the sanctity of family. Their distorted reasoning goes something like this: If you're not in my political camp, and you screw up, then you should be denied the comfort of family affection, and deserve to be kicked in the gutter to die alone. What rock do these people live under, where only their brand of political correctness should supersede even the intimate bond between husband and wife?
Should John McCain leave his wife because of her prior drug problem and even some theft that she might have indulged in while on drugs? If we discover other infidelities or indiscretions on the part of prominent figures, should there be a crusade to convince the “wounded” spouses to dump their lifetime mates? Well, only if they're found to be on the wrong side of the political fence.
Do these “family values” rightwing folk take pleasure in observing the consequences on children, as they lose their stable homes and become visitors every other weekend to each of their parents' residences? I don't think a husband's infidelity is worth subjecting children to the vagaries of life with a dating parent or parents, and having strangers enter their lives who would otherwise be unknown to them had their parents remained together. Children deserve more than an insecure existence with a “Single Mom” or to be forced into “blended” families, to say nothing of the financial stress that is endured.
Nature as addiction?
Men cannot turn off Nature's programming; all they can do is work to modify their behavior as best they can. Even though polygamy is closer to Nature's plan for the male of the species, the West dumped forms of polygamy and chose monogamy for a variety of reasons, chief among them economic. Nature's concern is only that the male's seed is planted over and over and over again -- and in as many wombs as possible. This is why Nature embedded the sex drive deep into the male brain, so he will never forget his mission, even when he sleeps.
Yet now we have the trendy, stupid notion that men can suffer from a “sex addiction.” What idiotic psychobabblers could call Nature's plan for man a form of addiction? Such hogwash is straight out of the feminist playbook that would paint normal male behavior as aberrant.
Am I making excuses for men? Yes, I certainly am. Needless to say, I am not referring to the “knuckle-dragging” sub-species of male, who live only for and through their animal instincts and make no attempts to live within the bonds of civilized society. But I believe that most men do an efficient job of suppressing their programmed sex drive. Nature hardwired men to yearn for sex 28 hours a day, and I think most men act responsibly in controlling and restraining this unquenchable urge.
Thanks to the revamped society that feminism has given us, men are now confronted with eager, available women at every turn, not only in the workplace, but in just about every aspect of their lives. Such was not always the case. (Whoever heard of a “woman Marine” or a “woman Sailor?”)
Nature knows nothing about our social preferences and does not operate around our social conventions. After all the laughter and jokes about men's sexual proclivities have subsided, when you think of it, men carry a terrible burden. They must cope with a basic drive, while finding a way to live in a civilized world that works to defeat that drive. Most men work hard to live within the rules set by that civilized world. They don't deserve to be abandoned or stripped of their families when they fail to live up to the standards that they themselves have helped to create, or when they are unable to get the better of the powerful impulses bequeathed to them by Nature. Read more!
When the dam broke and the earlier prototype of Swift Boaters descended on Bill Clinton, whom they despised with visceral intensity, I accepted the reality of the politics. Just thinking of all those presumptuous Executive Orders of his was enough to make my blood boil. But I was flabbergasted when, throughout those ugly years, spokesmen for these Republican bloodhounds -- the pundits in the press and especially the talk show hosts -- continually expressed their hopes that the Clinton family would go bust, that Bill deserved to be punished into everlasting damnation where he should suffer all alone. Some of them sounded like they were actually sending up prayers to their peculiar version of God, to effect such an end. (I grew up believing that the angels sing in heaven, whenever a marriage is saved.) “Why doesn't she divorce him?” they impatiently demanded, as if Hillary's failure to do so was evidence of some flaw in her character.
In each of these cases, there are children involved, but with or without children, why would anyone want to see a couple break their vows “for better or for worse?” Why not, instead, take satisfaction in seeing them remain intact, no matter who they are, and no matter how hard they have to work at it?
For today's conservative fanatic, politics rule over even the sanctity of family. Their distorted reasoning goes something like this: If you're not in my political camp, and you screw up, then you should be denied the comfort of family affection, and deserve to be kicked in the gutter to die alone. What rock do these people live under, where only their brand of political correctness should supersede even the intimate bond between husband and wife?
Should John McCain leave his wife because of her prior drug problem and even some theft that she might have indulged in while on drugs? If we discover other infidelities or indiscretions on the part of prominent figures, should there be a crusade to convince the “wounded” spouses to dump their lifetime mates? Well, only if they're found to be on the wrong side of the political fence.
Do these “family values” rightwing folk take pleasure in observing the consequences on children, as they lose their stable homes and become visitors every other weekend to each of their parents' residences? I don't think a husband's infidelity is worth subjecting children to the vagaries of life with a dating parent or parents, and having strangers enter their lives who would otherwise be unknown to them had their parents remained together. Children deserve more than an insecure existence with a “Single Mom” or to be forced into “blended” families, to say nothing of the financial stress that is endured.
Nature as addiction?
Men cannot turn off Nature's programming; all they can do is work to modify their behavior as best they can. Even though polygamy is closer to Nature's plan for the male of the species, the West dumped forms of polygamy and chose monogamy for a variety of reasons, chief among them economic. Nature's concern is only that the male's seed is planted over and over and over again -- and in as many wombs as possible. This is why Nature embedded the sex drive deep into the male brain, so he will never forget his mission, even when he sleeps.
Yet now we have the trendy, stupid notion that men can suffer from a “sex addiction.” What idiotic psychobabblers could call Nature's plan for man a form of addiction? Such hogwash is straight out of the feminist playbook that would paint normal male behavior as aberrant.
Am I making excuses for men? Yes, I certainly am. Needless to say, I am not referring to the “knuckle-dragging” sub-species of male, who live only for and through their animal instincts and make no attempts to live within the bonds of civilized society. But I believe that most men do an efficient job of suppressing their programmed sex drive. Nature hardwired men to yearn for sex 28 hours a day, and I think most men act responsibly in controlling and restraining this unquenchable urge.
Thanks to the revamped society that feminism has given us, men are now confronted with eager, available women at every turn, not only in the workplace, but in just about every aspect of their lives. Such was not always the case. (Whoever heard of a “woman Marine” or a “woman Sailor?”)
Nature knows nothing about our social preferences and does not operate around our social conventions. After all the laughter and jokes about men's sexual proclivities have subsided, when you think of it, men carry a terrible burden. They must cope with a basic drive, while finding a way to live in a civilized world that works to defeat that drive. Most men work hard to live within the rules set by that civilized world. They don't deserve to be abandoned or stripped of their families when they fail to live up to the standards that they themselves have helped to create, or when they are unable to get the better of the powerful impulses bequeathed to them by Nature. Read more!
Obama, the multi-cult President
Because of the horrors that Americans have watched take place in our name over the last eight years, it is understandable that some people would eagerly import aliens from the Moon, Mars or Saturn, or even “E.T.” himself, to replace the unworthy incumbents in Washington.
Different sets of people have different reasons for being enamored with and in support of Barack Obama. Some, just wishing to be perverse, think it would be cute to elect someone so far off the beaten track, so different from all the past politicians who have won the Presidency. They exult in Obama's unusualness, his strangeness – from his family background (a polygamous/bigamist father and a mother of questionable behavior), to his ambiguous racial lineage and roots, to his manifest identity problems (possibly reflecting a psychological disorder). He might be the first President to go under counseling as a resident of the White House. He is different, indeed.
Then there are those who think they're doing an in-your-face to conventional whites, whom they perceive as up-tight bigots, and evil at that. These snide Obama-ites (they come in all colors and ethnicities, including white) think they are making mischief as they attempt to overturn the ties that bind white Americans to their history, thereby upsetting the norm, which proclaims that Presidents come from the majority population, the natural descendants of the Founders. For these Obama-ites, it's all a lot of fun helping to create what they perceive as public discomfort and they enjoy the prospect of not just breaking, but shattering tradition.
And there are those who envision the ascendance of Obama as the just deserts of the despicable tyrants who now prevail in Washington and the people who made their reign possible – sort of an “Up yours!” with the finger to go along with it. As they push this black man from nowhere, they are smirking with glee, “This is what you get for eight horrible years of callousness, warmongering, and for hubris of an order previously unknown to mankind!”
And then there's the media. Since members of the media are whores, they want Obama elected because of the fun and games his presidency would provide. Caring nothing about the welfare of this country, they dream of an endless array of kinky stories they can sell and sell. And they are bound to find them and keep them coming.
As they dig up and embellish tales about Obama's siblings and other relations, there won't be enough newsprint or video footage to contain them. What a feast they are going to make of stories about his Kenyan half-siblings (by his bio-father's polygamous marriage), his Indonesian-white half- and step-siblings, and his all-white half-siblings. Then there's his father's third wife, who was also a white woman. Where are those offspring? And wait till they unearth dear, old Mom's journeys from land to land and learn of the boyfriends in between the three husbands that we know of. The media is going to blow a gasket reporting on all this multicultural amusement.
We are supposed to think of Obama as being blessed by the “rich tapestry” of all those blended cultures. But is he? Could one not also see a confusing polyglot that makes understandable why Shelby Steele's biography of Obama delves so much into aspects of his self-identity? If he is the country's choice for President, there will never be a dull moment. Read more!
Different sets of people have different reasons for being enamored with and in support of Barack Obama. Some, just wishing to be perverse, think it would be cute to elect someone so far off the beaten track, so different from all the past politicians who have won the Presidency. They exult in Obama's unusualness, his strangeness – from his family background (a polygamous/bigamist father and a mother of questionable behavior), to his ambiguous racial lineage and roots, to his manifest identity problems (possibly reflecting a psychological disorder). He might be the first President to go under counseling as a resident of the White House. He is different, indeed.
Then there are those who think they're doing an in-your-face to conventional whites, whom they perceive as up-tight bigots, and evil at that. These snide Obama-ites (they come in all colors and ethnicities, including white) think they are making mischief as they attempt to overturn the ties that bind white Americans to their history, thereby upsetting the norm, which proclaims that Presidents come from the majority population, the natural descendants of the Founders. For these Obama-ites, it's all a lot of fun helping to create what they perceive as public discomfort and they enjoy the prospect of not just breaking, but shattering tradition.
And there are those who envision the ascendance of Obama as the just deserts of the despicable tyrants who now prevail in Washington and the people who made their reign possible – sort of an “Up yours!” with the finger to go along with it. As they push this black man from nowhere, they are smirking with glee, “This is what you get for eight horrible years of callousness, warmongering, and for hubris of an order previously unknown to mankind!”
And then there's the media. Since members of the media are whores, they want Obama elected because of the fun and games his presidency would provide. Caring nothing about the welfare of this country, they dream of an endless array of kinky stories they can sell and sell. And they are bound to find them and keep them coming.
As they dig up and embellish tales about Obama's siblings and other relations, there won't be enough newsprint or video footage to contain them. What a feast they are going to make of stories about his Kenyan half-siblings (by his bio-father's polygamous marriage), his Indonesian-white half- and step-siblings, and his all-white half-siblings. Then there's his father's third wife, who was also a white woman. Where are those offspring? And wait till they unearth dear, old Mom's journeys from land to land and learn of the boyfriends in between the three husbands that we know of. The media is going to blow a gasket reporting on all this multicultural amusement.
We are supposed to think of Obama as being blessed by the “rich tapestry” of all those blended cultures. But is he? Could one not also see a confusing polyglot that makes understandable why Shelby Steele's biography of Obama delves so much into aspects of his self-identity? If he is the country's choice for President, there will never be a dull moment. Read more!
Those quaint Indians
There they were, as telephone guests, on New York's Public Radio station, WNYC, two men from India who live here in the city, trying to explain why so many men, like themselves, return to India to find wives. One man claimed that 80% of Indian men do this. Instead of settling for the American variety, that is, either Indian women acclimated to American culture, or women of other races and ethnicities, these men expressed their preference for mates born and bred in their homeland.
And there was the Public Radio host, ever faithful to the multicultural cause, questioning (with an edge in his voice) such a “quaint” custom. Along with him was a female guest offering the usual bromide that such men return home because they desire only "submissive" women. No, one man retorted, Indian men desire a marriage that will keep them within their customs and traditions, and even religions. (Why is it that no one ever explains why so-called submissive women have no right to husbands?)
But the host persisted, never coming out and saying it, but making it clear that he would prefer such men to intermarry with the other races that they find here in the good old USA. The host, a big promoter of “bi-racial” intimacy, at times sounded personally offended by some of the points made by the Indian men, especially the suggestion that they saw no advantages to bedding down in permanent partnership with women of cultures other than their own.
These men may not have known it, but they had just expressed the ultimate no-no. Nothing pierces the heart of a multi-cultist more than the expression of such heresy. If men like these prevail, how will we ever get to mix up the races and bring Paradise on earth? Read more!
And there was the Public Radio host, ever faithful to the multicultural cause, questioning (with an edge in his voice) such a “quaint” custom. Along with him was a female guest offering the usual bromide that such men return home because they desire only "submissive" women. No, one man retorted, Indian men desire a marriage that will keep them within their customs and traditions, and even religions. (Why is it that no one ever explains why so-called submissive women have no right to husbands?)
But the host persisted, never coming out and saying it, but making it clear that he would prefer such men to intermarry with the other races that they find here in the good old USA. The host, a big promoter of “bi-racial” intimacy, at times sounded personally offended by some of the points made by the Indian men, especially the suggestion that they saw no advantages to bedding down in permanent partnership with women of cultures other than their own.
These men may not have known it, but they had just expressed the ultimate no-no. Nothing pierces the heart of a multi-cultist more than the expression of such heresy. If men like these prevail, how will we ever get to mix up the races and bring Paradise on earth? Read more!
Black crime
When the news first broke, in December 2000, about the four bloody bodies found in a soccer field in Wichita, Kansas, the early reports left some people wondering about a possible gangland slaughter. Was it about drugs or turf? Did some bad guys kill some other bad guys, and save the police unnecessary labor?
As it turned out, five victims were meant to be lying in that field, but the fifth one survived – to tell the horrible tale. And, no, it had nothing to do with old-fashioned gangsters evening scores. The murderers were two black brothers, Jonathan and Reginald Carr, and the bloody bodies belonged to four young whites in their 20s.
As the story unfolded, its details were the kind to make you want to cover your eyes and read no further. The vicious nature of what were ongoing, hours-long, unprovoked assaults on people who never deserved such a fate, stunned the senses. For the sake of relevance, I offer the bare bones of the atrocity, but if you insist on the gory details, you can find them in multiple places on the Internet.
The survivor, whose identity was later protected and became known only by the initials H.G., went to stay at the apartment of her boyfriend, Jason Befort, a residence he shared with his roommates Bradley Heyka and Aaron Sander. They were later joined by another friend, Heather Muller. During the night, the Carr brothers, armed with guns or just a gun, invaded this apartment and dragged each of the residents from the room in which he or she had been sleeping into one bedroom.
You can guess at the forced multiple rapes that took place and other detestable, coerced acts, as the Carrs grooved on this lucky night they got to debase a little band of white folks, those people who appear to have such picture-perfect lives, who seem to recover even after bad things happen to them. Well, this night, they were not going to get a chance to recover.
Downplaying the terror
Americans are taught not to fixate on the racial aspect when it comes to assaults by blacks upon whites. Yet, we are conditioned to look upon every abuse perpetrated by a white upon a black as nothing less than an intentional racial affront – whether it happened in 1723, or yesterday. Black thugs, it seems, don't choose their victims on the basis of race – not when they rape them or rob them or murder them. To think otherwise is to think in “racist” terms.
The Carrs invaded the Befort apartment on December 14, 2000, but a week earlier, on December 7, in East Wichita, they carjacked the vehicle of Andres Schreiber, a 23-year-old white man, forced him at gunpoint to withdraw money from ATM machines, and then pistol-whipped him. On December 11, in attempting to carjack the SUV of Linda Walenta, a white woman, one of the Carrs stuck a gun through the window and shot her several times. She died three weeks later. December had certainly been a busy month for the brothers.
Many of us followed this story over the Internet on an almost daily basis, since we wanted to understand why five adults, three of them men, appeared to have submitted themselves, without a struggle, to two brigands brandishing guns, or a gun. It was not clear in the first reports just how many weapons had been involved – one or two? Had just one gun been shared between the two monsters?
I did not want to believe a notion I was slowly coming to harbor about whites, of a newly emerging fear of blacks, different from the physical fear, more of a mental anxiety resulting from unique social programming. Could the fear of being racially “incorrect” have shifted to a fear of fighting back, even when their lives are endangered?
In New York, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, street crime was rampant and did not abate until the early 1990s. During this period, I had listened to endless personal accounts of muggings from white college buddies, office colleagues, and all manner of other acquaintances. This was a period when such disclosures could break out between New Yorkers while standing on a supermarket line or waiting for a bus.
Yet, even in the course of describing muggings they had suffered, I felt that most whites strove to downplay the terror of the encounter and especially to hide the anger and hatred they experienced as a consequence. They would cautiously not belittle their tormentors, in order to show that they held no grudges.
Was their caution based on an inability to be open with me, a black, or was it more than that? Why did I get the feeling that they were just as fearful of revealing anger or downright detestation of their attackers even to fellow whites? Was the desire to appear pristine clean on the race issue subverting their normal feelings?
No one in charge
When, in April 2001, in Cincinnati, a white police officer shot and killed a black man, while trying to arrest him, all hell broke loose, as mobs of blacks rioted. This episode came to exemplify not only white concern for behaving “correctly” in relation to the race of the marauders, but a palpitating fear of black retaliation.
Although the mainstream media did its best to downplay the actuality of blacks randomly attacking whites – pulling them from cars and beating them – the local talk show hosts practiced no such restraint. White listeners were able to call in, share what they had either seen or experienced, and vent their spleen.
The Cincinnati Post reported on stores being looted, fires set, and whites dragged from cars and “beaten to a pulp.” This was the newspaper's first, spontaneous reactions to the barbarity. However, the editors soon learned to rein in such graphic detail, as they scurried to reduce references that might put blacks in a bad light.
Meanwhile, on national television, the country got to see the response of Cincinnati's law enforcement leaders, especially that of Mayor Charles Luken and Police Chief Tom Streicher, both white. Their first press conference is an event I shall always remember.
Mayor Luken preceded the Police Chief into the room, looking distracted and downright helpless. Before speaking, he kept glancing around, as if looking for something or someone. (An exit door, perhaps?) It turns out he was searching for Chief Streicher, whom he claimed should be the person to address the reporters. Finally, in came Streicher, a slight, slender guy in shirtsleeves, looking as fearful as the Mayor. These were not figures who projected a sense of authority.
When some rowdy blacks interrupted the proceedings, yelling loud, incomprehensible remarks, probably vulgarities, the two leaders looked more terrified than ever. Both gave the impression that there was no one in charge. (Perhaps, some day, tapes of this conference will make it to YouTube, with the caption, “How not to run a city.”)
Pacify the unpredictable blacks
Cincinnati talk show hosts (mainly conservative, of course) angrily told of fawning attempts by some whites to downplay the racial overtones of the riots, like carrying flowers to the place where the black suspect was shot, while ignoring the sites where various whites took undeserved beatings. Callers described scenes they had witnessed being filmed by various media outlets, only to see this news coverage censored and watered down, with particular violent events excised from the tapes, apparently, in order to protect the already damaged black image. The city's bureaucrats rushed to meet with Cincinnati's many versions of Al Sharpton, and with Reverend Al himself, who quickly moved in on the fun and games.
It was clear that the primary quest of the whites in Cincinnati was to pacify the unpredictable blacks, and yet not come off as “racists.” The late white nationalist, Dr. William Pierce, in assessing the feeble behavior of the whites, who fell all over themselves to prove what devout “anti-racists” they were, wryly concluded: “An impartial deity looking down on such scenes from above to decide which race should inherit the earth certainly would not choose the Whites.”
In the case of the Carr brothers' crimes, the story hardly moved beyond the environs of the Wichita region. Here, too, certain whites hurried to cover up the racial aspect of the crimes. As the Carr trial approached, word came, unexpectedly, that the trial would be carried on Court TV, which certainly would give it national prominence. As it turned out, more prudent heads prevailed at Court TV, with network executives deciding that the topic was too hot and, by daily focusing on these two heinous black assailants, public sensibilities might be inflamed. In Wichita, two cable TV channels and one local radio station provided continuous coverage of the trial, along with regional Associate Press coverage.
A fantasy of retribution
I first began writing this article last year, before health and other problems intervened. I was gratified when, in December, Professor Walter Williams devoted one of his syndicated columns to the media's concealment of black-on-white crimes. He cited the crime statistics compiled by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, noting that in 2004, “more than twice as many whites were murdered by a black than cases of a white murdering a black.” He feared that by suppressing these realities, the media and black leaders “contribute to a pile of racial kindling awaiting a racial arsonist to set it ablaze.”
In 2004, blacks, who make up 12-13% of the country's population, accounted for almost half of the nation's murder victims primarily at the hands of other blacks. And, although police statistics around the country show that blacks commit more crimes against whites by at least a rate of two to one, the federal government limits its release of crime statistics by race, and fudges some stats by lumping Hispanics/Latinos into the “white” category.
Rape or assaults on white women by black men is one of the leading crimes, according to a 2007 Department of Justice survey. A common banality that is sometimes expressed by angry black men, who may not be offenders themselves, but are disposed towards their brothers who target white women for rape, goes something like this: "If we were to indulge in rape from now until the end of time, we black men could never make up for the millions of rapes of black women at the hands of slave owners."
The last time I heard this atrocious argument was in the course of a heated dispute with a black man, who was “explaining” the actions of two black thugs then awaiting trial for the callous rape and beating of a white woman. In defending the indefensible, he made me wonder if this is what this form of violence is about for certain men. Do such men get themselves worked up fantasizing over what took place in the past, when black men had no power? Could this be the result of some of that “Afrocentric” teaching, with its emphasis on the injustices done to blacks?
In 1999, a white woman in Raleigh, North Carolina, was battered and raped by James Henderson, who broke into her apartment. During the assault, he told her several times that he was attacking her because her forefathers had raped and enslaved his ancestors. In the twisted minds of these men, are today's living, breathing women justifiable targets to act out a fantasy of retribution in the name of people who lived more than a century ago?
I informed the buffoon with whom I was conversing that, while he and his brothers were busy cursing those white slave owners, they should be sure to save some of that hate for the thousands of blacks in this country who not only owned slaves, but traded in slaves and, no doubt, had their way more than a time or two with their female property.
In this symbiotic dance going on between black and white men, perhaps the ultimate demonstration of power over the dominant male is proving he is no longer capable even of protecting his own women – not only from rape, but from seduction as well.
Gun shy policemen
Another example of media and bureaucrats working together to cover up the deeds of miscreant blacks occurred during the mardi gras riots in Seattle, in 2001. Members of marauding gangs dragged white women by their hair, threw them to the ground and kicked them, while men who went to their rescue were pummeled and kicked. During what turned out to be a three-hour seige, the Seattle police stood by, doing nothing. Their police chief had given orders for them to stand down. (Later, members of the force complained of their frustration over not being able to take action.)
One writer, giving an account of the anarchy that he witnessed, expressed astonishment that the thugs who attacked whites “cared nothing about being grossly outnumbered by whites, but moved with impunity through the crowds.” And, indeed, why shouldn't they?
The hours-long siege was not covered on the local television news, much less did it get any national coverage, even though 60 young people ended up in hospitals, with one dead.
Days later, when the flak finally hit the fan, the greatest concern expressed by the city's leaders was not for all the property damage done and the looting, or for the many citizens who were assaulted and injured, or even for the dead Kris Kime, a 23-year-old man who had tried to aid a woman under attack. No, the greatest concern expressed, as reported in the Seattle Times, was that the ugly episode might become a “race issue,” and that blacks might be blamed for the violence they perpetrated.
The police, whose crews finally did go in and disperse the gang bangers, were worried about being charged with “racial profiling.” As reported by the Associated Press, a spokesman said of the police, “They're gun shy about the perceptions of coming down hard on one single group.” The city fathers were determined to make the public believe that the attacks on whites “were not racially motivated.” They seemed to imply that racial motivation would be an even greater crime than the attacks themselves.
No justice, no peace
The knowledge that blacks will support the criminals in their midst, and that timid whites will hesitate to protest too profoundly was never more apparent than in an episode in Long Beach California, in 2006, deemed by the court a "hate crime," and handled as felonious assault.
Three white women, attempting to avoid the advances of a group of aggressive black males, were then set upon by the males and their black female companions. The episode took place on Halloween night, at a public “haunted house,” when a mob of at least 25 to 40 black teenagers took dominance of the residence. Earlier, these scoundrels had terrorized the mostly white visitors to the house by verbally abusing and physically intimidating them.
Witnesses described the unprovoked attacks on the women, who were beaten to the ground by the males. The gangsters' female counterparts then moved in by kicking and beating the prostrate women, first with a skateboard, then with tree branches, and finally with their fists. Two of the victims were knocked unconscious, with one suffering a recessed eye. Another suffered a dozen fractures to her face and damage to the lining around her lungs. All three suffered broken bones.
Ten people, nine males and one female, were finally rounded up, arrested and charged with felony assault, along with a “hate crime” charge. There were 10 defense attorneys, some of whom lauded their clients as “model students,” even as “scholars and athletes” -- propaganda that the California media faithfully parroted, until the testimony of school authorities proved otherwise.
And how did the black parents and friends of the accused, other adults and “activists” in the black community respond to news of this mayhem? Many parents vociferously argued against any punishment for the teenagers and underplayed the seriousness of the crimes. This might account for why there was no display of remorse or contrition on the part of any of the accused. Eddie Jones, apparently a local Al Sharpton wannabe, led demonstrations on behalf of the accused, with dozens of his acolytes shouting the now customary chant of “No justice, no peace.”
However, there was the voice of Joe Hicks, a black man well-known for his dissident opinions, who excoriated the unrepentant thugs and their parents, claiming that the parents exhibited “the same street culture attitudes” of their children.
Except for brief, one-time mentions in the Washington Post and the New York Times, the national media ignored the story. Most white-owned media did not want to touch it. One local newspaper called it a “man-bites-dog tale,” implying that whites are the normal perpetrators of such crimes – in spite of all evidence and statistics to the contrary.
Is it worse if it's a “hate crime?”
Like the quadruple murders that took place in Wichita, there are those crimes that are hard to get one's mind around. Such is the case of the grotesque rapes, torture, mutilations, and murders, in 2006, in Knoxville, Tennessee, of the young white couple Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. As in Wichita, their torment lasted for hours, as four black men and their female accomplice played with the living bodies of these human beings, physically torturing them, as the depraved do with helpless cats and dogs. In typical fashion, the story of this black-on-white crime was not touched by the mainstream media.
Not exactly coming off as apologists, but close to it, were two black columnists, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald and Gregory Kane of the Baltimore Sun and BlackAmericaWeb. Each felt it necessary to make the case that this horrendous offense did not fit into the category of “hate crime,” thereby not motivated by race. There is no way that either know this for a certainty, but blacks typically want to deny the reverse racism feature of black crime. The precept that blacks don't kill for racial reasons has now become a knee-jerk response to black-on-white atrocities.
Pitts ended one of his columns with a mocking taunt to those who grieved over the fate of Christian and Newsom and other victims like them: “Cry me a river!” Who, after all, he suggested, are whites to make such complaints, what with all the baggage they carry from history? “It always amazes me when white people put on the victim hat,” he callously wrote.
Kane, in defending Pitts' taunt, furthered the platitude about “complaining whites,” as he wrote, “No matter how many white victims like Christian and Newsom there are, there are far more black ones who are victims of gangs like the Bloods and Crips.” In other words, blacks are killing far greater numbers of blacks than whites, therefore, blacks, as a group, suffer more.
Kane did not mean his remarks to be, nor were they a comfort to the people who knew and loved this young couple. His crude, insensitive words were in no sense meant to mitigate their deaths. Will the fact that blacks mindlessly kill other blacks help those who are haunted by the photographs of Christian and Newsom's youthful, appealing faces and the open, trusting expressions on them, and the knowledge that, in their darkest hour, no one came to their aid? How do their parents live with such stark, brutal reality that will never go away?
Are we supposed to care whether this atrocity was legally deemed a “race-motivated” crime? Blacks are killing whites in inordinate numbers, and have been doing so for decades. What kind of ideas were flopping around in the fiendish brains of these five degenerates is of no importance. They targeted this young white couple and brutalized them for hours, for entertainment, causing them unimaginable suffering before their lives finally slipped away. We can only guess at the roots of the irrational hatred that could compel five wretches to follow through to the end, to enjoy the power they had to shut down the lives of these two attractive, “privileged” whites.
It isn't necessary to find notes, as in the case of pitiful, little 8-year-old Kevin Shifflett, from his black murderer, ranting about his desire to “kill whites.” Nor do we need eyewitness reports about either of these sadists shouting anti-white racial epithets, as in the Long Beach case. Pitts and Kane seem to imply that this monstrous crime is less so, because it could not be determined that nasty, “racist” thoughts were running through the minds of these warped beasts. Racism, of course, being deemed by the benighted likes of Pitts and Kane, as the World's Worst Crime.
Although in some felony cases we get hints about a possible race angle, we will never know the degree to which authorities caution against officially deeming a crime one of racial hatred, due to their fear of public retaliation -- fear that even a brief skirmish on the part of an addled, infuriated white might set off rioting black mobs. The driving factor in suppressing such information, of course, is fear of blacks, not of whites.
Dredging up the past forever
Here's why reporting on who's committing most of the felony crimes today against ordinary citizens is important. Last year, bills were introduced into both the House of Representatives and the Senate “to provide for the investigation of certain unsolved crimes, and for other purposes.” This potential law is called the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act (H.R. 923 and S.535).
The bill's sponsors, led by Rep. John Lewis, aim to set up an “Investigative Office” in the civil rights units of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, granting authority to agents to plow through old alleged crimes that were committed against blacks prior to December 31, 1969, supposedly during what is known as the “civil rights” period.
On the one hand, a general statement within the bill claims that said past crimes had to result in a “death.” On the other hand, the stated purpose in the introduction of the bill says nothing about death, and adds the vague wording, “and for other purposes,” implying that the law could be used as a catchall for all kinds of infractions of the law that we cannot conceive of at the moment.
If they don't find enough murders to prosecute, will they seek to ferret out half-century old alleged assaults, robberies, larcenies? Could they go back, find an atrocity that had occurred on which a town's police failed to act, and today make that town's government complicit and hold it accountable? Does the “civil rights” period mentioned mean only the recent past, i.e., 1950s through 1960s? The use of the term “civil rights” goes back a long way.
If this law is passed, we can expect that the country will be subjected to yet more black victimology, as the media grooves on the resurrection of old crimes that can unnecessarily stir up animosities. But, hey, it's only white folks who are bound to come out on the short end of the stick, right? The media will delight in sending us images of some 90-year-old codger, handcuffed and forced to do the perp walk. Of course, so much of the details of these events are lost in the mists of time and in dimmed, undependable memories, but no matter. There's bound to be some stories out there that can be milked and exploited. During this period when so many crimes committed by blacks against whites are virtually ignored by the media or rationalized away as justifiable, blacks are being primed to dig up crimes from the past, and make somebody pay.
There are other questions about this law. Just as Congress gradually extended the power of the EEOC to implement the 1964 Civil Rights Act, eventually giving us affirmative action and quotas, so too might the Emmett Till law be modified or reinterpreted, in order to carry out agendas not explicitly cited in the original bill. Just as the Brown vs. Board of Education court decision was “misinterpreted” to eventually justify forced busing and the crippling of school systems around the country, so, too, this law, if passed, could bring unexpected consequences.
Might we be looking at a law that opens the door to crafty mischief makers, to plod through a couple of centuries worth of real and imagined “crimes?” While whites are urged to shush their mouths about current atrocities, black leaders are gearing up, or as they put it, “beefing up investigations” of old crimes against blacks, for what might conceivably be ad infinitum.
See also: The everlasting quest: To transform whites Read more!
As it turned out, five victims were meant to be lying in that field, but the fifth one survived – to tell the horrible tale. And, no, it had nothing to do with old-fashioned gangsters evening scores. The murderers were two black brothers, Jonathan and Reginald Carr, and the bloody bodies belonged to four young whites in their 20s.
As the story unfolded, its details were the kind to make you want to cover your eyes and read no further. The vicious nature of what were ongoing, hours-long, unprovoked assaults on people who never deserved such a fate, stunned the senses. For the sake of relevance, I offer the bare bones of the atrocity, but if you insist on the gory details, you can find them in multiple places on the Internet.
The survivor, whose identity was later protected and became known only by the initials H.G., went to stay at the apartment of her boyfriend, Jason Befort, a residence he shared with his roommates Bradley Heyka and Aaron Sander. They were later joined by another friend, Heather Muller. During the night, the Carr brothers, armed with guns or just a gun, invaded this apartment and dragged each of the residents from the room in which he or she had been sleeping into one bedroom.
You can guess at the forced multiple rapes that took place and other detestable, coerced acts, as the Carrs grooved on this lucky night they got to debase a little band of white folks, those people who appear to have such picture-perfect lives, who seem to recover even after bad things happen to them. Well, this night, they were not going to get a chance to recover.
Downplaying the terror
Americans are taught not to fixate on the racial aspect when it comes to assaults by blacks upon whites. Yet, we are conditioned to look upon every abuse perpetrated by a white upon a black as nothing less than an intentional racial affront – whether it happened in 1723, or yesterday. Black thugs, it seems, don't choose their victims on the basis of race – not when they rape them or rob them or murder them. To think otherwise is to think in “racist” terms.
The Carrs invaded the Befort apartment on December 14, 2000, but a week earlier, on December 7, in East Wichita, they carjacked the vehicle of Andres Schreiber, a 23-year-old white man, forced him at gunpoint to withdraw money from ATM machines, and then pistol-whipped him. On December 11, in attempting to carjack the SUV of Linda Walenta, a white woman, one of the Carrs stuck a gun through the window and shot her several times. She died three weeks later. December had certainly been a busy month for the brothers.
Many of us followed this story over the Internet on an almost daily basis, since we wanted to understand why five adults, three of them men, appeared to have submitted themselves, without a struggle, to two brigands brandishing guns, or a gun. It was not clear in the first reports just how many weapons had been involved – one or two? Had just one gun been shared between the two monsters?
I did not want to believe a notion I was slowly coming to harbor about whites, of a newly emerging fear of blacks, different from the physical fear, more of a mental anxiety resulting from unique social programming. Could the fear of being racially “incorrect” have shifted to a fear of fighting back, even when their lives are endangered?
In New York, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, street crime was rampant and did not abate until the early 1990s. During this period, I had listened to endless personal accounts of muggings from white college buddies, office colleagues, and all manner of other acquaintances. This was a period when such disclosures could break out between New Yorkers while standing on a supermarket line or waiting for a bus.
Yet, even in the course of describing muggings they had suffered, I felt that most whites strove to downplay the terror of the encounter and especially to hide the anger and hatred they experienced as a consequence. They would cautiously not belittle their tormentors, in order to show that they held no grudges.
Was their caution based on an inability to be open with me, a black, or was it more than that? Why did I get the feeling that they were just as fearful of revealing anger or downright detestation of their attackers even to fellow whites? Was the desire to appear pristine clean on the race issue subverting their normal feelings?
No one in charge
When, in April 2001, in Cincinnati, a white police officer shot and killed a black man, while trying to arrest him, all hell broke loose, as mobs of blacks rioted. This episode came to exemplify not only white concern for behaving “correctly” in relation to the race of the marauders, but a palpitating fear of black retaliation.
Although the mainstream media did its best to downplay the actuality of blacks randomly attacking whites – pulling them from cars and beating them – the local talk show hosts practiced no such restraint. White listeners were able to call in, share what they had either seen or experienced, and vent their spleen.
The Cincinnati Post reported on stores being looted, fires set, and whites dragged from cars and “beaten to a pulp.” This was the newspaper's first, spontaneous reactions to the barbarity. However, the editors soon learned to rein in such graphic detail, as they scurried to reduce references that might put blacks in a bad light.
Meanwhile, on national television, the country got to see the response of Cincinnati's law enforcement leaders, especially that of Mayor Charles Luken and Police Chief Tom Streicher, both white. Their first press conference is an event I shall always remember.
Mayor Luken preceded the Police Chief into the room, looking distracted and downright helpless. Before speaking, he kept glancing around, as if looking for something or someone. (An exit door, perhaps?) It turns out he was searching for Chief Streicher, whom he claimed should be the person to address the reporters. Finally, in came Streicher, a slight, slender guy in shirtsleeves, looking as fearful as the Mayor. These were not figures who projected a sense of authority.
When some rowdy blacks interrupted the proceedings, yelling loud, incomprehensible remarks, probably vulgarities, the two leaders looked more terrified than ever. Both gave the impression that there was no one in charge. (Perhaps, some day, tapes of this conference will make it to YouTube, with the caption, “How not to run a city.”)
Pacify the unpredictable blacks
Cincinnati talk show hosts (mainly conservative, of course) angrily told of fawning attempts by some whites to downplay the racial overtones of the riots, like carrying flowers to the place where the black suspect was shot, while ignoring the sites where various whites took undeserved beatings. Callers described scenes they had witnessed being filmed by various media outlets, only to see this news coverage censored and watered down, with particular violent events excised from the tapes, apparently, in order to protect the already damaged black image. The city's bureaucrats rushed to meet with Cincinnati's many versions of Al Sharpton, and with Reverend Al himself, who quickly moved in on the fun and games.
It was clear that the primary quest of the whites in Cincinnati was to pacify the unpredictable blacks, and yet not come off as “racists.” The late white nationalist, Dr. William Pierce, in assessing the feeble behavior of the whites, who fell all over themselves to prove what devout “anti-racists” they were, wryly concluded: “An impartial deity looking down on such scenes from above to decide which race should inherit the earth certainly would not choose the Whites.”
In the case of the Carr brothers' crimes, the story hardly moved beyond the environs of the Wichita region. Here, too, certain whites hurried to cover up the racial aspect of the crimes. As the Carr trial approached, word came, unexpectedly, that the trial would be carried on Court TV, which certainly would give it national prominence. As it turned out, more prudent heads prevailed at Court TV, with network executives deciding that the topic was too hot and, by daily focusing on these two heinous black assailants, public sensibilities might be inflamed. In Wichita, two cable TV channels and one local radio station provided continuous coverage of the trial, along with regional Associate Press coverage.
A fantasy of retribution
I first began writing this article last year, before health and other problems intervened. I was gratified when, in December, Professor Walter Williams devoted one of his syndicated columns to the media's concealment of black-on-white crimes. He cited the crime statistics compiled by the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, noting that in 2004, “more than twice as many whites were murdered by a black than cases of a white murdering a black.” He feared that by suppressing these realities, the media and black leaders “contribute to a pile of racial kindling awaiting a racial arsonist to set it ablaze.”
In 2004, blacks, who make up 12-13% of the country's population, accounted for almost half of the nation's murder victims primarily at the hands of other blacks. And, although police statistics around the country show that blacks commit more crimes against whites by at least a rate of two to one, the federal government limits its release of crime statistics by race, and fudges some stats by lumping Hispanics/Latinos into the “white” category.
Rape or assaults on white women by black men is one of the leading crimes, according to a 2007 Department of Justice survey. A common banality that is sometimes expressed by angry black men, who may not be offenders themselves, but are disposed towards their brothers who target white women for rape, goes something like this: "If we were to indulge in rape from now until the end of time, we black men could never make up for the millions of rapes of black women at the hands of slave owners."
The last time I heard this atrocious argument was in the course of a heated dispute with a black man, who was “explaining” the actions of two black thugs then awaiting trial for the callous rape and beating of a white woman. In defending the indefensible, he made me wonder if this is what this form of violence is about for certain men. Do such men get themselves worked up fantasizing over what took place in the past, when black men had no power? Could this be the result of some of that “Afrocentric” teaching, with its emphasis on the injustices done to blacks?
In 1999, a white woman in Raleigh, North Carolina, was battered and raped by James Henderson, who broke into her apartment. During the assault, he told her several times that he was attacking her because her forefathers had raped and enslaved his ancestors. In the twisted minds of these men, are today's living, breathing women justifiable targets to act out a fantasy of retribution in the name of people who lived more than a century ago?
I informed the buffoon with whom I was conversing that, while he and his brothers were busy cursing those white slave owners, they should be sure to save some of that hate for the thousands of blacks in this country who not only owned slaves, but traded in slaves and, no doubt, had their way more than a time or two with their female property.
In this symbiotic dance going on between black and white men, perhaps the ultimate demonstration of power over the dominant male is proving he is no longer capable even of protecting his own women – not only from rape, but from seduction as well.
Gun shy policemen
Another example of media and bureaucrats working together to cover up the deeds of miscreant blacks occurred during the mardi gras riots in Seattle, in 2001. Members of marauding gangs dragged white women by their hair, threw them to the ground and kicked them, while men who went to their rescue were pummeled and kicked. During what turned out to be a three-hour seige, the Seattle police stood by, doing nothing. Their police chief had given orders for them to stand down. (Later, members of the force complained of their frustration over not being able to take action.)
One writer, giving an account of the anarchy that he witnessed, expressed astonishment that the thugs who attacked whites “cared nothing about being grossly outnumbered by whites, but moved with impunity through the crowds.” And, indeed, why shouldn't they?
The hours-long siege was not covered on the local television news, much less did it get any national coverage, even though 60 young people ended up in hospitals, with one dead.
Days later, when the flak finally hit the fan, the greatest concern expressed by the city's leaders was not for all the property damage done and the looting, or for the many citizens who were assaulted and injured, or even for the dead Kris Kime, a 23-year-old man who had tried to aid a woman under attack. No, the greatest concern expressed, as reported in the Seattle Times, was that the ugly episode might become a “race issue,” and that blacks might be blamed for the violence they perpetrated.
The police, whose crews finally did go in and disperse the gang bangers, were worried about being charged with “racial profiling.” As reported by the Associated Press, a spokesman said of the police, “They're gun shy about the perceptions of coming down hard on one single group.” The city fathers were determined to make the public believe that the attacks on whites “were not racially motivated.” They seemed to imply that racial motivation would be an even greater crime than the attacks themselves.
No justice, no peace
The knowledge that blacks will support the criminals in their midst, and that timid whites will hesitate to protest too profoundly was never more apparent than in an episode in Long Beach California, in 2006, deemed by the court a "hate crime," and handled as felonious assault.
Three white women, attempting to avoid the advances of a group of aggressive black males, were then set upon by the males and their black female companions. The episode took place on Halloween night, at a public “haunted house,” when a mob of at least 25 to 40 black teenagers took dominance of the residence. Earlier, these scoundrels had terrorized the mostly white visitors to the house by verbally abusing and physically intimidating them.
Witnesses described the unprovoked attacks on the women, who were beaten to the ground by the males. The gangsters' female counterparts then moved in by kicking and beating the prostrate women, first with a skateboard, then with tree branches, and finally with their fists. Two of the victims were knocked unconscious, with one suffering a recessed eye. Another suffered a dozen fractures to her face and damage to the lining around her lungs. All three suffered broken bones.
Ten people, nine males and one female, were finally rounded up, arrested and charged with felony assault, along with a “hate crime” charge. There were 10 defense attorneys, some of whom lauded their clients as “model students,” even as “scholars and athletes” -- propaganda that the California media faithfully parroted, until the testimony of school authorities proved otherwise.
And how did the black parents and friends of the accused, other adults and “activists” in the black community respond to news of this mayhem? Many parents vociferously argued against any punishment for the teenagers and underplayed the seriousness of the crimes. This might account for why there was no display of remorse or contrition on the part of any of the accused. Eddie Jones, apparently a local Al Sharpton wannabe, led demonstrations on behalf of the accused, with dozens of his acolytes shouting the now customary chant of “No justice, no peace.”
However, there was the voice of Joe Hicks, a black man well-known for his dissident opinions, who excoriated the unrepentant thugs and their parents, claiming that the parents exhibited “the same street culture attitudes” of their children.
Except for brief, one-time mentions in the Washington Post and the New York Times, the national media ignored the story. Most white-owned media did not want to touch it. One local newspaper called it a “man-bites-dog tale,” implying that whites are the normal perpetrators of such crimes – in spite of all evidence and statistics to the contrary.
Is it worse if it's a “hate crime?”
Like the quadruple murders that took place in Wichita, there are those crimes that are hard to get one's mind around. Such is the case of the grotesque rapes, torture, mutilations, and murders, in 2006, in Knoxville, Tennessee, of the young white couple Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom. As in Wichita, their torment lasted for hours, as four black men and their female accomplice played with the living bodies of these human beings, physically torturing them, as the depraved do with helpless cats and dogs. In typical fashion, the story of this black-on-white crime was not touched by the mainstream media.
Not exactly coming off as apologists, but close to it, were two black columnists, Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald and Gregory Kane of the Baltimore Sun and BlackAmericaWeb. Each felt it necessary to make the case that this horrendous offense did not fit into the category of “hate crime,” thereby not motivated by race. There is no way that either know this for a certainty, but blacks typically want to deny the reverse racism feature of black crime. The precept that blacks don't kill for racial reasons has now become a knee-jerk response to black-on-white atrocities.
Pitts ended one of his columns with a mocking taunt to those who grieved over the fate of Christian and Newsom and other victims like them: “Cry me a river!” Who, after all, he suggested, are whites to make such complaints, what with all the baggage they carry from history? “It always amazes me when white people put on the victim hat,” he callously wrote.
Kane, in defending Pitts' taunt, furthered the platitude about “complaining whites,” as he wrote, “No matter how many white victims like Christian and Newsom there are, there are far more black ones who are victims of gangs like the Bloods and Crips.” In other words, blacks are killing far greater numbers of blacks than whites, therefore, blacks, as a group, suffer more.
Kane did not mean his remarks to be, nor were they a comfort to the people who knew and loved this young couple. His crude, insensitive words were in no sense meant to mitigate their deaths. Will the fact that blacks mindlessly kill other blacks help those who are haunted by the photographs of Christian and Newsom's youthful, appealing faces and the open, trusting expressions on them, and the knowledge that, in their darkest hour, no one came to their aid? How do their parents live with such stark, brutal reality that will never go away?
Are we supposed to care whether this atrocity was legally deemed a “race-motivated” crime? Blacks are killing whites in inordinate numbers, and have been doing so for decades. What kind of ideas were flopping around in the fiendish brains of these five degenerates is of no importance. They targeted this young white couple and brutalized them for hours, for entertainment, causing them unimaginable suffering before their lives finally slipped away. We can only guess at the roots of the irrational hatred that could compel five wretches to follow through to the end, to enjoy the power they had to shut down the lives of these two attractive, “privileged” whites.
It isn't necessary to find notes, as in the case of pitiful, little 8-year-old Kevin Shifflett, from his black murderer, ranting about his desire to “kill whites.” Nor do we need eyewitness reports about either of these sadists shouting anti-white racial epithets, as in the Long Beach case. Pitts and Kane seem to imply that this monstrous crime is less so, because it could not be determined that nasty, “racist” thoughts were running through the minds of these warped beasts. Racism, of course, being deemed by the benighted likes of Pitts and Kane, as the World's Worst Crime.
Although in some felony cases we get hints about a possible race angle, we will never know the degree to which authorities caution against officially deeming a crime one of racial hatred, due to their fear of public retaliation -- fear that even a brief skirmish on the part of an addled, infuriated white might set off rioting black mobs. The driving factor in suppressing such information, of course, is fear of blacks, not of whites.
Dredging up the past forever
Here's why reporting on who's committing most of the felony crimes today against ordinary citizens is important. Last year, bills were introduced into both the House of Representatives and the Senate “to provide for the investigation of certain unsolved crimes, and for other purposes.” This potential law is called the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act (H.R. 923 and S.535).
The bill's sponsors, led by Rep. John Lewis, aim to set up an “Investigative Office” in the civil rights units of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, granting authority to agents to plow through old alleged crimes that were committed against blacks prior to December 31, 1969, supposedly during what is known as the “civil rights” period.
On the one hand, a general statement within the bill claims that said past crimes had to result in a “death.” On the other hand, the stated purpose in the introduction of the bill says nothing about death, and adds the vague wording, “and for other purposes,” implying that the law could be used as a catchall for all kinds of infractions of the law that we cannot conceive of at the moment.
If they don't find enough murders to prosecute, will they seek to ferret out half-century old alleged assaults, robberies, larcenies? Could they go back, find an atrocity that had occurred on which a town's police failed to act, and today make that town's government complicit and hold it accountable? Does the “civil rights” period mentioned mean only the recent past, i.e., 1950s through 1960s? The use of the term “civil rights” goes back a long way.
If this law is passed, we can expect that the country will be subjected to yet more black victimology, as the media grooves on the resurrection of old crimes that can unnecessarily stir up animosities. But, hey, it's only white folks who are bound to come out on the short end of the stick, right? The media will delight in sending us images of some 90-year-old codger, handcuffed and forced to do the perp walk. Of course, so much of the details of these events are lost in the mists of time and in dimmed, undependable memories, but no matter. There's bound to be some stories out there that can be milked and exploited. During this period when so many crimes committed by blacks against whites are virtually ignored by the media or rationalized away as justifiable, blacks are being primed to dig up crimes from the past, and make somebody pay.
There are other questions about this law. Just as Congress gradually extended the power of the EEOC to implement the 1964 Civil Rights Act, eventually giving us affirmative action and quotas, so too might the Emmett Till law be modified or reinterpreted, in order to carry out agendas not explicitly cited in the original bill. Just as the Brown vs. Board of Education court decision was “misinterpreted” to eventually justify forced busing and the crippling of school systems around the country, so, too, this law, if passed, could bring unexpected consequences.
Might we be looking at a law that opens the door to crafty mischief makers, to plod through a couple of centuries worth of real and imagined “crimes?” While whites are urged to shush their mouths about current atrocities, black leaders are gearing up, or as they put it, “beefing up investigations” of old crimes against blacks, for what might conceivably be ad infinitum.
See also: The everlasting quest: To transform whites Read more!
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