A Minority Report About Minorities
by Burt Prelutsky
January 28, 2010
Because white Americans are so terrified of being called racists, they rarely marshal a defense. Instead, they tend to stammer and stutter, muttering “Am not” under their breath, mimicking an angry child who has been called a baby by an older sibling.
For instance, the astronomical drop-out rates among Latino students is generally blamed on whites. Because nothing negative must ever be laid at the feet of minority groups, a sensitive, politically correct white majority must always hold itself accountable for their failings. Well, not all white people, of course. As a rule, white liberals are always prepared to link arms with Hispanic race hustlers to blame conservatives.
Here in Los Angeles, a 10-year study found that 30% of students who were placed in English language classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they entered high school, which greatly increased their chances of bailing out before they graduated.
As if that’s not depressing enough, over half of those students were born in the United States!
America, as people are fond of saying, is a land of immigrants. We, or at least our ancestors, came from all over the world. But I dare you to come up with a group of immigrants from Asia, Europe or Africa, whose children aren’t speaking English within a year of arriving on our shores. But here are all these native-born Americans who, even after several years in school, can only speak Spanish. And that’s the fault of gringos? I don’t think so.
This brings us to America’s black population. Slavery was evil, we all agree. In spite of the fact that it was commonplace in most places on earth in the old days, and is still practiced in Africa these days, doesn’t give America a pass. America, after all, isn’t just another country, even if Barack Obama doesn’t seem to think it’s anything special.
In the aftermath of slavery, we still had segregation and Jim Crow laws in several states. However, in 1960, in spite of that, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was just 19%. What’s more, between 1890 and 1940, blacks had a higher marriage rate than whites. If you go back to1925, 85% of black children were raised in two-parent families.
Today, the illegitimacy rate is 70% overall, and over 90% in America’s inner cities. Two-parent homes are the rare exception. In overwhelming numbers, black men have abdicated their responsibilities to black women and children, and yet they continue to demand respect and take umbrage when it’s not forthcoming.
In 2007, blacks represented roughly 13% of the population, but constituted 43% of all murder victims. And in 93% of those cases, they were killed by their fellow blacks.
President Lyndon Johnson took a lot of bows in 1964 for getting the Civil Rights Act through Congress, even though just a few years earlier, Senator Lyndon Johnson had not only voted against the bill that repealed the poll tax, but even voted against the anti-lynching bill.
When you see what’s happened to the black community over the past 46 years, it might be argued that LBJ did far less actual damage to decent black families as a bigoted senator than he did as a liberal president.
Yet another tragic irony is that LBJ is a large part of the reason that, year in and year out, 90% of blacks will leave the plantation just long enough to vote for the party of Strom Thurmond, James Eastland, Herman Talmadge, Orville Faubus, George Wallace, Bull Connor and Robert Byrd.
September 18, 2009
Don't you media elitists dare rob MLK and all of us who fought alongside him of that victory by shielding the first black president like he was some kind of boy. He's a man. Equal to his white-male predecessors in every single respect. And if he can't take the heat in the hottest darned kitchen on the planet, he needs to get the heck out and take his nanny press with him.
I say you can do it by accusing a few million white folks who are not racists and just continue to accuse them of being racists on a daily basis. Keep doing it day after day and week after week, and pretty soon you might just have what you want. The human spirit cannot absorb but so much of this before the inclination to hate the accusers gains traction.
What Bob Herbert wrote:
"The Scourge Persists"
By BOB HERBERT NYTimes summary:
"The fact that a black man is in the White House has so unsettled much of white America that the lid is coming off the racism that had been simmering all along."
09/19/09
Response By Chuck Hakes
Mr. Herbert, what you have written is a shame and a sham. I can only assume that your purpose is to paint anyone who disagrees with Obama and his policies as being racist.
I don't care that Obama is black. I care that he is a Marxist who will take away American freedom and bring us totalitarianism, and I don't like it.
I would remind you that Obama listened to Rev. Wright's Marxist black liberation theology for 20 years. A Harvard lawyer can comprehend what he listens to for 20 years and wouldn't listen for that long if he were in disagreement.
I don't like that Obama's slide into the presidency was greased by half- truths, and lies, and "trial balloons" like his early campaign attempts to avoid patriotic icons and practices until he caught on that wouldn't work.
I don't like that he is marginalizing our elected representatives by having a cadre of "czars."
I don't like that he has no covenant with the American people and has lost all credibility with some of us, not because of the color of his skin but because we can't believe him.
I don't like that he wants to scrap the world's finest health care system to make us all dependent on the federal government for our lives. We don't need to throw away something that works well and satisfies 80% of our citizens in favor of something experimental and exceedingly more costly. Obama's arguments for socialized medicine are rife with misinformation, half truths, and false data. And that's too big a topic to go into here.
Do you realize, Mr. Herbert, that the black vote went 95% for Obama and that Obama got 37% of the white vote while winning 53% to 46%? Tell us, Mr. Herbert, why did more than 5% of whites vote for Obama? That would have been commensurate with the black vote for McCain.
The white candidate, McCain got 63% of the white vote. The black candidate, Obama got 95% of the black vote. If Obama had gotten 67% of the black vote, the same percentage that McCain got of the white vote, McCain would have won with 52% or more of the vote.
Racism was at work on Election Day all right. It favored Obama.
Money favored Obama also. His margin of victory over McCain cost $17.53 per vote. The source of these funds has never been identified. Obama's initial agreement to use matching funds was a subterfuge. The strange coincidental sequence about his funding was that first, Obama agreed to matching funds. Simultaneously he avoided displaying patriotism. Then he reneged on his matching funds agreement. Then the funds rolled in, from whence has long since been buried. Then Obama realized that he was going to have to display patriotism to get more votes, so he did it.
Given this sequence, I ask if Obama's avoidance of patriotic display was in some way related to the decisions of some to donate to his campaign.. We might understand this better if we knew who donated.
Do you like fairness issues, Mr. Herbert? Is it fair to buy the presidency? Who bought it for Obama?
You and others may paint me as racist for what I've just said to you. You and others are not the judges of my "political correctness." I do not grant you that power and I do not care what you think of me.
I reserve the right to approve or disapprove of anyone I choose for political reasons, regardless of their race, creed, or color. That, Mr. Herbert, is true egalitarianism without co-dependency.
So don't even think of implying that my disapproval of Barack Obama and his administration is racist.
Don't play the race card with me. It is not a trump.
Chuck Hakes
And just who didn't see all of this coming? Come on, folks! Having you been paying attention for the past 30 years? In virtually every state and community in this nation liberals have been blaming racism for any failure, miscalculation, controversy or outright act of corruption by black elected officials. There has been a standard operating methodology in place for all of the 40 years I've been doing talk radio:
One-two-three. This scenario has been played out so many times in modern American history it would have been impossible to keep count. Now a black man has become president. Some fools thought that this would help our country move beyond racial division. Well --- perhaps it would have, if only evil white people had been smart enough not to object to anything this man might propose. But it didn't work out that way, so now the left and the media are finding racists under every bed, behind every utility pole and on every street in America. Newsweek Magazine even ran a totally absurd story about racism in babies ... putting a picture of a white infant on the cover with the title "Is your baby racist?" Read that story and you'll find that the authors think that it would be horrifying if a white child were to ever express pride in being white.
Last year, before the election, some of us predicted that if (or when) Barack Obama became president that this would happen. We said that every time his policies met with opposition the left would start screaming racism. So what happened when we said that this would happen? Well ... you guessed it. We were called racists. You just can't imagine how surprised and shocked we were.
So .. here is what Jimmy Carter, Bill Moyers, Hank Johnson, much of the Washington and New York press corps, Newsweek Magazine and the brilliant thinkers on the American left would have you believe of Americans right now:
Yeah .. the moonbat left really has us figured out, don't they?
08/25/09
By Lloyd Marcus
Thank you very, very much. You see us poor helpless inferior blacks (oh forgive me, I must be politically correct, "African Americans"), and you want to help us using your superior intellect. After all, we could not possibly succeed in this racist, homophobic and greedy country without your assistance.
07/24/09
by Marv Franklin
They really want lessons learned?
We're all tired of hearing Obama's apologists trying to cover for his calling the Cambridge Police "stupid."
Obama's defenders have chosen to drag out and deflect the debate by saying it is a good opportunity to discuss racism in America and see what lessons can be learned, because we can't talk about it enough. Well, "yes we can".
If their purpose is truly to learn lessons, then here is a list for their consideration:
1) Professor Gates should not have "cried wolf". He should not have called it racism or race profiling. It wasn't. An intelligent grown man, even though he may easily feel persecuted, should be able to recognize when the police are trying to look after his property and not lose control of himself.
2) President Obama should not have escalated the racist thrust of the event by saying that Sgt. Crowley was stupid, thus revealing again his own bias against anyone wearing a uniform -- military or police.
The Professor who teaches African and African American relationships showed his own bias by attacking the sergeant.
The President who professes bringing people together, once again showed his distrust of uniformed personnel and of whites in general. He forgot who he was and pretended to be Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson who make their living elevating racism.
There is a third lesson for the President: he should not make judgments on things where he does not have the facts or understand them. The President will not accept that obvious conclusion because it would also pertain to the auto industry, financial institutions and health care,and the economy.
I fear as long as we have the Democratic Party leadership that we have now, that divisiveness will be cooked up at every opportunity.
One last lesson learned and this one is for Sergeant Crowley: "Congratulations for doing such a professional job. You have demonstrated that the Cambridge police department is superior in conduct and performance to that of either the race-baiting Professor Gates, or the racially biased and reactionary President. Now you can visit the White House and have B.O. lecture you on how 'we can all do a better job,' and you will have to bite your tongue and listen to his platitudes. However, whether President B.O. knows it or not, accepts it or not, you could not have done a better job. The rest of America is proud of you and your compatriots who keep this country safe."
November 6, 2008 By Anne Wortham Fellow Americans, Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America. I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth. Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism. So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. |
Obama would not have selected Sotomayor if he did not share her convictions. And there is nothing in his writings or career to hint at disagreement. Thus it comes down to the senators, especially the Republicans. A vote for Sonia Sotomayor is a vote to affirm that race-based justice deserves its own seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
I think we are beginning — after less than four months — to see fissures in Obama’s pentellic statuary. And the cracks will widen, because in about six areas he has taken on human nature itself, age-old logic, and common sense-opponents that even a Harvard Law degree and Chicago organizing are no match for.
By Anne Wortham,
Fellow Americans,
Please know: I am Black
I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .
I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America.
Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.
I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University 's Kennedy School of Government.
I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.
Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.
So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.
So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America . Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.
There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.
ANNE WORTHAM
Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University 's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.
She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.
Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.
She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.
Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.
Why William Ayres And Others Matter
By Matt Schwartz
Guest Columnist
Marietta Journal
Assume that the mass media reveals the following about Senator John McCain: McCain has had an ongoing professional relationship with an avid member of the Ku Klux Klan named Bill Bayers. Back in the late 1960’s, Bayers was very active in intimidation campaigns that targeted black communities with cross burnings and other nefarious activities. Bayers himself even burned down a black church. Although no one was actually harmed by that particular arson, Bayers’ Klan colleagues did murder a number of police officers and other innocent victims. Bayers was never convicted for the crimes we know he committed because of Fourth Amendment technicalities. Bayers has since become the CEO of a non-profit corporation that offers educational assistance to communities that happen to be all white. McCain has volunteered as a board member for this 501(c) organization and he actively raised funds for it. Bayers’ wife (also an avowed member of the Ku Klux Klan) worked with Cindy McCain on a church board, and Cindy organized two events where Mr. & Mrs. Bayers addressed the audience on religious topics after they were openly praised by Cindy McCain. The New York Times reports that John McCain actually launched his first senatorial campaign in Bill Bayers’ living room. When confronted about his longstanding relationship with Bayers, McCain claims that he strongly condemns Bayers’ Klan activities and he is careful to point out that while these crimes were being committed, he was honorably serving the United States thousands of miles away as a reluctant guest of the Hanoi Hilton. Despite the fact that Bayers and his wife recently admitted in a televised interview that they wished they had burned even more crosses and black churches, McCain nevertheless characterizes Bayers as “mainstream,” and he argues that any attention on his relationship with Bayers is nothing but a distraction from the “real issues” of the 2008 presidential election.
Exit question #1: How many seconds after this story hits the news cycle does McCain rightly become a pariah in the American political landscape?
Exit Question #2: Given the moral equivalence between Weatherman William Ayers and Grand Wizard Bill Bayers, how in the world is Barack Obama not a pariah in the American political landscape?
As if his connection with William Ayers was not enough to disqualify Obama from holding an esteemed U.S. Senate seat (let alone the highest elected office in our country), Obama’s judgment and character are irrevocably stained with a great many other associations that should be loathsome to the American public. Case in point: Obama’s troubling relationship with his spiritual counselor of choice, Jeremiah Wright. This is a man whose anti-white, anti-American and anti-Semitic sentiments are a matter of public record. Wright (1) spiritually counseled Obama for twenty years; (2) he married Barack and Michelle Obama; (3) he wrote a forward for Obama’s book; and (4) he served on Obama’s campaign until one of his visceral anti-American screeds was broadcasted on Fox News. Obama counters by trying to convince us with a straight face that he never heard Wright say anything like that in the last 20 years. If we give him the benefit of the doubt on this, by the same standards of critical thinking, we also need to concede the existence of the Tooth Fairy.
Obama has made much hay about his tenure as a “Community Organizer”. It is rather surprising that he actually chose to use those words to define his experience. “Community Organizer” is not a description of some garden variety volunteer who helps unemployed folks with job training programs. It is a specific term of art defined by one of the most significant philosophical influences on Barack Obama -- Saul Alinksy. Alinsky was an avowed Communist who wrote in his opus, ‘Rules for Radicals,” that the purpose of community organizers is to essentially indoctrinate poor people with Marxist ideology and turn them into social agitators who will eventually wrest control and power from the upper and middle classes. Rules for Radicals enumerates many shady tactics that should be used to accomplish this goal. The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (“ACORN” -- an organization with which Obama has worked very closely) has embraced Alinsky’s play book and sought to advance his cause by employing such unlawful tactics as false voter registration and voter intimidation. By identifying himself specifically as a “Community Organizer,” Obama has, at a minimum, brazenly underscored his empathy for Saul Alinksy’s grand Communist vision.
Obama’s voting record corroborates his own suspected radicalism. It is the most Left Wing record in the Senate, even surpassing that of Bernard Sanders (the only Socialist in the U.S. Senate) by four places. One need not look beyond Obama’s own family to discern perpetual support for these recurring themes in his life. Obama’s mother was a suspected Communist. Frank Davis Marshall, the libertine poet with whom she cavorted during Obama’s youth, was a card-carrying member of the Communist party and an admitted strong influence on Barack Obama. Obama’s wife, Michelle, authored a racist college thesis and carelessly expressed her displeasure for the United States before Obama’s handlers had a sufficient opportunity to prep her for a meaningful role in Obama’s national campaign.
In the wake of this disturbing pattern of associations, we are left wondering whether Marxism is really dead in America or whether it has been cleverly repackaged as “Change You Can Believe In”. To the extent that Obama & Co. answer suspicions of Marxism with categorical denials, there is still a glimmer of hope for our country. For it would be much worse, of course, if their answer was instead, “So what?” Unfortunately, it appears that this frightening position will be generally acceptable in the near future, and that is when the curtain will finally begin to close on freedom in America -- Not with a foreign invasion or a bloody revolution, mind you, but with a majority vote of short-sighted, manipulated people who have been brainwashed to value government managed egalitarianism over their own liberty.
MATT SCHWARTZ
