‘Barack, I Didn’t Do It for This’: An Homage to Andrew Goodman
“Black America isn’t running for President. Barack Obama is. However deplorable Wright’s views were, I don’t think they were bad enough to require Obama to refuse to participate in one of the most important institutions of the neighborhood and city in which he had chosen to become involved.”
Let’s do a thought experiment and transpose these words onto John McCain (or any other white Presidential candidate). Let’s suppose that McCain belong to a church where David Duke was the pastor:
“White America isn’t running for President. John McCain is. However deplorable Duke’s views were, I don’t think they were bad enough to require McCain to refuse to participate in one of the most important institutions of the neighborhood and city in which he had chosen to become involved.”
Yeah, that would fly. Sure.
All of this is of a piece with the double standards (and implicit racism) of liberal America. Whites are held to the highest expectations and if one “racist” remark passes from the lips of Imus or Geraldine Ferraro or whomever, they must be ritually cast overboard. But brown peoples are not expected to meet the exacting standards that are set for whites – they are after all from a different cultural tradition and have a history of being oppressed and besides, though we must never, ever utter these words out loud and must in fact vigorously denounce them at every opportunity, we know deep down that they are really inferior to us and can’t be held to the same standards as the “civilized” races. This is all of a piece with affirmative action, the license that is given to Palestinians to hurl rockets into civilian areas, the lack of outrage regarding Darfur, the over the top outrage regarding Guantanamo, the acceptance (even celebration – rap “artists”, graffiti “artists”,etc.) of dysfunctional behavior in the minority community, etc. If you filter everything thru the idea of one (higher) standard for “us” (for those to whom much is given, much is expected) and a different (lower) standard for “them”, then you can come up with the left’s position on every single issue.
