The New Republic Joins the Racial Demagogues and Hucksters
At the beginning of this month, I wrote what I called a “swan song” for the old New Republic. I was wary of the direction the magazine would take: was I wrong, too pessimistic? The current issue of the magazine gave me hope that perhaps I was. Its cover story was written by the always intelligent and perceptive Paul Berman, a man who has emerged as one of the best critics of radical Islam in our day. Titled “The Thought Police,” Berman’s article reviews the important new book by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea addressing how extremist governments in the Muslim world are using terms like “blasphemy” and “apostasy” to advance a very dangerous move to power.
Just as I was having second thoughts, I looked at TNR’s website today and found a column by a writer named Rochelle Gurstein. The magazine identifies her as a new regular monthly columnist and author of a book titled The Repeal of Reticence, which the description on Amazon shows to be a serious cultural history. I will get to her analysis after pointing to commentaries that correctly point to what is going on.
To begin, let us look at some intelligent commentary about the issues surrounding Treyvon Martin’s sad death. Roger L. Simon perceptively addresses them in his latest column, and Victor Davis Hanson addresses them with his usual brilliant prose in a column called “Obama’s Demagoguery” posted at NRO. The real point about the Trayvon Martin case — which David Horowitz also points out with a first-rate comment — is this:
If the demonstrators were merely calling for an investigation, that would be proper. But the cries for retribution, and the accusations of racism which dominate the public demonstrations are not. And that goes for the statement of the president as well. Not willing to be separated from his racial constituency, even when they are behaving badly, Obama has lent his prestige to the insinuation that the crime was inspired by the victim’s race. Otherwise there would be no reason to mention the fact that “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” Everyone who has a son should be concerned by the loss of this life. By making it racial, the president is establishing guilt without evidence, and indicting non-black America as well.
Victor Davis Hanson calls attention to the following clear demagoguery that our president is now engaging in which has the effect of calling out the racial lynch mobs:
The dispute went national and was soon further sensationalized along racial lines. Others, mostly non–African Americans, countered that the facts were still in dispute and information was incomplete, while noting that just a few days earlier in Chicago ten youths were murdered and at least 40 others shot. Most of those victims and shooters were African Americans, but the carnage did not earn commensurate national attention from black leaders. President Obama himself, who had been silent about the slaughter in his adopted hometown, weighed in on the Martin case and, unfortunately, highlighted the racial undertones — lamenting that the murdered Martin looked just the way his own boy might, had he a son. The latter statement was true but also, of course, true of some of those murdered in Chicago. And given that the black minority currently commits violent crimes against the white majority more frequently than do the nation’s 70 percent whites against its 12 percent blacks, the president’s evocation of race in the Martin case seemed inappropriate to many.
As we all know, Geraldo Rivera caught hell for advising African American and Latino young men not to wear hoodies. Rivera, says Thomas Sowell, is right. He points out that the hoodie is for many young African American men worn as a symbol of identification with neighborhood gangsters. As Sowell writes:
There is no point in dressing like a hoodlum when you are not a hoodlum, even though that has become a fashion for some minority youths, including the teenager who was shot and killed in a confrontation in Florida. I don’t know the whole story of that tragedy any more than those who are making loud noises in the media do, but that is something that we have trials for.
So what we know so far is that the death of Trayvon Martin is not a simple matter in which we all can agree that a white racist murdered him because he was black. Last night I saw his friend, an African American named Joe Oliver, appear on Sean Hannity’s television program to point out that George Zimmerman is not a racist and in fact regularly tutored African American youngsters over weekends at his home. And the gated community in which he lives may not even be overwhelmingly white, and has many minority residents.
Yet the mob has rushed to judgment, and unfortunately the president has encouraged them without even waiting for the legal system to investigate what happened and to act accordingly with its findings. Now, the old line race hustlers and demagogues — led by the hack Al Sharpton and joined by the New Black Panther Party, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and others — are inciting the African American community to action as if this were a 1940s-style Southern lynching.
No need to publish this.
This line seems to need correction: “…again, recall that in Chicago alone a few days before Martin was killed, 10 black youths and 40 others were shot…”
The Martin case became widely known in the week after the referenced shooting and killings in Chicago, but the Martin case was actually lying dormant for over a month. In other words, Martin was killed in Feb and the Chicago mayhem occurred in March.
I suppose every generation of young adults believing themselves wise, only to discover years from now how profoundly stupid they were, requires its own Hanoi Jane.
I was just sure it was going to be Ms. Sandra Fluke. But Rochelle Gurstein would also appear well qualified to become this generation’s spoiled brat and twisted flake spokesperson.
Frankly, they are so numerous these days, it’s a race between thousands of ships of fools from the “progressive” Left, rowing like mad to be first to the Gates of Hell.
Yea, Ms. Gurstein; you’ve got your hoodie. Wear it to work everyday sweetie. Make a statement. After all, the hoodie is a symbol, right? Actually it is. It’s symbolic of a failed strata of society; the urban gangbanger. Unfortunately this segment of society will never read your prose, or much of anything else, being functionally illiterate. So I hope that in addition to churning out your claptrap, and purchasing your hoodie, you are going to make an outreach to these oppressed, undervalued, and under-appreciated youth. I word to the wise, honeybun; when you extend your hand in friendship and support make sure that you leave your jewelry,wallet, cash and credit cards at home, in your cozy little apartment, in the safe neighborhood.
And remember, the sainted Eldridge Cleaver raped white women as a “political statement”.
Gurstein’s book, “The Repeal of Reticence,” is actually very good and very insightful, and I sometimes think of it when there’s a story about the Kardashians or something. I am more than a little surprised to see that this is her orientation with respect to race relations.
I am hardly suggesting that there be any law against hoodies–I have one myself which I sometimes wear, although I don’t think many other people have one that reads “Kalamazoo Kings Professional Baseball.” But Rivera’s point–and I hate to have to say Geraldo made a good one–is in effect, you choose how you present yourself to the world and if you choose to look like a thug, people may treat you like one.
Of course wearing a hoddie isn’t a capital crime but the rush to judgment, the mass rallies, and the president’s intervention, do not further the goal of an open society with rational debate.
The Marxists are in trouble. The country is fed up with them. The class war has become an embarrassment. We quickly change channels when King Putt appears. Not to worry, there’s always race. Love, love, love that Trayvon, celebrated martyr. But the story is unraveling, this is not Jasper, Texas. Obama urgently needs to rescue us from the chaos of burning cities. How they must miss Bull Connor, DNC member. So far, all they have to provoke a white backlash is the silly “Pussy Ass Cracker” hoodie with the photo of a guy who looks Mexican. Ms. Gurstein can’t be happy.
That’s all true but I don’t think it is the only explanation of what is happening: it seems to me that the subversives want to look more and more aggressive.
I don’t know why they do that, you would think that in the year of the elections they would want to appear milder…
Yes, there’s always race. And as long as two or more races share the same territory, there will always be race, and not much besides race. Mark Levin cavils at Utopians, but compared to a “color-blind society” (a contradiction in terms, BTW) Communism looks reasonable. All the scattered attempts to create a socialist utopia have failed so far, but thousands of years of recorded history are devoid of any functioning society lacking zenophobia, at a minimum. As Rightists, if not conservatives, are quick to note, any theoretical organization of society, which is heretofore unkown in human history, is very unlikely to succeed, no matter how superior to actual human life it might be.
It has been clear for quite a while that The New Republic (TNR) was going in the direction that the left had taken which is the championing of an extreme, cult-like version of identity politics. The seeds of this were evident in the late 60′s and early 70′s.
The 60′s were initially about ending segregation and then about ending the war in Vietnam and encouraging a much fuller participation of women in all areas of American life. As someone who was radicalized in the 60′s, I can say that my reasons were that I believed segregation and discrimination were terrible wrongs, became horrified by the sheer volume of suffering caused by the war (including the forcing of Americans who were too young to vote to risk their lives in a war they had little stomach for fighting) and I had from a fairly young age felt that culture and tradition had limited the potential of many girls that I had gone to school with and I knew to be extremely good students.
As the original goals of the movement began being reached, many of the people who were involved had become so personally involved that they were actually threatened by their own success. Rather than pick up their own lives and return to their earlier more mundane pursuits, they began to see their success in correcting previous injustices as irrelevant because the progress that had been made meant there no longer was really a need for the same kind of activities.
By the early 1970′s, many of the loudest voices of the left had largely abandoned its early beliefs and concerns as they no longer justified the activities they wanted to engage in. The belief that the 14th amendment and the civil rights bills meant that all should be treated the same was replaced by identity politics whereby societies rewards should be divided by a racial, gender and ethnic spoils system rather than by individual effort and merit. In foreign policy, the efforts to end the war became irrelevant and were replaced by a completely uncritical support of virtually all revolutionary movements supported by the Soviet Union or China. (In some cases, a more nuanced approach was based on the support for only those political movements that allied with particular flavors of Communist regimes or political parties they favored).
The seeds of today’s political differences are to a large extent, between those who stuck to their traditional concerns and those who abandoned them when they became either boring or no longer provided a basis for continued involvement in politics.
The left wing of the Democratic Party is made up of liberal interest groups whose initial involvement stemmed from humane concerns but whose continued involvement was driven by much more personal concern of how politics could advance their own lives. Eric Hoffer is reported to have written something to the effect that causes begin as movements, evolve into businesses and end up as rackets. Left wing aggression in the academy is essentially a racket, where it is driven by the desire to use “correct opinions” as a weapon to secure all the benefits small and large that were formerly apportioned as a reward for good scholarship,teaching and honest service in promoting good teaching and scholarship. Victim politics has become the basis for demanding positive tenure outcomes, merit raises, promotions, appointment to important committees, creation of staff positions, growth of administrative staff, the inventions of departments and programs outside traditional disciplines and above all the creation of a pervasive ideology that says that all this self-aggrandizing activity is justified by the claim all objections to any of this is the result of a deeply ingrained institutionalized culture of prejudice and oppression. This ideology has become so self-evidently obvious that the unwillingness to confront its obvious stupidity gives academic life the feel of a cult rather than a place were ideas can be discussed in an open and honest way.
The relevance of all this is that writers for TNR are the product of universities. They have been immersed in a culture that understands nothing of what the 60′s were about and sees only what their professors tell them. In fact, many of their professors were too young to remember what the issues actually were about.
I don’t think that people like Ron Radosh, David Horowitz and Roger L. Simon have changed very much. It is the old concerns that motivated them in the past to protest segregation and discrimination and that lead them today to be outspoken against the kind of racial paranoia and opportunism that is seen in much of the reaction to the tragic event in Florida.
It is all terribly sad.
Joanthan Cohen, I would like to think you’re right about me. I’m sure you’re right about Radosh and Horowitz. And, yes, it is all terribly sad.
I am considered a Baby Boomer. Our generation has an awful lot of guilt on its hands. If you think it is sad for those of us who grew up in the 60′s and 70′s and who, whatever our past sins were, now believe in America, imagine what it has been like for good Americans who were there before us. There were Leftists from before the time of the New Deal who wanted to “fundamentally transform” America, but the overwhelming majority of Americans from that time until recently believed in the founding principles.
My Dad grew up in the 20′s and 30′s on a farm without electricity, in a rural county with an almost all white population. He fought in World War II and became a math teacher and college professor after the war. Throughout his life he has had friends from all races, and he is one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I have known. During the 60′s he was in favor of the civil rights movement for blacks, but he also saw on his campus and in the broader country how the Left was doing monstrous things, effecting all parts of life. While that was happening, as some famous people have already said, my Dad did not leave the Democratic Party, it left him. Yet the Democratic Party is still considered “mainstream,” and many in the Republican Party vote as if all of this is no big deal.
We face very serious threats, mostly from within ourselves. Before the Civil War, the country was of course deeply divided, but most Americans believed strongly in founding principles. When you consider the beliefs of Obama, and of the left-wing Supreme Court justices such as Ginsberg, and of many who are in powerful positions in education and the media, consider how far we have fallen from several decades ago.
Don’t be a self-hating Boomer, Egil. When the New Left was formed, not one “Boomer” (Americans born from 1948 to 1962) was even out of high school. Later when the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) composed their infamous Port Huron Statement in 1962 – the oldest Boomer was 14. The sit-in at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall and the beginning of what would be mocked as the Filthy Speech Movement happened in 1964.
Take a second look at any of your elders who’ve been bashing Boomers all their lives before laying the blame for putting America on the pinko-paved road to ruin.
You make good points, Micha Elyi. In addition to your good examples, the likes of Marcuse, Sartre, Sanger, Kinsey and Allen Ginsburg were helping to undermine things long before us Boomers reached what should have been our adulthood. And I don’t believe in the “Greatest Generation” claptrap that we’ve been subjected to (mostly by guilt-ridden Boomers I might add).
Yet it seems to me that a disturbingly high number of us Boomers bought into those undermining influences, and have been especially good at wrecking things, without having to face the consequences–yet, at least. And a lot of this nihilism, hedonism or utopianism has had its baneful effects on later generations.
Sorry–I’ll put a lid on my pessimism, or “self-generation-hatred,” for now.
Such fine writers as Simon, Radosh, and Horowitz were indeed motivated by concerns regarding white supremacy, and still are. But not enough is known about the liberal foundations and their ongoing attempts to encircle a powerful social movement in order to defang it. Where were these wealthy white people and their academic enablers when such as James Cone annexed MLK Jr. to what was once an integrationist movement? Here is one blog I wrote on the subject: http://clarespark.com/2009/10/31/the-offing-of-martin-luther-king-jr-and-ralph-bunche/. But more is on my website: http://clarespark.com/2010/07/15/index-to-black-power-blogs/. I especially recommend this one: http://clarespark.com/2009/10/10/ralph-bunche-and-the-jewish-problem/.
I am also questioning whether or not there is such a thing as a “sane liberal.” I called that into question here: http://clarespark.com/2009/08/09/what-is-a-corporatist-liberal-and-why-should-they-frighten-us/. The thrust of this piece: the state is not neutral, but pretends to stand above the fray in its role as mediator of conflict. But what if only some conflicts are reconcilable through compromise? In the actual history of “pragmatism” or “moderation” the truth went out the window so that phony reconciliations could be effected. The result? Massive dumbing down as truth became useful and virtue became that which was expedient.
Terrific post. Jonathan. I too thank you, and yes, you are right about me as well. And knowing David quite well, you’re correct about him too.
Materialism just doesn’t explain much of human behavior. The Jacobin you’d least like to meet, Robespierre, was known as “the Incorruptible”. The Left is composed of groups of people who cannot adjust to normal society. Seeing a power vacuum, they work to destroy normal society — a pretty good way to obscure their inability to fit in. Sexual perverts, the mentally ill, criminals, and just plain aliens are the base of today’s Democratic Party. I can theorize about the reasons, but I’ll stop with the plain fact. Observe the followers of Gramsci working simultaneously of every front in the Culture War. Destroying society’s values and mores removes the supporting structure and the society will degenerate. The former USSR (or maybe just the former Russia would be more accurate) is demonstrating before our eyes the fact that Leftism might not ‘work’ but it darn sure can destroy a society and a culture.
In 1968 America disenfranchised the greatest teaching organization assembled in its history and allowed racist ideologues to dismember the worlds best school system. Americans stood by and watched because those being disenfranchised were Jews. Those being thrown out of their positions where Jews. Those being threatened and physically attacked were Jews. All those folks out demonstrating, plenty of Jews amongst them, couldn’t be bothered with helping a brother, except, of course, a brother of another color. Now folks complain that merit is gone and racial politics and special interests have taken over education. Plenty of ex-lefties complaining now that they have to eat their own cooking.
Its been all about about what you look like since ’68.
For those who aren’t old enough to remember and those who are too old to remember-
http://njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/020906/SXSeriesExaming.html
Yes, 1968 should be considered one of the worst years in our history. And its still romanticized in some circles.
“The relevance of all this is that writers for TNR are the product of universities. They have been immersed in a culture that understands nothing of what the 60′s were about and sees only what their professors tell them. In fact, many of their professors were too young to remember what the issues actually were about.”
Obviously Mr. Cohen has done an in-depth study of TNR writers and knows they’ve been brainwashed. Such shoot-from-the-hip nonsense is typical of this neo-Bircher site.
Testing testing
An even more egregious exploitation of this case took place a few days ago in the pages of the New York Times, perpetrated by none other than the august Mr. Paul Krugman. He went on at length about how the gun control law entangled with this case was promoted by ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council). He then he used the racial tensions this case is generating to accuse ALEC (and of course the Kochs and the rest of corporate America) of enflaming racial tension so as to increase crime so as to help the prison-industrial complex get more prisons and more money. I kid you not, that is the gist of his paranoid rant. That the rightwing, via ALEC, wants more crime and more prisons and more money and is happy to intensify racism to get it. The fact that our prisons are burgeoning because of black on black crime mattered to him not a bit. Is it a form of racism on Krugman’s part to be exploiting blacks and the race issue this way to make baseless and diversionary charges against conservatives? In a way it is, isn’t it?
If Paul Krugman were in a natural environment, say at a PTA meeting, having lunch at a mom and pop cafe or going to church for a Potluck, the police would be called and he would committed for observation because of what he is. Because he lives in an atmosphere that is filled with decidedly odd (to me) people, his insanity goes unnoticed until he writes one of his crackpot columns. Then those of us who are more normal than not say, “Crazy Paul Krugman is at it again,” and his neighbors swoon and say, “Wow, Paul is at it again.”
It really is two different worlds.
I like mine better as he probably likes his better.
To Jon Burack: Yes it is.
The president of the United States engaged in RACIAL PROFILING. Every time he immediately takes the side of a alleged black “victim” WITHOUT KNOWING THE FACTS if the other party is of a different skin color, he is racially profiling. He should be called on it. He should be made to explain why those who are black can profile and accuse simply based upon skin color, but all others are not allowed to use statistics and experience to draw conclusions about black criminals. In the world of Marxist double think, we are all supposed to sacrifice our lives, including George Zimmerman, to the cause of racial correctness. So the next time, if you are white, and you feel threatened by someone who is black, be prepared to take a beatdown without comment just to advance the cause of “Civil Rights”. Far from there being a universal attack on black people, as the fraud Jesse Jackson asserts, there is a steady and increasing attack on white people. And whitey is not supposed to notice or say anything. In fact, if you are white, and want to defend yourself, that too is racism. Ask President Obama what he thinks about last summer’s “Knockout Games” – you know, the ones where black criminals were beating up whites just because they were…white? Hey Obama, all of those criminals could be your children too. And your family just got bigger with your other “children” rampaging in Florida for the Trayvon cause.
“The president of the United States engaged in RACIAL PROFILING. Every time he immediately takes the side of a alleged black “victim” WITHOUT KNOWING THE FACTS….”
The facts are that Obama called for a thorough investigation and said we would have to withhold judgment until it’s completed.
Did you forget your sarc/??
I wore a hoodie the other day. It was windy and I didn’t want my hat to blow away.
I wear one at times, too, usually when it’s chilly and windy. I see kids in hoodies when the temperature is in the 80s and so humid you can feel the water in the air. What’s that all about if it isn’t a gang signal? No one in their right mind wears one under those circumstances except gang-bangers.
I understand and appreciate what you’re saying here, but this statement bothers me: “And the gated community in which he lives may not even be overwhelmingly white, and has many minority residents.”
So what would happen if every resident at the complex were white? Why is this a welcome explanation? I’m worried that we’ve gone so far down the road of demonizing whiteness that it’s almost reflexive now.
When I was a college instructor, I called it the thousand-yard stare: it was the carefully blank look 18-year olds would assume when they thought the conversation was turning to the usual pile-on of white-hating “diversity speak.” I once had students transfer into my class because they’d gotten a gullet-full after one day in another teacher’s (composition!) class. Knowing her syllabus, I wasn’t surprised, and of course the retirement-age guys with tenure (who actually experienced privilege when they were hired) couldn’t care less — they were too busy strutting around talking about what they did during the civil rights movement, while any conservative instructor and all the undergrads paid the price for their spinelessness.
Nice kids — and for their entire lives, they had been told to equate their skin color with all bad things. It has to change. It has to be stopped.
Good points, Tina Trent. And my experience in academia was very similar to yours.
I was also subjected to diversity seminars during my years working at a university. You’re right, they were nothing but white-bashing exercises, which we were expected to endure with nods of agreement. Our College of Engineering graduate programs were almost 75% Asian, and yet there was a continuing cry that the graduate engineering programs weren’t diverse enough… because out of all of them only one had a single black student.
Yes, RebeccaH, as you and I know, “Diversity” and “Multiculturalism” mean that all cultures must be “celebrated” and considered equal, EXCEPT white culture, which must always be denigrated. And, well, those Asians must be put in their place too.
I am amazed at how the Diversity and Multiculturalism promoters can still have any credibility left, anywhere. Yet colleges, universities, school districts, governments and corporations still keep creating Coordinator of Diversity positions, to keep this racket going.
In our daily lives we’re ruled by a bunch of petty little emperors who are wearing no clothes, yet they keep on parading along in all their ugliness.
A voice from the Old Country. If you had tried to convince an ancient Roman that my distant ancestors from what is now Germany were a superior race of people to the dark-skinned peoples of Egypt he would have laughed you to scorn. After all, while cultures can exist without writing, civilisation cannot! And yet the alphabet we use is derived, in part at least, from the script of Ancient Egypt.
Part of the root of this, if not all, must surely lie in the institution of slavery. Leaving out the question of who started it, the undeniable facts surely are that by the mid-19th century the USA had split, ideologically, into pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. The result was a destructive civil war in which the victors on the battlefield failed to conquer the minds of the defeated. What were needed were bold and astute pioneers who could demonstrate that white and negro COULD live and work together as equals(and even disagree without being disagreeable!) From what I did learn of US history, post-1865, this was doomed by not allowing time for this to happen. After all, the oak tree, a symbol of my country, takes centuries to mature!
Thus a generation after the civil war white southern reactionaries, using the KKK as a terror weapon, made it virtually impossible for negroes to progress almost anywhere in the US. Just to be literate was to suggest that you were after white girls! Add to that the misuse of the Bible to justify such a thing, and the ugly phioisophies of Margaret Sanger and Madison Grant preaching the false gospel of eugenics(Hitler acknowledged his debt to Grant) and you have the father and mother of trouble.
This is a big subject, and it needs someone widely informed and well read to manufacture a systematic demolition job. Alas, so many minds have been destroyed by false solutions that it will take at least two generations to undo it.
Not to go off half baked, but as a woman whose seen first had the “diversity” of white bashing, the same rule applies in large corporations to the most evil group of all – white and male – real monsters.
Not only are most of us ‘white males’ subjected to “diversity and multiculturalism” seminars without choice, but white males get the added joy of “sexual harassment” classes taught by misandrists even if we’ve never been charged.
The fault in America and college campuses lies in the fact we discover a subject that needs to be addressed, and then invariably take the polar opposite position to solve it, generally to the extreme.
And that brings contempt.
Tina, my 19-yr old son enrolled in a Cuny community college in 2007. He was tested out at 12th grade reading level when he was 12 -years old, so I figured freshman comp would be a breeze. His freshman “Comp” Syllabus was xeroxed copies of Marx, Engels, Che, Lenin, Gloria Steinem, etc. at $80 from the bookstore. I raised my eyebrows and thought, this is bizarre, but said nothing. By mid-semester, he was “low”. I said what’s wrong? Well, the teacher doesn’t want me to write my own paper. Impossible, said I. The teenager tells me she wants group work. Not that way in my day, I’m thinking. How can a group write a paper?
More from the teenager: Well, the class is divided into groups. Each group shows up to discuss the assignment. We are to take turns writing up the discussion and we all get the same grade. REALLY? OK, how is this working out? Well, there’s three girls who don’t read and want to talk about their boyfriends. They talk so long we never get to talk about our reading assignment. STOP, I say. Tell the teacher. Well, one of us did. And? We have to meet after class to talk about the assignment and one of us has to write a paper for everybody, even the girls who don’t read. . Duh? This passes for college education in the USA? God help us.
Black racism is a great and booming business. I believe this weekend will see the last games of the NCAA, the final four teams having been selected. If someone keeps count, I think we’ll find that black players account for north of 95% of playing time. That can’t be a random happening. It has to be the result of racial discrimination! Where are the protesting black racists?
If Zimmerman is ever brought to trial, his lawyers can now plausibly argue that he will not be able to get a fair hearing. Not when Martin is now Obama’s adopted son and Zimmerman’s main defense would likely be that Martin was not wholly innocent in this affair.
I have no idea what Obama thought he was doing when he commented on a specific case that might well be brought to trial. I thought presidents were supposed to be smart.
“…Geraldo Rivera caught hell for advising African American and Latino young men not to wear hoodies.”
Oh, is that why he caught hell, Ron? You wouldn’t be fudging the facts, would you?
I worked with a brilliant Black engineer in the 90′s. We discussed race many times. His take on it, focused primarily on AA, was delivered with a little comparison. I think it was 1994 when we both walked on to a plane and he asked, “Did you look in the cockpit?” I confessed I had not. “A woman and a Black are piloting the plane, should you be worried?” I again confessed that it was of no concern to me.
“Well it should be. This airline hires based on AA quotas. Now those two in the cockpit could have been numbers 1 & 2 in their flight school, but you’d never know it and they’ll never get credit for it. Or, they could be last in their class, by passing more qualified Whites. Most people, knowing that the airlines hire pilots based on AA metrics AUTOMATICALLY assume minorities in the cockpit got there not on merit, but on the substandard requirements placed on them. Affirmative Action can only INCREASE prejudice, not reduce it.”
I was stunned by his logic. Just think how those pilots must feel when someone looks in the cockpit–defensive? Angry? Despairing of ever getting the respect they may deserve? Probably all the above. Race-based anything skews our point of view. JeSSie & $harpton are experts at this game.
In the ’80s and ’90s, I heard variations on that argument from blacks in the university and the professions who had been admitted before affirmative action.
“President Obama himself, who had been silent about the slaughter in his adopted hometown, weighed in on the Martin case….”
Yes, Dr. Hanson, he did, because a reporter asked him about it.
And his response should have been “…and I will refrain from making any judgments until the facts are available and local, county and state authorities have had their say.” And his remarks about his hypothetical son looking like Trayvon were beyond silly and absurd. They were manipulative, pathetic and contemptuous; he tapped into the demeaning, condescending meme of “all negroes/chinamen/wetbacks/etc. look alike to me.” Although, to be fair, perhaps Barry could not help himself; he is half-white, after all, and is programmed by those genes to think that way.
Obama’s comments have less to do with his own racial makeup, but more to do with his egocentricity. He can’t answer questions without thinking “what does this mean for me”? Embarrassing for a head of state
I am willing to take President Obama at his word when he revealed that any son of his would be a hoodlum.
In many matters Obama has acted stupidly.
I am a 58 yr old white male and I have been wearing hoodies since I was a teen. Does that make me a thug?
Not until you complete the look with gole-teef, tats, a menacing scowl, pimp-roll walking gait and hand signals signifying membership in the Crips, Bloods, South-Side Warriors, etc. Now you a gangsta, bad-@$$ mofo!
Exactly: Trayvon Martin seems to have spent a considerable amount of time, money and effort into making himself look scary. Now we’re on the verge of riots, because he succeeded?
That one fact no one mentioned was the “pants half-way down your a$$ exposing your boxers look”. Just another trademark of low-life culture. No kidding, the cell-phone pic running around the web show Trayvon with that stance and the grafitti caption “done Ni**ah” on it, and the kid flashing both hands in a gang hand-gesture (pinky and index fingers). Also, no one mentions the fact that this Kid is 6’3″ and a football player….Not exactly a poor helpless defenseless little waif like in the circulated picture. The one I saw of him in his hoodie looked a lot more seasoned and “toughened”. I couldn’t give a sh#t less what color some one is, so don’t go there…….The law will prevail. Deal with it, Black America!
PS I’ve been CCW for 17 years and know the rules well.
And, for the record, whether you look like Snoop Dogg or Eminem you will be 100% thug.
“the black minority currently commits violent crimes against the white majority more frequently than do the nation’s 70 percent whites against its 12 percent blacks” I was wondering about just this very issue. It seems understood that there is racism rampant in America with whites seeking out blacks to kill. And that the police are part and parcel of it. I assumed that was incorrect, but I’d like statistics to understand the above quote.
But the absolute tragedy is that our president is first and foremost “black” or a “black man” over and above being an American. Something like 97% of blacks or African Americans voted for race last presidential election and assuredly will do so again. That open racism is the tragedy in that no one seems to think that’s simply wrong in America. And it is. But the president, his Attorney General and many, many other liberals (sic) think that is OK.
It is not. And, of course, most everything is divided into Left/Right including most probably the Supreme Court.
The most frightening thing about this to me is the poll I saw a couple days ago that something like 77% of the pollees — a cross section of Americans apparently — believed that Zimmerman should have been or be arrested immediately. That is the power of the Far-left propaganda machine.
It means: President Obama will be reelected!
Here’s an interesting question for future reference – Can Georege Zimmerman get a fair trial in Florida or anywhere else? After this media carpet bombing the jury pool of anyplace-you care-to-name in the state of Florida is probably so irredeemably poisoned.
But maybe that’s the point. If Zimmerman is indicted and is somehow found “not guilty” or if the charge is reduced to a lesser homicide than murder it gives the race-mongers the excuse to keep this thing going. Maybe one of the long-term strategies for this whole thing is to insure that no trial can take place and then castigate “the system” for “failing to deliver justice to Trayvon Jartin.” J
Here’s an interesting question for future reference – Can Georege Zimmerman get a fair trial in Florida or anywhere else? After this media carpet bombing the jury pool of anyplace-you care-to-name in the state of Florida is probably so irredeemably poisoned.
But maybe that’s the point. If Zimmerman is not indicted or is indicted and is somehow found “not guilty” or if the charge is reduced to a lesser homicide than murder it gives the race-mongers the excuse to keep this thing going. Maybe one of the long-term strategies for this whole imbroglio is to insure that no trial can take place and then use that as an excuse to attack “the system” for “failing to deliver justice to Trayvon Martin.” Just a thought.
Hey why all the hate for hoodies? I love wearing hoodies, they’re convenient and comfortable.
The Left’s politics in the post-60s can be reduced to a simple question: Who is the victim? Once they determine who is the victim and who is the villain, all other problems go away: The victim can do no wrong and the villain can do no right. It doesn’t matter what they actually do–it’s the victim/villain status that accords them moral weight.
And it’s all relative. Cops as law enforcement officers are villains; cops as public union employees are victims. Hispanics are victims, unless they’re up against blacks, in which case they’re villains (see how we’ve now got “white Hispanics”?). Women are victims, unless they run against black candidates, in which case they’re villains. Jihadists who kill gays and women are villains, but when fighting the US they’re victims. Soldiers are undereducated, poverty-stricken victims of the war industry, until they actually go to war, at which point they become villains. See how it works? If you want to be bulletproof in a liberal forum, pose as a poor black transgendered lesbian. It won’t matter if you spout the most nonsensical drivel–you’ll be held in awe as speaking truth to power because you are a victim.
We seem to have the most athletic President ever. Once again he has jumped to a conclusion.
The Oby’s Ninja Force welcomes America to Florida!
Just saw a photo of a gang of Black Panthers showing their intelligence by holding aloft a wanted poster for the apprehension of a murderer!
The photo actually looked like one of Robert Mugabe’s security details out of Zimbabwe!
And how about we line up the facts before we start combing the streets looking for child killers.
The press makes this out to be the death of a cute – sweet – teenager!
A fellow blogger had a much more realistic description of the dead presidential look a like – gole-teef, tats, a menacing scowl, pimp-roll walking gait and hand signals signifying membership in the Crips, Bloods, South-Side Warriors, etc. Now you a gangsta, bad-@$$ mofo!
Before the kids family has dinner at the white house – lets get the facts out for viewing.
The fact that the NYT went to the ridiculous degree of referring to Zimmerman as a white Hispanic should surprise no one. Did anyone ever hear them describe the president as being a white black? No and you won’t. It was done only to bring the word “white” into the reporting (f you can call it that) of the killing of Trayvon Martin. There was such a rush to Florida to hang Zimmerman, I’m surprised the state didn’t break off and sink beneath the waves. Word was that half the reporters in the country were wearing cervical collars for whiplash suffered in the stampede.
What I’m striving to say is those reporters rushed to judgment just like they rushed for a hot story. They Wanted Zimmerman To Be White and Guilty of Murdering a Black Child!!
Now,bring out the beer and Obama can have another summit where he will appear to be Lord Bountiful, mediating between Zimmerman and the Martin family, even though he was one of the instigators just as he was after the Henry Gates, James Crowley incident.