For decades this nation has followed a bizarre racial path in which discrimination in favor of minorities has been viewed as the path to non-discrimination and equality. This view, influenced by white guilt over the past, has spawned a racial grievance industry dominated by racial entitlements, race-based preferences, and unequal enforcement of federal civil rights laws. It is a scandal obscured by the fact that most of us are embarrassed to complain about it for fear of being tarred as right-wing racists or worse.
I find myself uncomfortable even discussing the subject, because for most of my life I was a liberal Democrat — I was on the front lines of the original civil rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s as a protester on the streets and as a federal civil rights official. I was present in the deep South to expose and dismantle the vast machinery of violent racial discrimination which was truly a stain on our national honor.
Like many other officials, I confronted white racists who were terrorizing innocent black citizens. We have not yet succeeded in completely halting such awful practices, but the election of an African American to the White House by a majority white electorate, including me, is proof of just how far we have come in the proper direction.
What outrages me is that despite our country’s wonderful successes, too many seek to gain and hold power by cynically perpetuating and exploiting racial grievances. These racial racketeers seek to convince minority members that nothing will help them improve their lives unless they buy into the myth of racial helplessness and continuing victimhood.
Those leading this destructive scam are both blacks and whites in positions of power, including — to my astonishment — lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who once were involved with me in securing the destruction of racial segregation.
When I led an official federal investigation of the Civil Rights Division in 1960, I found lawyers dedicated to the race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws.
The current crop of racial racketeers, in and out of government, have betrayed the dream of my idol Martin Luther King Jr., and my own dream and the dreams of millions of others in the real civil rights movement.
Some of the worst aspects of this dream-betraying behavior were brought home to me on July 6, 2010, at a Commission on Civil Rights hearing: I watched attorney J. Christian Adams blow the whistle on the Obama/Holder Justice Department for its racially motivated decision to drop most of the charges in the already-won New Black Panther voter intimidation case because the defendants were black.
Adams resigned his position as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division because his political bosses under Eric Holder let the New Black Panther thugs off with a gentle slap on the wrist — even though their behavior clearly violated the voting rights laws of the nation. In his testimony — and now in a just-released powerful book — Mr. Adams claims that the racial discrimination in favor of black defendants in the Panther case was only one example of many such illegal actions on the part of officials in the Civil Rights Division. Incidentally, he views other Divisions of the Justice Department as acting in the best traditions of the legal profession.
The book is filled with examples of black assaults on the rights of whites wherein most of the nation, including the vaunted Civil Rights Division, turned a blind eye. Most people have not even heard of Ike Brown and Noxubee County, Mississippi, but they will now when Adams’ book and his nationwide tour reach the public consciousness. Biased lawyers in the Civil Rights Division initially refused to bring suit against Brown, the local head of the Democratic Party, to protect the rights of white citizens who were in the minority there. Adams writes:
Throughout the county, Dr. King’s dream of Christian love, equality, and integration gave way to a malicious campaign to exert racial payback.
A few courageous Division lawyers, including Adams, eventually brought a suit in federal court and won an historic judgment.
It is fair to wonder if one gutsy patriot and his book can help us all to gather our courage, to take the risk of being called bigots, and to go forth and realize the dream of Dr. King.
A small straw in the wind indicating that there might be some hope was the news that Loretta King, the Civil Rights Division official responsible for the biased Panther decision and other of that ilk, has just resigned in advance of the release of the book. Other such resignations at the Justice Department must surely follow for the good of the nation.
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