RUTHFULLY YOURS

ADRIAN MORGAN: CRYING WOLF OVER RACE?

Posted By Ruth King on July 15th, 2010

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6752/pub_detail.asp
July 15, 2010
Crying Wolf Over Racism?
The Editor

Samuel Johnson, the English 18th century intellectual, once said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” He was not attacking patriotism per se, but those who claimed to be patriotic as a means to mask their own foul behavior, distracting from their own faults by calling others “unpatriotic”. Nowadays, there is a new, different “last refuge of the scoundrel”. This is the refuge of claiming – with no sincerity whatsoever – to be opposed to racism. And to take full advantage of this refuge, the scoundrel must shout out at others that they are, or must be “racists”, even when there is no evidence of racism to be found.

Racism is too serious an issue to be thrown around as a term of insult, to spice up cheap rhetoric and as a means to engage in political point-scoring. Yet this is what is happening in the highest ranks of American political life. The current move by those in the current administration to invoke racism as a means of making political capital is not “progressive”. It is retrogressive, divisive, and in the manner that the term is currently being used, it is deeply dishonest. Worst of all, it cheapens those who have stood up to fight real racism, the insidious visceral racism that should never be tolerated.

When the current administration had been in power for only a few months, a Harvard professor was arrested on July 16, 2009, at his home in Cambridge Massachusetts. Professor Henry Louis Gates (who was black, and a friend of the president) became locked out of his own home, and used colorful language when police came to investigate. His subsequent arrest was immediately questioned in the media. The president declared that the police had “acted stupidly,” thereby implying poor judgment (or worse) on behalf of police Sgt. James Crowley who had made the arrest. After other police officers protested, the president said: “I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically.”

Though he did not apologize, he suggested that the professor, the sergeant and himself have a beer at the White House. He said: “The fact that this has garnered so much attention, I think, is testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America.”

That may be true, but it was a situation that had been made worse by the president taking sides without evaluating the circumstances of the arrest. The Gates incident came at a time when the polls indicated declining popularity for the administration.

Yet now, when the administration’s approval ratings are at their worst point, it seems that racism is again being invoked by the supporters of the administration. What is being described as “racism” is not genuine visceral racism, of the sort that in the past would leave the fresh features of young Emmett Till as an unrecognizable pulped mass, but is used against anyone who expresses opposition to the policies of the administration.

The latest polls (from ABC News/Washington Post) show that almost 60 per cent of respondents did not have faith the president would make the right decisions for the country, and only 43 per cent approve the way he handles the economy.

In the past, the Gates issue was a convenient distraction from issues of declining popularity, but currently there seem to be mentions of race that are entirely inappropriate. Race was not such an issue that it prevented a black president from being swept to power, but when things get bad, it seems that members of the administration think it is appropriate to invoke the specter of race. This will only polarize the nation in manners that are neither politically nor socially healthy.

At a NAACP rally in Kansas City on Monday, Michelle Obama delivered a keynote speech, in which she spoke about vegetables, obesity and health and moving beyond slavery, and being “decades beyond Jim Crow”. The fact that the Jim Crow laws were introduced by post-bellum Democrats in the South to disenfranchise blacks of their rights under Reconstruction was never mentioned.

At the same rally, the NAACP passed a motion that condemned the Tea Party movement as racist. Lloyd Marcus, who has attended and acted as a spokesman at more than 200 Tea Party events, writes in today’s edition of Family Security Matters that he is outraged. Lloyd has a right to be angry. The NAACP has produced no concrete evidence of racism – other than the Tea Partiers’ opposition to the policies of an administration that exploits race to its own advantage.

The motion by the NAACP condemned “explicitly racist behavior” urging people to “stand in opposition to [the tea party’s] drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.”

Sarah Palin has now entered the fray to remark that: “The charge that Tea Party Americans judge people by the color of their skin is false, appalling, and is a regressive and diversionary tactic to change the subject at hand.”

There is a problem at the Department of Justice at present. The Attorney General made few friends for himself when in February 2009, he declared that on issues of race, America was “a nation of cowards.” This injudicious comment was made less than a month after he was appointed to head the Department of Justice.

Shortly after Holder became Attorney General, as reported by former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams, a case against the New Black Panther Movement was dropped – where three members of the NBPP had been charged with offenses against the Voting Act of 1965. The three men were accused of offenses related to obstructing and intimidating voters in Philadelphia on November 4, 2008. One member of the NBPP, King Samir Shabbaz, who carried a night stick outside the polling station, has been captured on video calling for white babies to be killed.

Malik Zulu Shabazz, from Washington D.C., was another of the accused. This man is, according to the ADL, an anti-Semite. He has a BA from Howard University and intends to be a litigator, but his behavior in February 2006 in protest at the Danish cartoons show him to be rather ignorant. In this video, he forgets that he is protesting against Danish cartoons and goes into a tirade about the Dutch and the Dutch East India Company. The NBPP reflect only racism, and should not be given any special treatment. When it seems that the Department of Justice has deliberately dropped a case against three leading figures of the NBPP, there appears to be serious grounds for concern.

Eric Holder declared, after the State of Arizona had passed a state law (SB 1070) to enforce immigration control, that the law was “unfortunate” and “open to abuse” by officials. He subsequently admitted that he had not read the contents of law that he had already criticized. Last week, he moved to sue the State of Arizona, declaring that its attempt to prevent illegal immigration would lead to “racial profiling” and a patchwork of state laws. The State of Arizona passed its law because the federal administration has failed to deal with securing the border and preventing illegal immigration.

As Mike Cutler states in today’s Family Security Matters, there is a federal law from 1907 – Title 8, USC § 1324 (a) – that specifically prohibits “alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts.”

Instead of dealing with Arizona, perhaps the Attorney General should be looking at so-called “sanctuary cities”.

There are 31 sanctuary cities existing in America, where local authorities choose to deliberately break the terms of Title 8, USC § 1324 (a), deliberately concealing or harboring illegal aliens. IN order to deliberately conceal or harbour illegal aliens, these cities have introduced ordinance that prohibits police or city officials from asking people about their immigration status.

Yet the Attorney General, so concerned to make an example of Arizona, while the administration does nothing to prevent more illegal immigrants from coming into America, will not pursue actions against the 31 sanctuary cities. Holder told the Washington Times yesterday that:

“There is a big difference between a state or locality saying they are not going to use their resources to enforce a federal law, as so-called sanctuary cities have done, and a state passing its own immigration policy that actively interferes with federal law. That’s what Arizona did in this case.”

President Obama has recently stated that there must be means to create “a pathway for legal status” for the estimated 10.8 million illegal aliens already living in the USA. If the Attorney General and the President are choosing to turn a blind eye to illegal activities, ignoring the existence of illegal aliens who have NO LEGITIMATE cause to be in the United States, they are undermining the nation. And again, this undermining of national principles and values is being carried out under the cover of “combating racism.”

The late Charlie Norwood wrote on the “La Raza” movement in 2006. He stated that:

National Council of La Raza succeeded in raking in over $15.2 million in federal grants last year alone, of which $7.9 million was in U.S. Department of Education grants for Charter Schools, and undisclosed amounts were for get-out-the-vote efforts supporting La Raza political positions.

The Council of La Raza succeeded in having itself added to congressional hearings by Republican House and Senate leaders. And an anonymous senator even gave the Council of La Raza an extra $4 million in earmarked taxpayer money, supposedly for “housing reform,” while La Raza continues to lobby the Senate for virtual open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Those who oppose illegal immigration, such as those in the Tea Party movement who have paid their taxes and resent the actions of those illegals who attempt to circumvent the laws that other Americans expect to abide by, are now being called racist.

There is a sickness in America today. It is a moral sickness that attempts to ignore the principles that created America, the values of the Founding Fathers. Those afflicted by this sickness attempt to impose “revisionism” onto the political landscape. This is what passes for “progressive” policy, but progressives do not believe in progress. They believe in rearranging the order of society, with no sense of common purpose or ideal. The only way that such “progressive” policies can come into being is when there is chaos.

By crying out “racism”, when racism is not the issue bothering most people, the so-called progressives are trying to divide society. It is the old, long-discredited principle of “Divide and Rule”, now repackaged under the bogus guises of equality, revision, and even “reparation”.

Islamic terrorists who have made numerous attacks upon America were not mentioned in the latest issue of the National Security Strategy (pdf) as being “Islamic”. Recognizing its own failing popularity, the administration has even abandoned that particular shibboleth. Yesterday, the president mentioned “Islamic radicalism” when describing the actions of terrorists who killed 74 people in Uganda on Sunday.

And once again, while discussing the terror groups Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab, the term “racism” was invoked. The two groups were “racist”, as if their racism was what motivated them to kill Ugandans. The president stated: “In short, Al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life.”

Admittedly Osama bin Laden is a racist. He has frequently alluded to black people as “slaves”. But Islamic terrorism is not motivated by race. It is motivated by hatred toward anything that is not concordant with, or submissive to, its own ideology. There are complexities in Islamic terror that need to be understood in order to combat it at its very source. To make bland statements about Islamist imperialism being motivated by “racism” is another great distraction from the real issues at hand, and a cheapening of the seriousness of the problem.

Racism is a great evil. But it is fast becoming trivialized in this unhealthy political climate. When false or unsubstantiated accusations of racism are thrown out for a dramatic sound-bite or to demonize a political opponent, it blunts and diminishes the term. If this continues, people will forget why racism must be fought. Racism can only be effectively fought when those who combat it have a clean conscience. If our political representatives throw accusations around like the boy who cried wolf, then no-one will be aware when real racism starts to infect society. After sullying themselves in the muck of racist name-calling, no politicians will be morally fit to lead the real and necessary fight against authentic racism.

The Editor, FamilySecurityMatters.org

Comments are closed.