RUTHFULLY YOURS

Is this the conversation we’re having? The mudslingers keep telling us “we need to have a conversation” about race relations.

Okay, go ahead. Let’s talk.

But a conversation means both sides get a chance.

Last night, at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn, a male described by authorities as African-American, Calvin Peters, stabbed an Israeli student, Levi Rosenblat.

The New York Daily News reports that Peters kept yelling, “I want to kill a Jew.”

Is this a conversation? Is this what they mean?

Rosenblat never had a chance against a weapon.

A knife is not a conversation and riots do not make for better relations between the races.

Yet the flamethrowers, beginning at the top with Obama, keep telling us that we need to talk. We need to discuss.

The talking began in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 clearly outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This was followed by the 1965 Voting Rights Act that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. From all that we have had ups and downs but relative harmony.

From one speech to the next, the president uses words that trigger even more animosity.
There will always be fixing to be done, but in the fields of music, comedy, entertainment, education, sports, politics, African Americans are at the heart of American culture. Whatever racism remains, it is on the sidelines, practiced among those who will never be cured – on both sides.

But that is not enough to satisfy the race baiters who decoy us by demanding more discussions, more conversations – anything to keep the pot boiling.

Go ahead, have a conversation with Al Sharpton, the man who waits by the phone for the next flare-up so that he can stir up even more trouble.

Seems to this observer that the “conversation” is slightly one-sided, favoring the rabble-rousers.

The vandalism, looting and burning in Ferguson USA – is this what Obama means by having a discussion? Is this the conversation he has in mind when he says that he “understands” the “frustration” among blacks?  Among the lawless, this can be taken as an open-ended signal to pursue lawlessness. The president has your back.

From one speech to the next, the president uses words that trigger even more animosity. Tirelessly he reminds us of our racist past, a message strange to the ears of generations of Americans — the 99.9 percent who never owned slaves or took part in segregation. He keeps talking to Americans who died a century ago.

But upon our heads Obama, and Holder, and the Congressional Black Caucus – upon our souls they place their own prejudices and obsessions with race.

They kindle the fire and judge us all as racist – and this they call a conversation.

Go ahead, have a discussion with New York Mayor de Blasio who came in with a grudge and stays with a grudge against the entire New York City Police Department.

Yes, nice talk we’re having – and listen to Chris Rock and Jon Stewart as they blast away at the sins of “white people” – all “white people.”

Since the verdict is already in and since the Mark of Cain is upon us all for the sins of our fathers, what more is there to say?

If our conversations included inner city criminal behavior and black on black crime, even black on white crime, as recently as Crown Heights, perhaps we’d get somewhere. But bringing that up — even that would be considered racist, since only one side is permitted to do all the talking and all the stabbing and all the rioting.

Yes, nice conversation we are having.

Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. New from the novelist, the acclaimed anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. Website: www.jackengelhard.com