“Stop talking about race and racism will end”
Morgan Freeman
It is 2009, and a black man has reached the most powerful position in this country. How does this fact change race relations in America? What is being done differently among both races in this country? Sadly, very little. Unfortunately race is still very much an issue in this country, but not in the way a liberal might think. Enter Congressman Hank Johnson and race bating Maxine Waters asking the media to investigate “birthers and the tea baggers” at rallies for their “racist views.” So now any opposition to Socialism and out of control spending is labeled racist by the libs.
One of the most fundamental right of a democracy is the right to criticize your leaders. And these attempt by the Democratic Party to eradicate this and make Obama unable to be criticized is a very dangerous concept at best. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, then the only politician or group of people open to criticism will be white men. And at that point, not only will free speech be threatened, but Democracy will also be in danger. The reason why liberals are okay with this is the same reason why liberals embraced Chavez and for the same reason they embraced Stalin in the 30’s and 40’s. They believe in socialism and care more about that then in free speech or the welfare of their country.
Most of the rest of America understands the danger in this course of action and will refuse to cower. Race relations thus, in the next three years, will go downhill. For you cannot have it both ways. You cannot expect to end racism and then practice it by reminding people of your race when it is politically convenient and expect a double standard to be accepted without resentment. You cannot claim to want to have a colorblind society when you refuse to be colorblind yourself. This also extrapolates to our culture at large, as affirmative action, the BET, and King’s vision are on opposite sides of the spectrum of this debate. Are there two sets of standards of justice? Absolutely, especially in the media. Notice the different coverage of the Philadelphia swim club and the Marshall attack at Firestone Stadium. Without a doubt there is white racism and that is reprehensible. But a failure to treat all racism by the same moral code will only ensure our society is never colorblind.
The truth is, there is no end game for the race peddlers like Sharpton and Jackson and their ilk in the NAACP, and that should lead to some troubling questions. For instance:
Should a ethnic group with who now holds the highest office in the country still need their own institutional racism in the name of their own network, magazine, month, and institutionalized reverse discrimination called affirmative action? And how does reverse discrimination help to heal the racial divide among this country? By their very nature, I believe these groups contribute to the very problem they claim they were created to prevent. When you start off by doing (discriminating, in this case against whites by affirmative action) what you claim to be opposing (discrimination) you do nothing to solve your problem in the long term. You can’t have it both ways, it is either bad to discriminate or it isn’t. This is the same logic that makes liberals more outraged when a white guy beats up a black then when a black kills a black. This is the same logic that allows N.O.W. to march for the rights to kill babies and for gay rights but stays silent on actual abuses in the Muslim world. This is the same logic that allows liberals to march to support a relatively minor event (Jena) when their own young are being killed by the tens of thousands every year in our inner cities. Which event hurts the black community more? But that is black on black, so Sharpton does not care. It only matters if race plays a part, for there are no political points to gain on black on black crimes. And this my friends, is why liberals never fix anything and often are more destructive then any white bigot to the black community. They won’t confront any real problem that violates their simple, politically correct view of the world.
Race peddlers like Sharpton are silent on the issues of the death of the black family, the devaluation of education in the urban community, and the negative influence of gang culture. Sure, racism exists and it is a problem, but it is not just race guys. Racism was a lot worse decades ago and blacks were not killing each other by the thousands and they most likely had a dad in their family. And they were not incarcerated at the present rate. And don’t talk about slavery, because that was a lot closer to the age of slavery and again, the black on black killings, and the incarceration was a lot lower and more families had fathers. But don’t look for Sharpton to say much on that subject. Until the groups like the NAACP find the courage to fight the root causes of the plight of urban community, the current start of the black family is unlikely to get any better.
The double standard of race will, in the end, not only fail to fix the problem, but in the end will hurt blacks as it will weaken the term as many whites will tire of the race card being played when it is politically convenient. Freeman is right. The obsession with black and white are obstacles to overcoming racism. Obviously there are levels, and not all actions are equal, as Black history month is nowhere near morally equivalent to the destructive actions by some of the racists in the KKK, but I still believe it divides America nevertheless. For the simple truth is that if you stop calling a black person black, he suddenly becomes a person. And as long as either side is allowed to discriminate freely, as long as the standard of right and wrong is influenced on both sides by the color of the skin, it just sows the seeds of hate for a different generation. Dr. King had it right. People should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. This is the only thing that will end racism. And for both sides it remains a dream.
Blogs at Orbys.net
I agree with your comment on the death of the black family. I think this is one of the most important issues facing our country right now. Just last week week, a postman was killed right down the street from me from a 19 year old kid. Yes, the kid was black. The gun accidently went off and killed the postman. Where were the parents? Nowhere to be found. How are these kids supposed to learn? Its not cool to care about school.
Obama is a racist for telling Paterson to withdraw now.
The war on poverty, and taking the father out of the family, has destroyed the black and white families alike.
It’s what statists do … Pursue their power.
Morgan Freeman proves he is a true American and a solid intellectual. He is spot on in his analysis, and the race card, as he calls it, is too often as a substitute for reason when presenting an ill formed liberal idea. Liberalism has done more harm to the black community than any band of fools in sheets ever could.
Liberals may have the best of intentions (or actually, they may not), and it’s too easy to point at the goofballs in the KKK and lay blame, but the truth of the matter is that those types represent a former threat, and are nothing more than a red herring at this point.
If you took all of the Klansmen in the U.S. and put them in an NFL stadium, it wouldn’t be full. Now round up all the thugs (black, white, yellow, brown, whatever), you couldn’t fit them all in the stadium AND the parking lot.
In short, liberal policies have resulted in a legacy of fatherless homes, illiterate children and thugery. Murder, drugs and broken lives. Intentions be damned, at least you know where you stand with a Klansmen.
I present that current liberalism is nothing more than a modern form of the plantation; here’s a little welfare in exchange for your vote! We know these policies only enslave people to the government.
And Obama should tell Peterson not to run, but not because he’ll hurt the party. Obama should’ve told him to step aside because he’s not capable of running the state government in New York. Just that simple.
White convervatives can no longer be racist. Why?
We have been told for years “that while whites can be “racist,” other groups are “incapable of racism due to power difference.”
If this is truly the case, then the only ones that can be “racists” are the ones in power, which today are the liberals.
Morgan Freeman is right. As long as people are labelled, they will be viewed by that label and not by the “content of their character”.
How many times do we have to celebrate “the first”? The first woman, the first African-American, the first African-American woman, the first Hispanic, etc., ad naseum. As long as we continue to distinguish the gender or race, we will not move past the labelling and on to a colorblind society.
Who provides the most labelling of the people in the news (except for when the person is a Democrat)? The media. The media are the ones holding us back by exacerbating and flaming the racial and gender discriminatory feelings. Since 2000, the media has become more and more the propaganda arm of the DNC.
So, the media and Democrats are the primary movers and shakers that want to keep tension between the races and sexes. They are the ones that always distinguish the race or gender of a purported victims, indicating that primary reason they were victims is because of the race or gender.
As someone I read this weekend pointed out, most large cities in the country have been controlled by Democrats for a couple of generations or more. How are these cities doing in racial equality? When will the Democrats fix these problems? How long to they need? They have virtual total control, what’s slowing them down?
Number of Blacks killed by whites between 1860 and 1960 is approx 3500.
Number of persons (both Black and White) killed by Blacks last year was over 8000, over 80% of them, other Black men.
(Tuskegee Institute)
What if Sharpton (et al) all treated this statistic as a wake-up call to focus on actually FIXING the problems instead of PROFITING from it?
“It is 2009, and a black man has reached the most powerful position in this country.”
Huh!!………I didn’t know George Soros was black…….
http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w222/RidesAPaleHorse/Obamination/SenorSoros.jpg
I will be blunt. It will be over when he steps down as the being the first marxist President of the United States and Blacks began to seriously ask themselves who they really are and want to be in the American society and culture.
We need to get rid off these stupit racial description that we fill out to get a job, to go to the Doctor. Who cares that I am a Hispanic Jew?. Ask me for my level of education and my income level and that should be enough! And everybody born in this country legally should be an American, that’s it.
I demand the same thing from all the Latinos too. There is no country in South America that has sub-racial categories or ethnic groups classification. There are no Arab-Argentinian. In Brasil where they had slavery as well,, there is no Afro-Brasilan or no German-Brasilian today, they are simply Brasilians and very patriotic. . In Colombia there is no African Colombian or in Uruguay. People are just what their passport says. The day we can get rid of the idiotic race classification , a lot of souls will began to heal.
Race relations has been booted back (by president O’Dumbo) to at least the 50’s, maybe even the 1850’s.
It was pathetic to see Obama’s defenders trot out the “you can’t say that about a Black man!” line. What they are really saying is that IN THEIR MINDS Obama is not capable of defending his policies on their merits — since we have to presume they agree with the policies on the merits, it must mean that they think Obama isn’t up to the job.
So the irony is that Obama’s critics are willing to treat him like any other President, and his defenders treat him like a hot-house flower… or maybe like someone who they fear advanced through his career on the basis of affirmative action.
So remind me – just who are the racists?
It’s a two-edged sword.
The people who play the race card are wrong, regardless of their place on the political spectrum.
Consider Michael Steele. The man actually went on Meet the Press and said that he found it “curious” that Obama would call upon one of only two black governors to step away from reelection. He followed that up by wondering aloud how the “black leadership” would react to it. That’s playing the race card, plain and simple.
Now, the people who attack as “racist” mere criticism of Obama’s policies are every bit as wrong. Let me say that again; the people who attack policy criticism as “racist” are every bit as wrong.
Finally, you get the fringe. If you don’t disavow the fringe, it subtracts from one’s true (and entirely reasonable) criticisms. When the head of Tea Party Express characterizes the President as “welfare thug” and “racist-in-chief,” there’s no policy criticism there. When the protester carries the sign referring to Obama as a pimp (the “long-legged Mack Daddy” signs) or names him a “lyin’ African”–both were seen at the 9/12 march–they need to be disavowed. Those with rational, principled criticisms need to say “we aren’t part of that.” That’s true whether the fringe is left or right…
I believe the death of the black family is a direct result of LBJ’s so-called “War on Poverty”. Mothers with children on AFDC (Aid to Families of Dependent Children), married or unmarried, were not allowed to have the father in the house. It perpetuated the welfare mentality; have more kids, get more money. It also destroyed the black male sense of worth. Unintended consequences. Not feeling sorry for people victimized by this thinking…many pulled themselves out of this quagmire and found a way to independence, but we were swimming in this low-life thinking from the 70’s on. We have LBJ’s social engineering to thank for a lot of this.
Here’s an interesting article on racism.
http://deweyindetroit.com
@wesmorgan1: “Long-legged Mack Daddy” is a phrase coined by a Harlem minister, whose name escapes me at the moment. He obviously despises him.
I am waiting for 0zer0 to disavow the fringe. I won’t hold my breath.
The Long-Legged Mack Daddy minister of whom you speak is Harlem’s Reverend Manning. He himself attended the 9/12 TEA Party in Washington, DC, carrying a sign calling Obama a Long-Legged Mack Daddy: http://angrywhitedude.com/?p=2461
Mason Weaver also appeared, saying, “I thought you might want to hear a Black man speak to you without a Tele-Prom-Ter.” http://www.breitbart.tv/black-speaker-at-dc-rally-mocks-obamas-teleprompter-dependence/
@stuiec: Yes! I watched a lot of Reverend Manning tapes on youtube during the campaign but couldn’t retrieve his name from the old memory bank. Good for him on appearing at the Tea Party!
I loved the black guy who said he was looking for racists but hadn’t found any…was that Mason Weaver as well?