Can Obama Ever Move Beyond the Race Issue?
When I moved to Boston almost 30 years ago, I was shocked at how much talk there was on the news that pitted skin colors against each other. I came from a quiet little town of 5000 in the Adirondacks. Yes, we were mostly white, but not entirely. Race was a non-issue. Seriously…no one cared about color…not the blacks or the whites or the Native Americans. Then I got to Boston.
What was surprising was that the race issue seemed mostly media generated. It’s as if the reporters were still living in the 1950’s. And I think they still are today. They continue to frame issues in terms of color, even when color isn’t the issue. Like the case of Henry Louis Gates and the Cambridge police. Did you notice that there were a number of policemen on the scene, black as well as white? And then the leader of the free world stands up and calls the police stupid after he admits he doesn’t know the whole story? Sorry, Mr. Obama, but that was really stupid and the impact of your days of listening to Rev Wright rant about “whitey” are showing.
Here’s some interesting insight from one of the greatest minds of our day, Thomas Sowell. If you haven’t read his book, Basic Economics, I highly recommend it. One of the most useful and understandable economics books out there. Given the mess our economy is in now, it should be required reading for all…especially the administration in DC!
From National Review:
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a “post-racial” era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us.
That was quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially.
Barack Obama has been allied with such people for decades. He found it expedient to appeal to a wider electorate as a post-racial candidate, just as he has found it expedient to say a lot of other popular things — about campaign finance, about transparency in government, about not rushing legislation through Congress without having it first posted on the Internet long enough to be studied — all of which turned to be the direct opposite of what he has actually done after getting elected.
Those who were shocked at President Obama’s cheap shot at the Cambridge police for being “stupid” in arresting Henry Louis Gates must have been among those who let their wishes prevail over the obvious implications of Obama’s 20 years of association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.
With race — as with campaign finance, transparency, and the rest — Barack Obama knows what the public wants to hear, and that is what he has said. But his policies as president have been the opposite of his rhetoric, with race as with other issues.
As a state senator in Illinois, Obama pushed the “racial profiling” issue, so it is hardly surprising that he jumped to the conclusion that a policeman was engaging in racial profiling, when in fact the cop was investigating a report received from a neighbor that someone seemed to be breaking into the house that Professor Gates was renting in Cambridge.
For those who are interested in facts — and these obviously do not include President Obama — there has been a serious study of racial profiling in a book titled Are Cops Racist? by Heather Mac Donald. Her analysis of the data shows how this issue has long been distorted beyond recognition by politics.
The racial-profiling issue is a great vote-getter. And if it polarizes the society, that is a price that politicians are willing to pay in order to get votes. Academics who run black-studies departments, as Prof. Henry Louis Gates does, likewise have a vested interest in racial paranoia.
For “community organizers” as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama’s background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.
What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.
To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.
President Obama’s first nominee to the Supreme Court is, like Obama himself, someone with a background of years of affiliation with an organization dedicated to promoting racial resentments and a sense of racial entitlement.
An 18th-century philosopher said, “When I speak I put on a mask. When I act I am forced to take it off.” Barack Obama’s mask slipped for a moment last week but he quickly recovered, with the help of the media. But we should never forget what we saw.
