Well, this was the week that Race re-entered the political arena with a vengeance. A degenerate right wing blogger edited a piece of film on a lady who worked for the Bureau of Agriculture, thereby distorting the entire meaning of what she said. He then published this outright lie, which was picked up by, who else, Fox News and broadcast just like it was news or even reality, neither of which, it even approximated.
I’m sure Andrew Brietbart, the blogger, will spend the next couple of years getting reamed by defamation of character and libel lawsuits, which is a it should be. It’s just too bad that we don’t have felony laws on the books that deal with what he did.
What happened after this tripe was broadcast just shows that this nation still hasn’t found a sincere, logical, intelligent way to deal with issues of race. It’s not an easy problem to solve and we probably will never find an adequate solution but we’re not making it any easier by not acknowledging the problem for what it is and attacking it on that basis.
Racism has basically been with us since we learned to walk upright. Maybe before. Racism has gone under various names but is most easily identified as tribalism, us against them. Its original basis was defense of the family and acquisition of territory, women, hunting grounds and later arable land, all with an aim to survival and extension of the tribe. Then came religion and we had the first non-survival based racism.
Almost everyone in the world practices some form of social or intellectual racism. This ranges from thinking that one would rather not associate with someone not of their circle to physically attacking them. I’m a pretty old guy but I have never in my life met anyone who I could truthfully say had no prejudices against anyone. Some but not all prejudices are well earned by those against whom they are held.
Everyone speaks against prejudice and racism but the reality is that most do so out of both sides of their mouths. Almost all (maybe not Buddhism) religions speak against racism and turn around and condemn everyone who doesn’t belong to their religion. We in this country think of racism as black against white but there are so many other types being practiced that they are hard to count. There is ethnic prejudice, social prejudice, financial prejudice, age related prejudice, gender prejudice, pick a subject and you will see a prejudice develop around it.
Okay, so with all this prejudice and racism why the hell are we so uptight about really discussing it? Why have our social mores dictated that certain words are out of bounds?
George Bush won the 2000 & 2004 elections by .5% and 2.4%. Barack Obama won the 2008 election 53% to 46% over John McCain for a 7.3% margin. His margin of victory calculated in votes was 9,529,918, the highest margin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. A conservative estimate is that Obama’s margin of victory would have at least doubled if he had been white. How can I say that? One has only to have attended a McCain rally or seen footage from any one of them to see the “No Nigger” signs held up by “good wholesome Americans.” These are the bigots who wear our flag on their tee shirts, support unjust wars and whine about losing their country to immigrants and welfare cheats. They are actually clueless about what this country really stands for and have a vision that extends only as far as their own selfish wants.
Andrew Breitbart in attacking Shirley Sherrod displays the utter cluelessness that is exemplified in those that scream about reverse bigotry. He has attempted to show that a black woman has been prejudiced against a white couple when the reality is that the white couple were helped by Ms Sherrod and have so stated. But why would Brietbart bother to do such a thing? Because he’s stupid, yes. Because he is himself a bigot, it sure looks that way. But these are causes, not reasons. The reason he did it was to show the world that blacks could be prejudiced just like whites. Well, duh! Can I run that as a headline? Will that surprise anyone? Do they, maybe, have a reason to be? Is he really dense enough to think he could get away with such a pathetic scam?
The fact that he’s right, that blacks can be bigots too, as can Asians, Native Americans, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, anyone, would seem to be self evident, unless you’re a stupid clown like Andrew Breitbart. The fact of the matter is, as stated above, that a certain amount of racism and bigotry has always and will always exist. It’s part of our DNA. It’s there, like the evolutionary changes that have occurred to protect the species and allow it to evolve and prosper. The fact that we allow those natural protective traits to evolve into something negative is only a sign that we are an imperfect species.
So what do we do about it? Many have suggested that the President head a council on racial solutions. I think that would be a disaster. The President has more on his plate right now than any man should be asked to deal with. The fact that he’s black, alone, would put him in an untenable position to deal with this problem. Maybe the next white President will have the guts to do something like that but Obama getting into it will bring a message of self-reward that will help neither him nor the country.
Look, minorities have taken a lot of crap in this country ever since it started. That doesn’t mean they are entitled to anything more than the rest of us, it just means that they are entitled to be pissed off, and that the rest of us shouldn’t get all bent out of shape about it. The simple answer is for all of us to treat each other with respect. I’m just not smart enough to deal with the complicated answers but I’ll bet the problem flattens out if we stick with the simple one.