OPINION

I Am Not the Racist; They Are

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Author’s note: There is offensive language in this column.  None of it is mine.    

Since I religiously follow my own recommendation to my readers that you should read the writings of the Left to understand the arguments they are making, it is clear that there is a strain of thinking that people like me are inherently racist.The in-vogue position is that we are white supremacists and benefactors of white privilege.  This line of thinking perpetuates racial stereotypes and in itself is racist.

One of the elements of these arguments purports that only white people can be racists.  That is because whites experience white privilege and only the “disadvantaged” can experience racism against them.  I believe that is the essence of the argument.  But who can be sure because it is so inherently illogical on its face, it is difficult to logically describe.

That is why I was thankful for Yuli Gurriel.  You may remember he is the first baseman for the Houston Astros.Yuli is a 33-year-old rookie from Cuba. In game three of the 2017 World Series, he hit a home run off the Los Angeles Dodger pitcher from Japan, Yu Darvish.   Yuli then went back to the dugout where he was seen making the now-famous slant-eye motion to his teammates belittling Yu’s ethnicity.  Thank you Yuli for forever putting to rest the inane argument that only whites can be racist.

The newest darling of the Left is Ta-Nehisi Coates.   He is a black man who apparently thinks, from reading his writings, that America is a racist country and we whites are all guilty.  Lately his most vivid argument is that the lead racist is President Trump and that anyone who voted for Trump is a racist (white supremacist).  His lengthy column in The Atlantic titled The First White President lays out his case for this.  If you can meander through the leftist jargon he uses to comprehend what he is attempting to communicate, he states in this piece that the people who elected Trump did so to overturn Obama’s actions because they are racists.  He does not seem to consider that we who voted for Trump did so for two primary reasons: 1) His deplorable opponent; and, 2) We deeply disagreed with President Obama’s policies that had nothing to do with the color of his skin.

The pivotal paragraph in the column by Coates is:

“For Trump, it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. “Race is an idea, not a fact,” the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written, and essential to the construct of a “white race” is the idea of not being a n*gger. Before Barack Obama, n*ggers could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent—an entire n*gger presidency with ni*gger health care, n*gger climate accords, and n*gger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new—the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his rightful honorific—America’s first white president.”

I cannot think of anything I have ever read that is both more inherently racist and wrong.The fact that a publication like The Atlantic, one with such a rich journalistic history, allowed him to publish this and then proudly boasted about it is despicable. 

Today’s public communication has generally been degraded particularly with the use of Twitter.  People have started to use words in the public arena that would never have been used before.If you want to guess what the words are then refer to George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words.  That The Atlantic would allow this to be published is also inherently racist.  They would not publish something from me that uses the same verbiage; why should they publish it at all?  Someone who writes something like this has a deep hatred for not only Trump, but all who voted for him.  That is racist at its core.

Then there is Professor Ekow Yankah, Benjamin Cardoza School of Law at Yeshiva University, who published a column in the NYT titled “Can My Children Be Friends with White People?” After telling us how bad it is for black people in America, particularly Trump’s America, Yankah writes, “I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line.”  Maybe this man lives in a different country than I do.  Maybe I should tell all my black relations and my black niece, I didn’t mean it; is just a mirage that we have a relationship devoid of the issues of race.

These people and their enablers who publish them on The Left are sustaining a divisive mentality emanating from their own racist thoughts; or, in the case of the whites who support this, a misguided guilt for the failures of some in the black community. 

Most of America today has washed itself of these racial tendencies.  If you don’t want to believe that then take a time machine back to 1960 and see what the divide between races was like then.Though people in a mixed-race society like America will never be free of racial overtones, it is not because this country is inherently racist.  It is because in a country of 330 million people we will always have knuckleheads.

I was recently reading a book, “Flash Boys” by Michael Lewis.  In it he writes of a Canadian of Japanese descent who is transferred to New York to work for the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).  He never really experienced any recognition of his ethnicity in Canada.

While he was in New York, RBC decided to enhance their diversity by calling a meeting of their non-white employees.  Lewis writes “Going around the table, people took turns responding to a request to ‘talk about your experience of being a minority at RBC.’  When Brad’s turn came he said ‘To be honest, the only time I’ve have ever felt like a minority is this exact moment.  If you really want to encourage diversity you shouldn’t make people feel like a minority.’ Then he left.”

That is exactly what we should all do when these race-baiting racists spew their filth.If you know some Leftist who wants to continue this trash, first try to enlighten them, then let them know they are the people who should be branded as racists.  Not me and hopefully not you.