Michelle Obama Creates Racial Strife

If you didn't know this was given in 2015, you might think it was given in the 1950s or '60s.

Surely we've come farther than this in 50 years.

Well, those of us who look for the good in life see that things are MUCH better than they were back then. We've come a long, long way as a society. Because there are those of us who choose to see it that way.

But then there are those, like Barack and Michelle Obama, who have a pessimistic outlook on life and can't see it. All they see is race. They see everything through the prism of race, and it distorts everything they see. Those kind of people are the ones ginning up the hate in places like Chicago, New York, Baltimore and Ferguson. And Tuskegee.

This speech wasn't productive. It was counterproductive. It was hurtful and divisive. In a time when we need leaders calling on people to ignore differences and to see each other as more than just the race that they are, this does the exact opposite.

Michelle Obama should be ashamed of herself for this. The fact that she isn't tells you everything you need to know about her and people like her who insist on colorblindness yet do everything they can to point out the color of peoples' skin.

A Black Man and a White Man Discuss Race

Today I did something that I very, very rarely do - I confronted a friend about race on Facebook. This wasn't just any friend, either. This was a person who used to be one of my closest friends - someone who Kristi and I both have known and loved for a long time. In fact, it's fair to say that without this person Kristi and I may never have gotten married. But now this is someone whom I'm considering unfriending.

So yeah - this hurts.

This friend is a black man and has long been a voice for inclusion and diversity. He celebrated his blackness, and that was pretty cool. But lately, his posts have become more polarizing and less inclusive. He's always been focused on race, but usually in a very educational and philosophical manner. But then something happened. His posts started to get more confrontational and one-sided and divisive. But he's my friend and he's entitled to his opinion.

But today he linked to a story about some New Jersey teens who did a great thing the right thing and paid for some merchandise, even though the store was closed. Great story. But he interjected race into it and it just made my blood boil. I am firmly of the belief that there's enough racial tension in this country and that inserting race into everything is one of the things that's tearing out country apart.  So I called him on it. This is that conversation: (click on the image to enlarge it)

...and that's where I left it.

I don't mind having an honest conversation about just about any topic, but what infuriated me was his complete unwillingness to even slightly admit that he might be wrong in interjecting race into this. Well, that and his condescension.

Friends, I meant everything I said in the discussion. If we want to live in a world where race doesn't matter, then let's all let it not matter... together.

And for my friend, I pray that someday you'll see how hurtful you've been and how you're actively involved in setting the clock backwards on race relations, especially since you're in a position to influence young minds.

"It Wasn't Racial."

I didn't blog about it. Purposefully. It was too soon. We didn't have all the facts. And we didn't know anything about the three teens who murdered Australian student Chris Lane in cold blood last Friday.

But now things are starting to come to light.

After the killing, people all over the internet began wondering aloud what the reaction would be to this killing by those who said that Trayvon Martin was a racial hate crime. They were, for the most part, silent on the issue. People who for weeks and months have been raising holy hell on Facebook and Twitter and in blogs and changing their status profiles to pictures of hoodie-wearing people suddenly have nothing to say. Well, most people, anyway. I did see a few pop up here and there to say something along the lines of "this was just a killing. It wasn't a hate crime. It wasn't about race."

Yeah. Well now there's this from the Daily Caller:

One of the teens charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of Australian baseball player Christopher Lane in Duncan, Okla., previously posted anti-white statements on his Twitter feed.

Not about race, huh? Not a hate crime? Notice that James Edwards is the one using the word hate in the hashtag of his tweet. Not anyone else. To me, that screams hate crime.

So, Oprah, Al Sharpton, President Obama et al, where are you now? You hypocrites.

[edit: It seems that people are giving Jesse Jackson credit for speaking out on this matter because he tweeted on the matter. Let's be clear - that's not speaking out. That's just saying something. But good for him, anyway, for sayting something, even if it was weak.]

Obama: Honor Trayvon With Gun Control

From MSNBC: 

President Obama called on the nation to honor Trayvon Martin a day after George Zimmerman was acquitted of his murder by asking "ourselves if we're doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence." 

His comments came as family members of Zimmerman and Martin, as well as pundits, celebrities, and court observers had strong reactions to Saturday’s not guilty verdict, with those reactions taking various forms — from joy and outrage to Shakespearean references and calls for peace. 

"I now ask every American to respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son. And as we do, we should ask ourselves if we're doing all we can to widen the circle of compassion and understanding in our own communities," Obama said in a statement on Sunday. 

"We should ask ourselves if we're doing all we can to stem the tide of gun violence that claims too many lives across this country on a daily basis. We should ask ourselves, as individuals and as a society, how we can prevent future tragedies like this. As citizens, that's a job for all of us. That's the way to honor Trayvon Martin."

President Obama, you're an opportunistic race-baiting pot-stirring controversy-ginning piece of crap.

The Zimmerman case had nothing to do with gun violence or race.

Micromanagement and Race Relations

From ABC News:

President Obama spoke to Shirley Sherrod, the USDA official who was ousted after a race flap, and expressed his "regret" over the events of this past week, the White House said this afternoon.

According to the White House, Obama "emphasized that [Agriculture] Secretary [Tom] Vilsack was sincere in his apology yesterday, and in his work to rid USDA of discrimination."

On Thursday morning Agriculture Department officials e-mailed Sherrod a specific job offer and today Obama told her he hoped she would take it.

Sherrod was offered a job tasked with settling lawsuits from minority farmers who say they were discriminated against in applying for farm loans. Vilsack on Wednesday said Sherrod was offered the job because she "has a unique set of skills trying to turn the page on our civil rights chapter which has been difficult."

Two questions:

1. When will Obama keep his nose out of state and local affairs, quit micromanaging and just mind the general running of the country? He had no business injecting himself into this matter. In fact, his involvement simply made this a much bigger mess than it had to be.

2. When will the race debate actually be over? The answer is when people of color - all colors - stop using race as an identifier and simply start treating people as people. By continually focusing on "black America" or "white America" people of all colors are doing a disservice to us all and to the eventual goal: a truly colorblind America. People should be judged by their capability and their character, not their skin color. It's no longer whites who are the primary keepers of racially-charged views and thinking. When everything is filtered through the lens of race, that's what makes one a racist. And by constantly crying foul on the supposed basis of race, it only furthers racial tension in this country. If those people would just let the past go and quit holding a grudge for slavery and civil injustices in the first half of last century, the better we will all be. I'm not saying that the people who lived through it should forget - quite the contrary. It has made them stronger and has made them who they are. But compared side by side, civil rights has come a hell of a long way from 1950 to 2010. And that's what's important - the present. The past is ugly, but the present and the future are a whole lot brighter, if only we would all let it be.

Tea Parties and Americans: The Left Just Doesn't Get It

From a NYTimes New Alert:

The fierce animosity that Tea Party supporters harbor toward Washington and President Obama in particular is rooted in deep pessimism about the direction of the country and the conviction that the policies of the Obama administration are disproportionately directed at helping the poor rather than the middle class or the rich, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Bull crap.

The media just doesn't get it. I can't speak for everyone, but let me tell you why I (and the people I spoke to there) went to the tea party last year: government intrusion and reckless, unaccountable spending. That's it. We're simply tired of the government looking at us as cattle - as a food source. They see us not as people, but as a power base and, as a whole, they've stopped listening to us. Congress and the president has decided that they know better than we do how to run our daily lives and how our money should be spent. The concept of individual liberty is completely lost to them.

They have no problem with lying to us about how badly we need a stimulus package RIGHT NOW or else the entire economy will collapse. Then we find out that all kinds of other crap has been included into the bill that was supposedly all about the economy and that the trillions of dollars that were spent - that we didn't have - went to wasteful projects and people and places that didn't even exist. And then came the health care bill, which is fraught with all the same kinds of nastiness.

But is it about so-called class? Not at all. Why must everything be about class or race to liberals? Why must everything be a damn game? It's simply about standing up for individual liberty and accountability in government! How much more simple can I put it? I want liberty for people of all races and of all backgrounds and of all so-called "classes," not just the middle class or the rich. That's ludicrous. The left and the media think that because the people who are most likely to attend a tea party are middle class and skew toward upper middle class that we only are there to help the people who are there.

What utter nonsense.

The reason they see it that way is because that's how they view politics: help those who support you or are like-minded and step on everyone else. But that's not how conservatives (or even most Republicans) view things. Because we have a message of personal accountability and hard work, not government hand-outs and state-run coddling programs people (and by people, I mean people on the left) think that we're these cold, heartless animals who are only out for ourselves and who don't care about the poor or people who are down on their luck. Again, that's simply not true. We just have a vastly different view of how things should be fixed. Instead of taxing everyone so that the government can dole out checks and food like some sort of giant teet, we think that charity should come from charities and churches and private foundations and from the goodness of people's hearts. There are times when people are down and just need some assistance. Cool. Fine. I understand that. Then that's where a government safety net should come in, but it should only provide just enough so that people don't starve while they're out there trying to get back on their feet. It should be a limited time assistance, not a perpetual system of dependence as it is now. People should not make their living by sitting at home waiting on a welfare check to come, but there are millions that do. And somehow, the liberals have removed the shame in that - in accepting something for nothing and relying on someone else to take care of you.

There's an old saying: "give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." That pretty much sums up the conservative philosophy.

What strikes me is how different the news alert at the top is from the news story that it links to:

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The 18 percent of Americans who identify themselves as Tea Party supporters tend to be Republican, white, male, married and older than 45.

I sincerely doubt that only 18 percent of Americans are tea party supporters. Perhaps it was in the phrasing of the poll question. Had the question asked something like "do you identify with the concepts of government accountability, lower taxes and more individual liberty?" instead of something like "are you a Tea Party supporter?" the results would have been a whole lot higher. I don't identify myself as a Tea Party supporter. I'm a conservative who attended a tea party to show my support for conservative philosophy and to protest my government's willful and deliberate ignoring of my liberties. The whole "Tea Party" thing has taken on the tone of a third party, and I don't support that. What I support is making the Republican party conservative again and holding the Republicans to the standard we elected them on.

They hold more conservative views on a range of issues than Republicans generally. They are also more likely to describe themselves as “very conservative” and President Obama as “very liberal.”

And while most Republicans say they are “dissatisfied” with Washington, Tea Party supporters are more likely to classify themselves as “angry.”

Not angry as in unruly mob "angry," but angry as in "I've finally had all I can swallow, so I'm going to take a little time off of work to make my voice heard" angry.

Their responses are like the general public’s in many ways. Most describe the amount they paid in taxes this year as “fair.”

Uh, no. Flat out wrong. A huge part of the catalyst behind some in the tea party movement was unfair and extraordinarily high taxes.

Most send their children to public schools.

True. So? Is the New York Times arguing that because we support smaller government that we don't support education or that we shouldn't be sending our kids to public schools?

A plurality do not think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president,

I'm one of those who thinks that Sarah Palin is a fad and shouldn't be held up as some kind of savior of the Republican party. What Sarah Palin is - and represents - is a refreshingly unabashed conservative voice on the national scene that we haven't heard in a long time. But she's not the best candidate for president, no. I'm not going to go so far as to ay she's not qualified.

and, despite their push for smaller government, they think that Social Security and Medicare are worth the cost to taxpayers.

Horse crap. Only people who don't pay attention think that, and the story already established that those who attend tea parties are far more likely to pay attention to politics.

They actually are just as likely as Americans as a whole to have returned their census forms, though some conservative leaders have urged a boycott.

What the crap does the census have to do with anything? I've never heard any "conservative leader" say to not return your census form. What I've heard is that people shouldn't have to fill out all the crazy demographic and personal information that the government asks for on them because such information is only used to gerrymander congressional districts and attempt to justify social spending programs. What they've urged is to say "there are four people living in my house and our household income is X." And that's it. The government doesn't need to know what race I am in order to serve me. If we're to truly live in a "colorblind society," then race shouldn't matter at all.

They are more likely than the general public, and Republicans, to say that too much has been made of the problems facing black people.

See my previous comments. Race shouldn't matter. If people are having problems, it shouldn't matter what race they are - that's extraneous to the situation- just find a way to solve the problem, not how to capitalize on it.

And some other nuggets from way, way down in the story:

They are far more pessimistic than Americans in general about the economy. More than 90 percent of Tea Party supporters think the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared with about 60 percent of the general public.

Nearly 9 in 10 disapprove of the job Mr. Obama is doing over all, and about the same percentage fault his handling of major issues: health care, the economy and the federal budget deficit. Ninety-two percent believe Mr. Obama is moving the country toward socialism, an opinion shared by more than half of the general public.

And nearly three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.

And finally:

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

What contradiction? We expect to get what we paid for. Now, I don't expect to get a dime of Social Security benefits, but there was an entire generation or two before mine that were promised benefits and were sold on the concept of Social Security as their retirement income. That's what the government promised them. So I don't begrudge those people for expecting the money back that they paid into the system. What I think is ludicrous is anyone who still expects that after seeing Social Security not pay off and seeing people not able to get by on their Social Security benefits. I think Social Security should be overhauled drastically or done away with completely (with the aforementioned previous generation in mind). But, that's a post for another day.

It's Not About the Media

I was very disappointed yesterday when I flipped on the radio and heard first the local guys in Houston, then Limbaugh and Hannity in a full fledged tizzy - not over the substance of what Harry Reid said, but instead about the double standard that exists for Democrats who say such things.

It's not about the media, guys. Make no mistake - there's hypocrisy going on here, but it's not on the part of the media. It's on the part of the "black community and black "leaders."

Ward Connerly in the Wall Street Journal agrees with me:

For my part, I am having a difficult time determining what it was that Mr. Reid said that was so offensive.

Was it because he suggested that lighter-skinned blacks fare better in American life than their darker brothers and sisters? If so, ask blacks whether they find this to be true. Even the lighter-skinned ones, if they are honest with themselves, will agree that there is a different level of acceptance.

Was it because he used the politically incorrect term "negro"? If so, it should be noted that there are many blacks of my generation who continue to embrace this term. In fact, "negro" is an option along with "black" and "African-American" on the 2010 Census.

Was it because he implied that Mr. Obama might be cut some political slack because of his oratorical skills or his looks? If so, that fact was not harmful to Joe Biden, who was elected vice president after praising Mr. Obama as "articulate" and "clean-looking."

Or, finally, could it be viewed as offensive that Mr. Reid suggested that blacks often have a distinctive way of speaking? If that is, indeed, the offense, then I will offend a lot of individuals when I assert that I can tell in probably 90% of the cases whether an individual is black merely by talking to him on the telephone.

In short, this incident does not rise to the level that it prompts me to join the parade of those who urge Mr. Reid to resign because of it. There are far more substantive matters over which the Senate majority leader's performance should be judged—and I find his performance seriously flawed on any number of them.

And he sums up my thoughts exactly:

We are too quick to take offense about race when none was intended. Some are too anxious to manufacture outrage over matters that do not justify the attention that we give them. And we are too quick to politicize race.

As far as I'm concerned, Messrs. Bond, Sharpton, Jackson and a host of other Americans formerly identified as "negroes" have forever forfeited the right to be outraged whenever a Republican or a talk show host makes an inappropriate or "insensitive" racial comment.

The Time I Defended Harry Reid

From Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON – The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate apologized on Saturday for comments he made about Barack Obama's race during the 2008 presidential bid and are quoted in a yet-to-be-released book about the campaign.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments," Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were first reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

I don't see what the big deal is here. What he said is both true and unoffensive. Obama is a light-skinned black man and slips in and out of a more black (which is what Negro means, y'all) speech cadence easily depending on which group he's pandering to - er... - speaking to.

"But no one calls people Negros anymore! That's an archaic, outdated and offensive way of referring to blacks!"

Really? As long as there's still an organization called The United Negro College Fund (even if they have acronymized it), there should be no one offended. Until blacks get rid of the so-called "offensive" language in their own culture they have no right to complain.

Ditto the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and using the word "nigger" to refer to other blacks.

White people (as a group) are no longer the racists who further the blacks-as-inferior mentality. Most times they shackle themselves.

"the overwhelming majority of whom were black..."

A sentence that jumped out at me from an article on torture by Douglas Turner of the Buffalo News about methods used by the United States in the past.

If we look for race in everything, that's what makes us racists. This sentence has no place in this story. The fact that the tests that it refers to were done isn't good, but race has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's just race-baiting.

The sentence reads just as effectively when written "Keeney in 1962 covertly set up a CIA front called MK-ULTRA, which used the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies to conduct tests on unwitting federal inmates to chart the effect of hallucinogenic drugs."

Shameful in an otherwise decent story.