Everything Is Not (Not) About Race
by Guest Contributor Christopher Sean Watson
Editor’s Note – Please read the piece carefully – and thoroughly – before commenting. – LDP
After reading an article recently claiming that Tea Party demonstrators, angered over the healthcare bill, were shouting out “nigger” at members of the Black Congressional Caucus, as a Black American, I felt compelled to weigh in. For the past two years, politicians, journalists, bloggers, and political pundits have debated the merits of whether demonstrations against Barack Obama are racially motivated. The fodder was fueled on at least two occasions when former President Jimmy Carter stated that an overwhelming portion of the bitter outcry is racially inclined. With all due respect, Jimmy Carter needs to go back to selling peanuts. Speaking out against a person of color does not make one a racist. Just as speaking out against a woman doesn’t make you sexist, nor does raging against Islam’s radical ideas make you xenophobic.
It’s time for us Black people to stop crying racism every time someone says something mildly critical. We cannot continue to blame “the white man” for our own mishaps and misfortunes, no matter how seemingly institutionalized it appears. Shame on you. What evidence do you have to suggest that well-meaning, hard working, God fearing white Americans revolting against every priority, policy, and decision of this administration are projecting racial animosity? Of course there are a couple of isolated incidents out there, but those incidents aren’t proof in and of themselves, unless there is a significant enough body of examples to suggest a trend or pattern of abuse exists.
Look, I remember all the “misunderstandings” that happened before the election just like everyone else. I remember when McCain ousted a campaign official in Virginia for writing that “if Obama were elected he’d hire rapper Ludacris to paint the White House black and change the national anthem to the “Negro National Anthem…” But, it’s Virginia, folks. What does one expect?
Yes, I do remember when the president of a Republican women’s club in San Bernardino County, CA resigned after sending out that newsletter with Obama’s face on a fake food-stamp coupon surrounded by ribs, watermelon, and fried chicken. What’s so racist about that? Everybody knows that we love watermelon.
But, that stuff was during the campaign when tempers flared high and people often made misguided comments in the heat of battle. What about since the election you ask? Oh, I knew you were gonna bring that up. When that aide to state Senator Diane Black of Tennessee, sent an e-mail to staffers showing the first 43 commanders-in-chief in presidential poses, while displaying Obama’s image with enormous white cartoonish eyes on a black background, she was just poking a little political fun. She didn’t mean anything by it. You know how you sometimes turn people into cartoons to make them seem juvenile, shiftless, or idiotic. Yes, like in old Amos and Andy photos. I mean, no, not like that at all. Like a cartoon. Stop trying to twist up my words and make everything about race.
What’s that? Oh, the incident involving the vice chairman of the Collin County Republican party in Texas who sent an email to local Republican clubs calling a proposed $50 fire arms tax “another terrific idea from the black house and its minions”? She was just angry over Obama trying to stifle our 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. How is that about race?
What? Last June South Carolina Republican activist Rusty DePass compared an escaped gorilla from the Columbia Zoo to Michelle Obama’s ancestors? Well, that was way out of line. I hope that guy apologized for being so insensitive. But that was just an isolated incident. Huh? You say that wasn’t the only incident? The New York Post editorial cartoon with the police shooting a gorilla and saying “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” is sort of similar. But, not really. That was just a coincidence because that escaped gorilla in South Carolina was in the news that week and the cartoonist was merely connecting two separate national stories and making a clever reference. That’s not racial, that’s funny.
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