Race baiting dominates the Democratic Party
As a young man, I observed that those who saw racism in everything were usually the most racist. That analysis has proven itself over time. Today, the accusation is so frequently made on Democratic Party media outlets, very recently by Beto O’Rourke against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that it’s now difficult to know who is not a racist. If a Jew, the most persecuted demographic in modern world history, is racist as O’Rourke says, who is exempt? But the term is used several times a night on MSNBC, NBC, CBS, and ABC news outlets. Presumably, everyone is racist except Democrats, who decry everyone else as such.
As a result, white Democratic presidential contenders are apologizing for and fleeing from their whiteness. Joe Biden (yet unannounced) and Bernie Sanders are “old white men,” we are told. The party seems intent on purging the stain of whiteness from itself. Sanders thus far ignores it while instead apologizing for his great wealth and “tax breaks.” Biden recently apologized to Anita Hill for the “whiteness” of the Senate Judiciary Committee he once chaired.
Beto O’Rourke recently admitted to having benefited from what he called “white privilege.” He told a group, “Absolutely undeniable. I have been arrested twice. But that didn’t come to define me or narrow my options in life. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I’m a white man.”
Democrats also see everywhere “white nationalism,” a form of racism, and attempt to attach the label to anyone who wishes to enforce existing longstanding immigration law — the same law enforced by Barack Obama. Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar recently tweeted, “Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. The fact that he still has influence on policy and political appointments is an outrage.” This is coming from probably the most anti-jewish member of congress. Unable to show clear documentation for the charge, supporters acknowledged that although they could not X-ray for “racist bones,” even so, Miller (and by extension President Donald Trump his boss) is still guilty of “soft-core” white nationalism. In other words, they are white nationalists because they are white and in the majority.
Since whites participated in slavery in our early history, 13 Democratic presidential hopefuls attending the Al Sharpton-founded National Action Network’s annual conference April 3 committed to sign Congresswoman Jackson Lee’s recently introduced bill creating a commission to study reparations for African Americans. Most saw it as a way of addressing the persistence of racism and white supremacy today. Cory Booker said, “It will begin to right the economic scales of past harms.”
Senator Kamala Harris said, “Justice means recognizing domestic terrorism, including white nationalist extremism,” which she noted “should be considered a national security priority.” Senator Bernie Sanders said he would sign, then returned to his racist central theme, “We have a president who is a racist, who is a sexist, who is a homophobe, who is a xenophobe, and who is a religious bigot.”
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand would sign, as would Congressman Beto O’Rourke, Gov. John Hickenlooper, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Indeed, no presidential candidate at the gathering opposed it. All supported “racial restitution,” whatever that means.
The problem with such legislation is that no white person now living had anything to do with slavery 154 years ago. Even then, it was almost entirely the whites of the north who gave their lives to free the slaves. It was whites who established and maintained the Underground Railroad at considerable risk to themselves, and it was white author Harriet Beecher Stow in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” who brought attention to the moral issue of slavery. Even today, race baiters need to be reminded that it was whites who elected the first half-black president, Barack Obama.
Of course, there were abuses of the past. Indians, Chinese, Germans, Japanese, and Jews can all make cases. Race baiters want whites to acknowledge that they are racist and oppressive by nature and should have what they call “white guilt.” The only remedy they seem to accept is compensation, but this is never enough.
But their focus is almost entirely on the blacks and slavery, and the then perpetrators and victims are dead and today’s descendants, many generations later, were not wronged. How do they make the case for their receiving compensation for wrongs committed to their ancestors without committing an injustice to those now living — even if it were their ancestors who committed the injustices mentioned? Would they not be the source of new injustice?
Why should I pay for the injustices of my ancestors when, even worse, they may not have been the perpetrators? And why should my black neighbor receive a benefit forced from me without creating an injustice to me? Under this logic, his posterity will need to atone to my posterity. Could not the same arguments be used against them in a later century?
Today, most white Americans are of many races and not racist. Insisting that all whites should have “white guilt” because of presumed ancestral injustices or confederate association only exacerbates racism, the very thing race baiters insist they wish to end. Are race baiters not then the “real” racists? That the news gives their racism so much attention should be objectionable to everyone.
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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The most breathtaking example of intellectual dishonesty growing out of the most desperate example of white fragility I have experienced so far. Certainly, a person who holds a Ph.d in history and political science can seriously entertain these ridiculously simple minded ideas. Often, contradictory ideas. The premier and most offensive being that one is not responsible for offenses committed by their ancestors. There is no ‘presumption’ in the facts of slavery, exploitation, oppression and genocide. White fragility is defensive racism. The abdication of responsibility, not guilt. The worst part of it is that it distorts our perspective of history and trivializes it.
My familial history is a case in point. Shortly after the American Revolution, my ancestral grandfather endowed my grandmother with ‘a negro gentleman’ in his will. This gentleman was to act as an overseer and personal servant to care for the lands and property and to protect the old woman in his old age. The family had to ‘hire’ him for wages when New York State emancipated slaves. So, my family owned slaves. Yet, in less than one generation, a great, great uncle was dismissed from his Presbyterian pulpit for preaching abolition, and in the next, eight (8) Flagler men volunteered for service in the Union Army to oppose slavery. My point being that moral conscience is evolutionary. Slave holders become abolitionists. My parents were active in the Civil Rights movement and two of my sisters married black men. Evolutionary. These changes in consciousness do not occur spontaneously. There must be a clear understanding of the nature of inequality, its structure, its existence before you are able to correct it. That is how a half free nation that at its inception only bestowed democratic rights and privileges to white men of means and property to the egalitarian democracy we have today.