I turned on Sean Hannity's show yesterday in the car and Neal Boortz was guest hosting. I like Neal Boortz. I don't always agree with him (just as I don't always agree with Hannity or Rush or Beck) but he's interesting most of the time. And since he retired last year it's a rare treat to listen to him again.
He was talking about racism, the definition of it and how the definition has changed over the years. The following is a synopsis of his remarks, with a few of my own thrown in.
Racism: Merriam-Webster's first definition of racism is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race." The second is "racial prejudice or discrimination."
So many other things have become synonymous with racism or racist that one would need a dictionary just of those two words to keep up. I'll give you some examples.
According to some on the left, and talk show hosts such as Chris Matthews and Toure', you're a racist if you did not vote for President Obama.
If you oppose Obama's policies, regardless of the reasons you state, you're a racist.
If you oppose Obamacare you're a racist.
If you oppose gun control you're a racist.
If you support voter ID laws you're a racist.
If you are against illegal immigration you're a racist.
If you belong to or support the Tea Party you're a racist.
If you believed George Zimmerman you're a racist.
If you call Obama "The Food Stamp President" you're a racist.
If you use the phrase "you people" you're a racist.
During a debate, Mitt Romney described President Obama as "angry" on two separate occasions and was immediately branded a racist by MSNBC.
Chris Matthews says the word "Chicago" is code for racism.
FOX News correspondent Juan Williams says that “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich are Republican code words for blacks.
It's getting so the liberals will take any word, phrase or incident and turn it into something racist - unless it doesn't benefit them. The Trayvon Martin shooting versus the Chris Lane shooting is a perfect example. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the mainstream media made the Trayvon Martin shooting into a racial incident even though the Sanford police, Zimmerman himself and Martin's own parents said race had nothing to do with it. Mainstream news organizations edited the audio bytes and made it sound like Zimmerman profiled Martin. Sharpton and Jackson marched and held rallies and went on TV calling George Zimmerman, who was white, Hispanic and black, a racist murderer.
In contrast, when three black teenagers (OK, two black and one half black) murdered Chris Lane in Oklahoma the other day because they "were bored", the mainstream media, Sharpton and Jackson were predictably quiet. Two days after the fact, Jesse Jackson, in a statement well befitting his very outspoken personality, said "Senseless acts of violence like this are frowned upon." Really, Jesse? Frowned upon? That's the best you can do?
Sharpton stayed quiet a couple days longer then said this about the Lane murder and why he was not speaking out or protesting in some way: “The three were arrested, there was nothing to protest, the system worked there. And racial? Not only did the police not say it was racial, one of the three were white.”
Since the third one, the "white" one, is biracial, can he be called white so easily? If that's the case, can the President of the United States be called white? Or do people like Sharpton get to choose someone's color or race based on his own particular needs? Oh, and Al? YOU were the one who kept making the Zimmerman case racial - even though the police and Martin's parents said it wasn't. How quickly you seem to forget.
Racism in America has changed. In most cases it's more covert than it was in the days when whites held public lynchings of black people. And that wasn't really so long ago. The last known "public lynching" of a black man in the US was in 1939. However, if you include those who didn't use a rope, James Byrd, intentionally dragged behind a speeding truck, was the last lynching of a black man. That was in 1998. Michael McDonald was killed in 1981 and Emmet Till in 1955. To me those were technically lynchings. And we don't really know how many other black people have been intentionally "lynched" since then. But Trayvon Martin wasn't one of them.
Additionally, black contempt and even hatred for whites seems to have substantially increased since Obama was elected President. I don't necessarily blame President Obama and yet I do. He has done nothing to calm the racial tension in the United States but in fact, with his statements on Trayvon Martin, Professor Gates, etc., has actually exacerbated them. It seems racial tension is something the President doesn't worry too much about.
The President has been understandably quiet following the shooting of Chris Lane. His Deputy Press Secretary said yesterday that he was "unfamiliar with the case." Yeah, right. They have people in that office who do nothing but watch the news reports and take notes on anything that could be asked by the White House Press Corps. Nice dodge - if you believe him. Most of the Press Corps don't ask the hard questions. Only FOX had the cojones to ask.
So there you have it - the new definition of racist. Anyone who opposed President Obama in any way. If you're a black conservative I'm sure you're considered a racist against your own people. It's sad, really. Obama was supposed to be "the great uniter." Instead he has taken the sad tale of racism in the United States and made it worse. Whether it was intentional or simply an unexpected consequence remains to be seen.
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