I have danced around this issue, avoided it, felt guilty for saying nothing, and in general increased the probability that I will end up with a stomach ulcer. In 2008, we ended up with our first black President, and there was a slight promise that we would reach the point of being able to call ourselves a “post-racial” nation. Of course that has been blown out of the water since, as the Obama administration has turned out to be the most racially divisive in recent memory.
Conservatives regularly complain about liberals playing the race card, and are, in return, regularly called racist. Of course there is also the liberal propaganda about blacks only being Democrats, and if a high-profile black is insolent enough to admit supporting Mitt Romney, they are met with abuse. But, the last straw for me personally came with the rampant death threats against Romney. I gave Wayne Dupree (@NewsNinja2012) a heads up about it, and he offered his two cents on the issue. Then, I questioned Wayne on the issue on The 405 Radio (Hour 2, about 10 minutes in), asking if I was wrong to suggest that black liberals threatening to riot and kill Romney were actually racist themselves.
What struck me was that Wayne stated that he felt badly that I, as a white conservative woman, was uncomfortable bringing this up in the first place. Whether or not this can be considered racism or reverse racism is theoretically an argument for sociologists. Given the state of academia in general, the result would probably be a statement against whites suggesting that blacks are capable of racism at all in the first place. However, that does not change the fact that race relations in America have gone downhill over the past four years. It could be argued that there is yet another swing toward self-imposed segregation among liberal blacks. And the irony is that while some community leaders might scream against blacks becoming members of a permanent underclass, at the same time, they are supporting Obama, a President that has done a great deal to guarantee that, at least when considering low-income blacks. There is no argument that social programs have grown by leaps and bounds, and that is one of the largest bones of contention in this election.
But, this is nothing new in the world of Democratic Party politics. Democrats have regularly made their way by giving voters programs that they think they want, purely for political support for at least a few years – until the bills come due. And Democrats rely heavily on the lack of intelligence of their followers. James Carville has finally admitted it, but it’s no great revelation. Here in Pennsylvania, Democrats are known to fund their war chests with Union money, and then tell anti-Union supporters that either they aren’t really taking that money, or that it won’t turn into pro-Union votes while in office. Both are bald-faced lies, of course. But it is what is politically expedient. And their supporters buy it. Even my father did, for a short while. Then he started campaigning for Republicans, in spite of remaining a registered Democrat.
But, this is not about political lies, per se. It is about a false conception by the public that if someone is black, they by definition, cannot be racist. That simply is not true. Why do these liberal blacks on Twitter want Mitt Romney dead? Why are they threatening riots in the streets if he wins? They are making these threats because Romney is a successful white man, period. To them, it is impossible to consider that a white man could ever understand them. Maybe no white man can, given the depth of hatred that has been instilled in them. And that is what racism is – hatred. Regardless of how this election turns out, we as a nation, will be left with masses of people that have learned to hate over the past four years. Maybe they had those feelings before 2008, but there is no denying that they have been amplified in the intervening years. That is the Obama legacy. He offered “Hope and Change”, but traded down to “Hatred and Divisiveness” instead. How’s that working for you?
