I mentioned earlier that I tend to mentally chew on things, and the process can take some time. This, I think, is mainly because I'm really not used to questioning with boldness. It's one of the unfortunate side effects of leftist thinking, which often requires shutting one's brain off.
I mention this because what I'm thinking about today is a statement made about a year and a half ago, and one that has been stuck in my craw ever since: "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards."
This is, of course, from the man with the most amazingly selective eyesight I've ever seen, Attorney General Eric Holder. He said this in February of '09, and the uproar was immediate. My knee-jerk reflexes kicked in (I am, after all, a work in progress) and I joined in the furor in my own way, but there was then and still is now a part of me that agrees with the essence of that statement: too many people in America are afraid to talk about anything racial. And it is a sad state of affairs. We shouldn't have to pussyfoot around each other, terrified that some offhand look or remark might send a total stranger into a frothing-at-the-mouth conniption fit.
Unfortunately for Mr. Holder, this is where his moral authority ends. For Eric Holder to bemoan the abysmal state of race relations in this country is like a heroin dealer complaining about how there are too many drug addicts in the neighborhood, or an OPEC executive ranting that he's paying too much at the pump. The reason race relations in this country are nowhere near as good as they should be is because of people like Mr. Holder and his cadre of race-baiting hucksters who insist upon seeing racism where no sane person would. People who insist upon opening up old wounds and pouring in salt, and people who insist on continuing to collect on a debt that has been long since paid.
If you owed a man money, and then paid it off with interest, you would be more than justified in calling the police if that man's son tried to shake down your kids to pay him the same amount you had paid his dad, claiming that your kids were "guilty by association."
Yet this is the state of race relations in America, mainly because self-styled leaders of the "black community" (whatever that is) know that perpetuating this false sense of guilt will directly lead not only to very comfortable homes and expensive cars, but also to power. Lots of power.
And therein lies the disconnect: There's no way a man like Eric Holder is going to throw the brake on this gravy train. I don't think anyone is buying the idea that the man who dropped an open-and-shut case against the New Black Panther Party for racially motivated voter intimidation, while pursuing a lawsuit against Arizona SB 1070, is secretly pining for an America where unfounded accusations of racism would be met with eye-rolling derision. Mr. Holder's motivation in this 18-month-old speech was not to reprimand, but to gloat. And why shouldn't he? His cushy new job was a direct result of his new boss's old Republican opponent throwing the election, and of (so-called) news outlets outright ignoring Barack Obama's less savory connections -- all for fear of being called racists. Prominent media figures scrambled over the tops of each other in a never-ending quest to prove just how truly open-minded they were, and anyone who had the audacity to question the halos that photojournalists kept giving the Democratic candidate was quickly branded a heinous bigot. In short, the entire '08 presidential campaign was a race-baiting grievance-monger's wet dream.
Is this still relevant? You betcha. The Leftists currently running this country are still operating out of the same bag of tricks that worked so well for them in 2008, and, as it's all they really have, they will work that ugly little bag for all it's worth. Fortunately, the rest of us are now a little wiser.
Tammy Bruce has said that when someone calls you a racist, act as though he has called you a cocker spaniel, because it's just as likely to be true. Thanks in large part to the Left overplaying the Race Card to the point that even Jon Stewart thinks it's been maxed out, more and more Americans are taking this approach. We need to continue this trend. Repeat after me: The debt of slavery has been PAID. The debt of Reconstruction and segregation has been PAID. Any further offenses, by a person or persons of any amount of dermal pigmentation, are the sole responsibility of the perpetrator thereof, and cannot be tacitly applied to a group of people arbitrarily boxed together due to an accident of birth. (That last one was a little wordy, sorry.) There have been some truly ugly chapters in American history due to a widespread acceptance of racism at the time; this attitude is no longer prevalent, nor is it acceptable to the vast majority of Americans. Any people who are somehow still stuck on injustices that, in many cases, they've never actually experienced, should cease the endless navel-gazing and go quietly help someone in genuine need.
