Right Minded Online

It looks like racism in America is alive and well, after all.

It came after a family night of celebrating America and freedom with a fireworks show at Firestone Stadium. Marshall, his family and two friends were gathered outside a friend’s home in South Akron.

Out of nowhere, the six were attacked by dozens of teenage boys, who shouted ”This is our world” and ”This is a black world” as they confronted Marshall and his family.

The Marshalls, who are white, say the crowd of teens who attacked them and two friends June 27 on Girard Street numbered close to 50. The teens were all black.

Ohio.com – Akron police investigate teen mob attack on family

If the election of Barack Obama couldn’t prompt the race-baiting left to finally declare an end to racism in America, nothing will. Regardless of what actually occurs, liberals will never admit that blacks have achieved equality. What I really resent is when they use sports as a prop to whine about racism that doesn’t really exist.

“A lot of people might be tempted to believe that the struggle — which both produced these three giants of sports and comedy and gave them the power to help so many others — that struggle for racial equality is over,” Clinton said.

“But I really came here to say if you want to honor Hank Aaron and Muhammad Ali and Bill Cosby, you must first recognize that this struggle is nowhere near over,” he said.

The luncheon was among events leading to Saturday night’s first regular-season Civil Rights Game, between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds.

Clinton: Push for racial equality far from over – Yahoo! News.

By now, you’ve all heard about the racist e-mail distributed by a GOP staffer working for State Senator Diane Black, which prompted widespread media coverage, and rebukes from both Democrats and Republicans. What you probably haven’t heard is that a Democrat staffer also sent an e-mail around the same time that was every bit as distasteful, if not more so, but that hasn’t been covered by the mainstream press, and hasn’t been pursued nearly to the degree that the GOP staffer was pursued. Why? A Democrat sending racist and/or distasteful material doesn’t fit the (false) media template of the “racist Republican,” and so Democrats generally get a pass on stuff like this, while Republicans are routinely flogged.

Can the Left Be Racist, Ridiculous and Repugnant, Too? Or Just the GOP? | Blue Collar Muse.

President Obama is standing behind his Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor after she has come under scrutiny for a racist, anti-male statement she made 8 years ago.

President Barack Obama on Friday personally sought to deflect criticism of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who finds herself under intensifying scrutiny for saying in 2001 that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. “I’m sure she would have restated it,” Obama flatly told NBC News, without indicating how he knew that.

Why would she need to restate that if it’s what she really believes?

Obama sure Sotomayor would restate 2001 comment – Yahoo! News.

When Republicans nominated such esteemed jurists as Clarence Thomas, Alberto Gonzales, Miguel Estrada, and Janice Rogers Brown, Democrats obstructed them all, and they got away with it without being labeled as racists. If conservatives oppose Sonia Sotomayor — and I hope they do – look for the left to play the race card, even though our obstruction will be totally based on ideology and not on race.

Conservatives pointed with particular concern to a 2001 speech Sotomayor made at the University of California at Berkeley Law School in which she said, “Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.”

In discussing discrimination cases, Sotomayor also referred to a remark at times attributed to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion” and said that she didn’t necessarily agree.

“First, as Professor Martha Minow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise,” Sotomayor said. “Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., suggested Sotomayor was a racist, writing in a blog posting: “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.’ Wouldn’t they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism. A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.”

Conservatives, liberals take sides on Sotomayor – Yahoo! News.

Memphis Mayor-for-Life Willie Herenton is going to run for Congress against Steve Cohen next year. Cohen has chastised Herenton for his outdated views on race:

Herenton wrote in a Commercial Appeal guest column that “it remains a fact that the 9th Congressional District provides the only real opportunity to elect a qualified African-American to the all-white 11-member delegation representing Tennessee in Washington.”

Cohen said Harold Ford Jr.’s close state Senate race in 2006, President Barack Obama’s election and his own victories in the majority-black district in 2006 and 2008 were proof that such notions are now “history.”

“This district has shown it’s beyond race and Barack Obama’s campaign shows that America and particularly the Democratic primary (electorate) is beyond race,” he said.

At a time when many liberals, black and white, are still fighting the civil rights battles of the 1960’s that were actually won long ago, it is refreshing to see that Congressman Cohen confesses that America is beyond race. I would dispute that particularly the Democrat electorate is beyond race. They’re as obsessed with race as ever, but Cohen is correct in asserting that America is (largely) beyond race. Sadly, Willie Herenton and other race card players have warped themselves into a perpetual state of victimhood, so that regardless of what happens, in their view, the man is still keeping blacks down, when, in fact, the only people keeping blacks down are the very Democrats that black voters keep putting in office.

Cohen on Herenton’s commentary: Mayor’s opinions outdated : Local Politics : Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Michelle Malkin predicted that the April 15 tea parties would get smeared by the left, and she was right. The smear is on, and Geraldo Rivera has even resorted to the well-oiled liberal tactic of simply laying down the race card.

On Fox News, smear merchant Geraldo Rivera bashed the Tea Party movement because he’s “never seen any people of color” at the protests — a line of attack being plied on left-wing blogs (and even by a purported conservative blog). Tea Party organizer and Top Conservatives on Twitter Michael P. Leahy politely laid the smack down on Geraldo. But it’s not going to stop the reality-challenged Rivera from repeating the attack. (Psst, Geraldo: Meet Lloyd Marcus).

Michelle Malkin » Tea Party Smear Watch: The Race Card.

It looks like “the man” is trying to keep black people down again.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Thursday blamed the global economic crisis on “white people with blue eyes” and said it was wrong that black and indigenous people should pay for white people’s mistakes.

FT.com / Americas / Politics & Policy – Brazil’s leader blames white people for crisis.

Back during the campaign of 2008, many Americans wondered if electing a black president would finally prompt the race industry to lay down its weapons. Rush Limbaugh warned us that, on the contrary, racial accusations would actually increase, because anytime a conservative opposed President Obama on ANYTHING, the race card would be played. It looks like Rush was right…again.

Well, Attorney General Eric Holder, here’s your conversation about race: House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina is now accusing GOP governors who have fundamental misgivings about the trillion-dollar stimulus of opposing the law because they don’t like black people.

Who’s being divisive, Eric Holder? Who’s obsessed with race? Who needs to stop self-segregating and stop spreading race-based poison? Where’s the outrage? Clyburn earlier this year invoked plantation imagery to suggest that S.C. GOP Gov. Mark Sanford’s opposition to earmarks was based on RAAAACISM.

Indeed, Congressman Clyburn is so bereft of ideas, and has probably played the race card so often for so long that’s its simply a reflex action now. A conservative criticize a black man’s political ideology? Why, that’s racism! Indeed, playing the race card has no doubt saved him from having to produce genuine ideas to the point that he couldn’t logically defend porkulus if he had to. Fortunately, conservatives have wised up so that the race card doesn’t work with us anymore. It might still work with white liberals and moderates, but since we only deal with actual ideas over here on the right, the race card is seen for what it is: a cop-out, a coward’s reaction to issue-based criticism.

Michelle Malkin » Top Democrat accuses anti-stimulus GOP governors of…RAAAAACISM!.

American voters elected their first black president last November, but to Attorney General Eric Holder, we are just as racially polarized as we’ve always been.

Attorney General Eric Holder described the United States Wednesday as a nation of cowards on matters of race, saying most Americans avoid discussing awkward racial issues. In a speech to Justice Department employees marking Black History Month, Holder said the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.

“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,” said Holder, nation’s first black attorney general.

Race issues continue to be a topic of political discussion, Holder said, but “we, as average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about race.”

He urged people of all races to use Black History Month as a chance for honest discussion of racial matters, including issues of health care, education, and economic disparities.

Don’t talk enough with each other about race? Perhaps it would be a little easier if whites weren’t reflexively called “racist” by the civil rights industry and continually browbeaten with the sins of past generations. Remember Reverend Lowery’s admonition, “when white will enbrace what is right?”

Holder: US a nation of cowards on racial matters – Yahoo! News.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has picked up on this, too, and, as usual, offers an analysis that is even more brilliant than my own.

Funny. When I think of racial cowards, I think of Barack Obama at Jeremiah Wright’s church, sitting there week after week, year after year, saying nothing about the separatist demagoguery echoing from the pulpit to the pews.

When I think of racial cowards, I think of all the navel-gazers who fret about poisonous racial dialogue, but say nothing about “My President Is Black” bigotry.

When I think of racial cowards, I think of the people cowed by mau-mau-er Al Sharpton — now attacking the NYPost over a cartoon lampooning that crazy dead chimp.

When I think of racial cowards, I think of the folks who enable p.c. thugs to cry racism over “That One” and “Thug Thizzle” and “tricked out.”

Holder doesn’t want an honest dialogue about race. In the Age of Obama, “talking enough with each other about race” means the rest of us shutting up while being subjected to lectures about our insensitivity and insufficient integration on the weekends.

And let’s not forget that in the most recent presidential election, 4% of black voters voted for John McCain, while 44% of white voters voted for Barack Obama, meaning that white voters proved far more willing to cross racial lines in voting for president. And let’s also not forget how left-wing editorial cartoonists lampooned Condoleezza Rice a few years ago.

Right before Inauguration Day, CNN ran a poll asking black Americans whether they believed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream had finally been fulfilled. Sixty-nine percent answered in the affirmative, more than double the 34% who agreed with that statement just last March.

This is great! If the election of Barack Obama was the last benchmark in fulfilling King’s dream that he shared back in 1963, can we please finally bring the race industry to a close? After all, the battles that were fought back in the 1950’s and 1960’s were won long ago. Isn’t it time to graduate from the civil rights movement?

Unfortunately, the answer is “no.”

While black Americans were declaring the fulfillment of MLK’s dream, CNN also reported that hate crimes experts and law enforcement were carefully monitoring white supremacists leading up to the Inauguration.

Mark Potok of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center fretted, “I think we are in a very worrisome moment historically. I say that because there are several things converging that could foster the continued growth of these groups: continuing high levels of nonwhite immigration, the prediction by the Census Bureau that whites will lose their majority in 2042, the tanking economy, and what is seen as the final insult, the election of a black man to the White House.”

Well, Inauguration Day has come and gone, and there was never a peep from the white supremacists. In fact, the only racial slur of the event was uttered by the Reverend Joseph E. Lowery during his benediction/speech to wrap up the Inauguration ceremony.

The Reverend Lowery, an icon of the civil rights era, concluded his benediction/speech with the plea, “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

When white will embrace what is right? Excuse me?

Similarly, Tom Brokaw, while supposedly engaging in objective journalism on Inauguration Day, remarked, “Having been in the South in the 60’s and Los Angeles, in Watts and northern urban areas, when we were evolving as a country, I’m thinking of all the bigots and rednecks and people I met along the way. I’m saying to them, ‘Take this.’”

Both Lowery and Brokaw obviously cling to the stereotypical Jim Crow-era card-carrying-member of the Ku Klux Klan, complete with the white sheet, Confederate flag, hanging noose, burning cross, and ”Segregation Forever” bumper sticker. Those stereotypes don’t exist anymore, except in isolated pockets. Every race has its supremacists. White supremacists in 2009 are a tiny, irrelevant minority. The rest of us reject them.

The Reverend Lowery is stuck in the 1950’s and 1960’s, back when there was real injustice and discrimination, back when there were battles worth fighting. But the median age in the U.S. is 36.4, meaning that most of us have no recollection of the civil rights era. Most of us were not brought up as racists or taught that whites are superior to blacks. We were taught differently, and therefore we behave differently than those who ran the South during that time (back when the South was the exclusive domain of Democrats, by the way).

This is what makes Reverend Lowery’s plea that whites should embrace what it right so aggravating. He had the privilege of seeing first-hand the America of fifty years ago, and America today. How could someone who fought for civil rights back then not be able to marvel at America in 2009 and relish the progress that has been made just within the span of two generations?

Indeed, the America that existed during Jim Crow does not exist anymore. But try telling that to Joseph Lowery, Tom Brokaw, and other leftists who still project the gross caricatures of George Wallace, Bull Connor, and William Fulbright — all of them pro-segregation, all of them Democrats – onto white people today.

In the most recent presidential election, 4% of black voters voted for John McCain, while 44% of white voters voted for Barack Obama, meaning that white voters proved far more willing to cross racial lines in voting for president. Indeed, black Americans are almost exclusively Democrats, which is ironic, given that the last discriminatory barriers left standing are kept in place by Democrats.

Writes conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, “Teachers’ unions and government school protectionists have stood in the schoolhouse door, blocking innovation, competition, and parental choice — leaving minority children and their families to languish in some of the country’s worst schools.”

Aside from education, liberal social programs that were erected in the 1960’s to fight poverty have done nothing to cure poverty, but have instead decimated the black family by discouraging two-parent households and thus contributing to soaring fatherlessness. But try suggesting that we dismantle these costly, yet worthless programs, and you will be called, among other things, a “racist.”

Since white people long ago learned to embrace what is right, what we need now is an Emancipation Proclamation freeing black Americans from the chains of liberalism, from perpetual victimization, from the soft bigotry of low expectations, and from government programs that have ravaged their families.

I’m detecting an increased level of racism in America such as I haven’t seen in quite some time — if ever — during my lifetime, and it has all come out since the campaign and election of Barack Obama. Even though the focus was on white supremacists on Inauguration Day, all the racism seems to be coming from the left. First, we had the Reverend Lowery make the snarky plea to God that white would embrace what is right. Then we had Tom Brokaw telling rednecks and southerners to “Take that.” And now we have Robert Reich, with respect to how the stimulus money should be used, telling us, “I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers…I have nothing against white male construction workers, I’m just saying there are other people who have needs as well.”

Michelle Malkin » Robert Reich: Keep stimulus money away from skilled workers and “white male construction workers”.

A friend of mine has passed along the link to a blog post covering comments Tom Brokaw made yesterday while covering the Inauguration.

Listen, I just want to say one thing. Having been in the South in the 60’s and Los Angeles, in Watts and northern urban areas, when we were evolving as a country, I’m thinking of all the bigots and rednecks and people I met along the way. I’m saying to them, “Take this.” You know?

Tom Brokaw: Take That Bigots & Rednecks – Political Forum.

The Reverend Joseph E. Lowery just delivered the benediction following President Obama’s speech, and finished with a slap in the face to us white folk with his plea that “white will learn what is right.”

I’ll track down the full text of the benediction somewhere and post it when I do. In the meantime, gee, that’s a way to bring about the racial healing that the civil rights leaders keep lecturing us about, to speak nobly of people of each race as Reverend Lowery did, then finish with the snarky “white will learn what is right.”

Where has it been established that in 2009 we caucasions haven’t learned what is right? And who appointed Reverend Lowery as the arbiter of racial justice? What if a white pastor finished off a prayer with the plea that “black will learn what is right?”

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin picked up on it, too. The actual quote was “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

UPDATE II: I just did a search for Joseph Lowery on my blog and dug up my op/ed from February 13, 2006, “Liberals show one-sidedness at King’s funeral,” regarding the politicization (by liberals) of Coretta Scott King’s funeral. At the funeral, the Reverend Lowery remarked “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there (applause). But Coretta knew and we knew that there were weapons of misdirection right down here (applause). Millions without health insurance (applause), poverty abound (applause), for war billions more (applause), but no more for the poor (applause).”

But his plea for the white people of America to “embrace what is right” really stole the show. And I thought Barack Obama was the post-racial candidate. The Reverend Lowery obviously doesn’t see it that way.

UPDATE III: Rush Limbaugh caught it, too.

A CNN poll has found that 69% of American blacks believe Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream has finally been fulfilled. Finally. Can we now please dismantle the race hustling industry and move the country forward? Can we please end the left’s industry of victimhood now that we have reached the mountaintop? Pretty please?

One of the areas of American life where the dream remains unfulfilled is public education. Teachers’ unions and government school protectionists have stood in the schoolhouse door, blocking innovation, competition, and parental choice — leaving minority children and their families to languish in some of the country’s worst schools.

Yes, folks, if there’s one last hurdle left to be surmounted by American blacks, it’s the hurdle erected and held in place by liberals and the Democrat Party — the same party that gets 90% of the black vote, the same party that claims to act in the best interests of blacks. What we need is an Emancipation Proclamation freeing blacks from the chains of liberalism, to free them from the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Michelle Malkin » MLK’s unfinished legacy.

The hypersensitive, professional race-baiters on the left are closely watching white supremicists in preparation for Barack Obama’s inauguration. I guess when you’re a liberal, white supremicists, and not militant Islamists, are the number one enemy. After all, white supremicists fly airplanes into skyscrapers, blow themselves up in crowded places, and behead their hostages.

White Supremacists Still Not On The Rise | Sweetness & Light.

What a great time we live in nowdays. We Americans enjoy such luxury that we actually have the time to actively seek ways to be offended.

They’re part of a long standing tradition that will soon become a part of Presidential history.

The head of the Alabama NAACP, however, wants Mobile’s Azalea Trail Maids to stay home on Inauguration Day, claiming the group reminds him of slavery.

“These are not just regular costumes. These are the costumes that remind someone of the plantation in Gone with the Wind,” Edward Vaughn said in a phone interview.

Vaughn went on to say the group would be the laughing stock of the Inauguration. County leaders say nothing could be further from the truth.

“We want everyone to know that these young ladies do not need to be identified with slavery,” said Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine.

“I don’t see what the dresses have to do with racism. I dont see it. It’s just a regular dress to me. Just a dress they wore back in the day,” said Carolyn Tius of Montgomery.

Organizers stand behind the tradition, but opponents say tradition is the problem.

“We needed something that could show Alabama’s great progress rather than something that shows a shameful past,” Vaughn said.

Progress? The NAACP continues to fight the battles of 40 years ago — battles that have already been won — and they want to lecture others on progress?

WSFA 12 News Montgomery, AL |Alabama NAACP criticizes use of Trail Maids in Inaugural Parade.

Senator Harry Reid says he is not going to seat Roland Burris, who was appointed by Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich to fill Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat. Roland Burris, of course, is black. If Harry Reid were a Republican, we all know that the Democrats, the media, and the self-appointed race police — a couple of reverends come to mind — would be screaming racism, that the racist Republicans are trying to keep the black man down.

But Harry Reid isn’t a Republican. He’s a Democrat. And Democrats, as we all know, are the only people keeping blacks from being re-enslaved. Democrats routinely get 90% of the black vote. Harry Reid is supposed to represent the Great White Hope to black people, yet he is refusing to seat a black man legally appointed to the U.S. Senate. So come on, race hypocrites of the left, be consistent. Call Harry Reid a racist for turning away a black man.

Defiant and upbeat, Illinois U.S. Senate appointee Roland Burris said Monday that upon arriving in Washington, he plans to tell Democratic leaders: “I’m here to take my seat.”

But Burris faces an uphill battle on Capitol Hill, where his fellow Democrats have pledged not to confirm anyone appointed by embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill the seat left vacant by Barack Obama’s election as president.

“I am the junior senator according to every law book in the nation,” Burris said Monday, chalking up the controversy swirling around him to “politics and theater.”

Burris says he’s ready to take US Senate seat – Yahoo! News.

Tennessee Republican Chip Saltaman is in a bit of trouble after recently distributing a CD containing the parody song “Barack the Magic Negro.”

The uproar over the song, which Saltsman defended as political satire of a 2007 column in the Los Angeles Times that used “Magic Negro” in the headline and text, shows evidence of a double standard, Saltsman said Saturday.

“Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media didn’t utter a word about David Ehrenstein’s irresponsible column in the Los Angeles Times last March,” Saltsman said in a statement e-mailed by his spokesman, Stephen Smith. “But now, of course, they’re shocked and appalled by its parody on The Rush Limbaugh Show.”

Limbaugh, of course, picked up the line and ran with it, knowing the media and liberals would express outrage over the apparent racism on the right. After all, liberals are always outraged over something, and so the Maha Rushie wanted to prove a point — that the left would ignore the Magic Negro line when it was created by a liberal, but would become indignant once it was parroted by a conservative. Sure enough, the left fell for it. And so the joke is on them.

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin has a great deal more on the parody flap and the hypocrisy of the left.

www.tennessean.com | Nashville Local News | The Tennessean.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, must not know American liberals very well, as he has committed the mother of all sins. Liberals will tolerate all sorts of shenanigans, such as killing the unborn, infanticide, adulterous affairs by their own politicians, same-sex marriages, all sorts of debauchery. Even a terrorist attack doesn’t get them too excited. But al-Zawahiri has done the one thing that DOES get the left’s hackles up. He directed a racial epithet at Barack Obama. It’s something you just don’t do. Bloggers have been fired for things like that. I’m not one for uttering racial epithets myself, but it’s not my #1. The left, however, is so obsessed with race that this may be the one thing that actually gets them on board the War on Terrorism.