Letters to the Editor
Infidel1959
Published Letters: 12
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No Excuses
[Read the article: Was Obama's speech enough?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay. You want to have an honest dialogue about race? Here goes!
I was a born a poor white boy in a racially mixed, crime-ridden, drug-infested urban housing project outside Boston. No silver spoon I. Made my way in life in this great country of ours the hard way. I worked for it. I am white, and I am guilty of NOTHING that ever contributed to the oppression of black people in this country. Actually traveled a lot of the same hard goddamn road.
To say, as many of you have, that blacks in this coutry have the right to engage in racial tirades against white people because of past or present grievances, denies the present and all the progress that has been made in the last 40 years. We have immense government and NGO social services networks, affirmative action, minority scholarships, minority grants for research, government contracts and small business loans, and even minority job fairs. How do you think I feel being blocked out of those because I'm the wrong skin color? But I digress.
The success stories abound. Oprah Winfrey. Denzel Washington. Spike Lee. Forest Whitaker. Halle Berry. Shaquille O'Neal. Kobe Bryant. David "Big Papi" Ortiz. 80% of the athletes in the NBA, at least half in the NFL, and a significant percentage of MLB players. More and more actors, actresses, producers, directors and writers in Hollywood than ever before.
Not to mention all the racial preferences in minority hiring, civil service exams and promotions. Oh, yeah, and more and more elected public officials. Like, say, Barack Obama.
Where is the oppression today, I ask you? Who among you bears the scars of chains, the limps from hobbling, the bites from dogs and bruises from high pressure firehoses? Will you never let go of the past, or will you forever blame others for your own shortcomings and racial paranoia? Hell, even the Jews have reconciled with the German people, and they tried to EXTERMINATE them only a couple generations ago. Yet today in America, unimaginable only a generation ago, a black man is a serious contender for the White House, and a lot of WHITE voters put him in that position. Face it, he could never be there otherwise. Yet we are still the U-S of KKK-A?
Racial hatred, with few exceptions, is not something that you can paint an entire racial or ethnic group with. It is an individual choice to be racist. There are fine black people and horrific whites, and vice versa. I know. I grew up with a lot of both. I work beside them now in a large corporation. I judge them all individually, as should we all be judged, by the content of character and not by the color of our skin.
If by racism you are talking about all the Aryan Supremacists, skinheads and dumb rednecks out there who still hate blacks as much as they ever did, sure, they're out there. As a white man I disavow them all completely. They do not represent me. They represent the embodiment of hate and ignorance. But there's a pretty good number of black rednecks out there, too, and the "Reverend" Wright is their archetype. And they do not get a pass because of slavery and Jim Crow.
I was not born into the "original sin of slavery," as Obama has called it. Hell, my family wasn't even OVER here until 1900! Does it even occur to many of you that millions of white people in this country emigrated here LONG after slavery was over? Or doesn't it make a difference if we're white?
Regardless of the many documented, inhuman and unimaginable indignities the Rev. Wright and many other blacks suffered after returning home from the war, only to find another war yet to fight, he claims to be a man of God. A man of God preaches love, not hate. A man of God preaches reconciliation, not division. A man of God suffers the Crucifixion as Jesus did, not crucify others like the Romans. A man of God preaches that we are all His children and have the right to live our lives in peace, not that 3000 fellow human beings from 84 different countries slaughtered in a senseless act of mass murder are "our chickens coming home to roost." That is no less than justification for the worst sort of atrocity, and it is an unforgivable slap in the face to every family who lost loved ones that day.
And Obama will never fully disavow him, which means his campaign is essentially over. If McCain had attended a church for 20 years where he listened to, praised and was mentored by a radical right-wing preacher who railed that "blacks brought AIDS into this country to kill white folks" or "black gangsters brought cocaine in to destroy the white community" or "black privilege" or "The United States of Africa," and if McCain gave a flowery speech on healing the racial divide but declared "I could no sooner disavow myself from him than I could the white community," how many of you would be willing to give McCain the same pass you are giving Barack Obama today?
On Election Night, it is the Rev. Wright's words that will be echoing in my mind, not Obama's. I will not brook a racist or those who support them, no matter WHAT color they are! Racism is racism, and personally, I'm getting a little tired of this White Devil sh*t!
Lastly, it is highly ironic that African immigrants to America who have fled religious and ethnic persecution, and yes, even slavery, hold a higher opinion of America, her freedoms and boundless opportunities than many who were born here. Why is that, I have to ask?
Said my piece.