Tuesday, August 30, 2016

The New Race Hustlers



Two young black men are darlings of Democrats these days: Ta Nehisi Coates and Deray McKesson. Both grew up in Baltimore and both support Black Lives Matter. Both are educated and well-spoken as long as you don’t listen too closely to what they’re saying. McKesson is a founder of Black Lives Matter and Coates wrote the book Between The World And Me that, “has become the intellectual and emotional voice of the Black Lives Matter movement,” according to Robert Cherry writing in the New York Post last week. Both are moving to take over from the two alleged Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Like them, McKesson and Coates preach that black men are victims of white supremacy and white racist cops are looking to shoot them down.
Both want to keep race an issue in American politics. With the cooperation of the Mainstream Media and millions of liberals suffering from white guilt, they’re succeeding. Other Americans, however, are sick of hearing about it. Coates exacerbates that race fatigue by pushing reparations for descendants of former slaves, claiming it’s the best way to counter the ostensible pervasiveness of white supremacy. When US Senator Bernie Sanders was asked in a debate if he supported reparations, however, he said no, because it would never get through Congress and because it would be divisive.
3-minute podcast of my Sanders interview

When I got the opportunity last January, I asked Sanders why he thought it would be divisive but he dodged the question. He instead lamented black poverty and black unemployment, but I followed up by asking if he believed paying reparations was a good idea on its face. After he dodged again, Conway Sun publisher Mark Guerringue asked if he supported the principle of reparations. Then Sanders put the question back on us: “Does anybody else support the principle of it? Do you support the principle of it?”

“No,” said Guerringue.

“No candidate does,” I responded.

“It’s a big word,” said Sanders. “What does it mean?”

A fair question. Newsweek tried to answer it in 2015 putting out cost estimates for reparations ranging from $36 billion to $10 trillion and citing obvious problems like who would get it and in what form? As Jackson and Sharpton fade away, Coates and McKesson keep stoking guilt in liberal white America — a major Democrat constituency. Both men are at the core of Democrat efforts to portray the problems of black America as “the lingering effects of slavery” and not the legacy of disastrous Democrat policies.
Sharpton and Jackson

Some older black Americans have a different view. Economist Thomas Sowell believed the Democrat view as a young man, but rejected it later in life. In his 2014 article: A Legacy of Liberalism, Sowell contends: “The current problems facing blacks in America owe more to the Great Society than to slavery. Nearly a hundred years of the supposed ‘legacy of slavery’ found most black children being raised in two-parent families in 1960. But thirty years after the liberal welfare state found the great majority of black children being raised by a single parent… The murder rate among blacks in 1960 was one-half of what it became 20 years later, after a legacy of liberals’ law-enforcement policies.”
San Francisco 49er's quarterback Colin Kaepernick recently refused to stand for the National Anthem. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said. after becoming engaged to Black Lives Matter activist Nessa Diab and converting to Islam.
Meanwhile, Burgess Owens — another black former NFL player, just released a book titled: “Liberalism or How to Turn Good Men into Whiners, Weenies and Wimps.” Owens quotes Frederick Douglass’s response to a question asked of him: “What shall we do with the Negro?” Douglass answered: 

“I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, of they are rotten to the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him the chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

Frederick Douglass
Douglass’s opinion echoes the thinking of black Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley. He must have had Douglass in mind when naming his recent book. He was making a plea to liberal Democrats when he picked the title: “Please Stop Helping Us.”

14 comments:

Unknown said...

Forty-niners quarterback. Wrong team.

Tom McLaughlin said...

Thanks Bob. I knew that, but my fingers must have forgotten. It's fixed

Anonymous said...

Time to end the continued oppression of lowered expectations, as proscribed by our
self promoted elite majority?
(oxy intended)
CaptDMO

Anonymous said...

"Both want to keep race an issue in American politics"

Like that is a BAD thing? Like it is NOT a big issue in American society?

Anonymous said...

". Nearly a hundred years of the supposed ‘legacy of slavery’"

I know what you mean. It is like all that "supposed" atrocities of the holocaust. Aren't all these people over that by now?

Anonymous said...

Reviews for Jason Riley's book:

This book is proof that the author is bought and paid for by the Heritage Foundation and doesn't bring any independent thought into American public discourse on racism and the impact on policy. Completely inauthentic and a waste of my money.

This was suggested at our church book club. I struggled to read it, it was littered with inaccuracies, no heart at all, I can't help feeling that someone from Murdoch's empire said, Tom (whoops, Jason) this whole Black Lives Matter thing is going too far - you're happy aren't you? And of course, all Uncle Tom's are, because whites pay them to be lapdogs. Our entire book club loathed it

Anonymous said...

Fun column...thanks!

Anonymous said...

Coates piece persuasively (and seemingly effortlessly) turns the issue of race in America into a pressing discussion about work, wealth, and theft rather than an unresolvable grudge-match about bygone guilt. (Please read it here!) Of course, it also has the words "reparations" and "slavery" in it, so you can assume that a lot of discussion about it will go like this:

How to Read TNC's piece on reparations:

1. Read the title.
2. Stop reading. Do not read past the title.
3. Explain that racism is over.

Racism MUST be over because an old white dude living in 94% caucasian Maine does not see it!

Tom McLaughlin said...

I read the whole article and others by Coates on reparations and Bernie Sanders too. Bernie was right. It's divisive as illustrated by recently leaked DNCC memo from Nancy Pelosi's computer on BLM. See here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/1/black-lives-matter-rips-democrats-leaked-memo-how-/

Dems have to tread carefully. They disavow the memo, but after Hillary's endless email scandals and voluminous lies about same, I believe Guccifer and not Pelosi or any other Dems. The above article claims reparations made it into the Dem platform too.

George Soros is steering the whole thing, but he's not doing it from behind the scenes anymore as his memos are being leaked as well.

The Democrat-controlled Mainstream Media may blank all this out, but many of us know about it anyway. We won't shut up about it either.

Anonymous said...

Boy, all this silly nonsense the corporate media keeps spitting out

Anonymous2 said...

And why do you assume a person who is sick of hearing about 'race' is 'racist'?

If you turn on a tv, or radio, and everytime you watch or listen people will bring up hotdogs. Hotdogs are constantly talked about. Hotdog signs are in lot's of store windows. Even the London New Years fireworks show blasts a big huge image of a hotdog, you don't think you would get sick of the subject of hotdogs?

Anonymous2 said...

So, if a black man doesn't think like he is suppose to in your mind, that automatically makes him an Uncle Tom? You do not sound very smart.

Try reading some Thomas Sowell, or listen to Shelby Steele, or Walter Williams. I find they have plenty of heart. Plenty of mind to.

Anonymous2 said...

And please do not stop addressing the negative impact media, and 'race hustler's' are having on society.

I am an avid radio listener, and many years ago I noticed the subject of 'race', being discussed more, amd more. It started to feel like I was being indoctrinated, so I stopped listening to those programs. I grew up in a cult like atmosphere, so I am not completely clueless.

Problems always need to be solved, and injustices addressed, but there are those who have bad agendas.

Keep dialogues, differing opinions, and free speech alive.

JAC said...

You certainly take some wise words by Frederick Douglas and remove all of the intervening history and context. Had Black Americans been left to their devices, had they been allowed the same advantages as White Americans, Black Americans would have had access to the property, government programs, and jobs that their White counterparts. In places and times where Black people have been allowed access to these things, Black Americans have prospered in accordance to their hard work and abilities; the same as anyone else. While the overtly oppressive systems, and the lack of access to beneficial systems, no longer directly apply in the 21st century, the subtle shadows of these overt policies persist. Kaepernick doesn’t owe any success or fortune he has to anyone or anything besides God and himself; he worked hard to develop his talent and earned what he earned.