THE CAR DOESN’T WORK, IT MUST BE THE COLOR

As a result of my last Blog post, Common Sense, I entered into a discussion with an intelligent liberal (no, this is not, according to some Conservative thinking, an oxymoron) family member. During this discussion the concept of Conservatives not wanting the President to succeed because the President is black, reared its ugly head.  When ever I hear this racist canard from Liberals, I am left pretty much speechless. It would appear that anyone not liking the spectacularly successful policies this President has proposed (not implemented, but proposed), and not wanting the President of the other party (opposite philosophy) to succeed, could only feel like this because he is black, completely ignoring the fact that every other President, all white, have also had their very vocal detractors, and I don’t remember ever hearing the word racist used. When the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton took off after President Bush, did I miss the racist claims? Or, can only whites be racist? If, God forbid, Hillary Clinton becomes President, will she have the built in excuse of sexism, waiting to bail her out of any lack of success? As a white man am I ever going to be able to blame a President again?

As much as I despise using racism as an excuse for a lack of success, in the case of President Obama I do, in some small way, understand it. We have a President who has a certain personality, and I’ll leave it up to the reader to fill in what you think the scientific term for this personality might be. President Obama’s speech after the death of Bin Laden was crammed to capacity with the word “I”.  When things don’t go quite as well, the “I” seems to be replaced with, “ Republicans” “Tea Party”, “the generic Washington establishment ” (as if he lives in Bigbutt, Montana and watches all of this unfold on Twitter). This is not the type of personality whose underlings (and when you are President, that’s pretty much everybody) wish to convey the bad news that something he wishes to have happen, is not happening.  So, it’s time to open up the blame bag and see who’s ripe for attack this time. How could the Republicans, Tea Party and the generic Washington establishment be against a plan so skillfully and brilliantly thought out, it must be because they are—here it comes—Racist.

The reason this bothers me so was brought out in my Blog post entailed, background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Profiling: The New Dirty Word. The African-American race has been kept where it is on the American social strata because the likes of the aforementioned Jackson and Sharpton. They, and those like them, have succeeded in making victims of the entire race. When you are a victim, you have no control over your circumstances, you are in the control of “the Man,” and until the man lets you up you have little chance of success.  In the plantation days the man was actually a man, today the “man” who cares for all needs is the government.

In a classic newspaper article written by Charles Reese, he made the observation that all the good and bad in this country is the result of the actions of 545 men and women (100 senators, 435 congressman, 1 president, 9 Supreme Court judges) If they want something to happen it will happen, if they don’t it won’t.  In order for racism to actually affect the policies of the land, many of the 545  (46 of which are Black) would have to be voting against a policy which they feel would benefit the country, but they would not support it because the President is black. Sorry, I maybe naive, but I just can’t buy that.

I really don’t believe crying racism and treating the most powerful African-American in the world as a common victim is the way we want to go. It is indeed racism if we do not treat President Obama like every other President before him.