In 2008, we all heard it: When Barack Obama was voted president, all racial divides would end. A take on Obama’s words, after “the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” many pundits said we would be in a post-racial society.
Whatever our racial transgressions, and we did have them, I believe they’re long over. I believe the United States is one of the most color blind nations that has even been. Of course there are racist people of all colors, but as a nation we’ve moved on from that dark past.
Unfortunately, it seems there are Leftists who want to keep us in that dark time. One is named Tim Wise, the bright and smiling face you see here, striking that intellectual pose:
I had never heard of Wise before today, author of such uplifting books as White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son or Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority. Let’s not forget the clever and quirky Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama (there are a couple more but I’m getting depressed simply writing the titles).
Yesterday afternoon, on Denver’s radio version of Hannity & Colmes called “The Rundown with Sirota and Brown” (don’t know who David Sirota is and Michael Brown is a former FEMA Director), the team interviewed Wise about his latest book.
Sirota, appropriately, Left.
Honestly, I’ve never heard someone so eager to make white people feel bad about being white, and give black people every excuse to not achieve if they want to achieve. Wise bemoaned the fact that when someone tells another to pull himself up by his bootstraps, he said something to the effect of, “Well, maybe black people don’t have bootstraps.”
My point? Cut the racial crap. Cut the minority crap. Cut the welfare crap. Cut it all out. In America, to paraphrase the successful Herman Cain, if you are not successful it’s your fault (did I mention Herman Cain is black?).
If you don’t like your situation, you live in a country where you have but to work for your success. That’s it. That’s all. So quit whining and get at it.
Don’t let race peddlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton — and even white guilt peddlers like Tim Wise — decide your destiny.
The Rundown – Sirota & Brown – TalkRadio 630 K-HOW.
**UPDATE 10/24/2012**
h/t Twitchy.com
Apparently Sirota is not satisfied to let this this topic die, and seems to have taken additional marching orders and yet more quotes from Tim Wise.
From his Salon.com column on reasons why “racism still rules politics:” My comments below each point.
1. Joe Biden Is almost never called a socialist or a Marxist.
Joe Biden is a lot of things. He isn’t labeled socialist and Marxist because “incredibly dumb” and “mostly a circus act” are two that come to my mind before any political philosophy. That Obama’s opponents don’t apply those words to Biden like you prefer doesn’t come close to a whisper of racism
2. Romneycare is Obamacare, yet the latter is criticized.
Where have you been? Do you read any leading conservative sites or listen to top conservative talk shows? During the primaries (and, speaking for me in my particular caucus) Romneycare was the cornerstone of why we opposed Romney’s nomination. Even if you were right that we don’t criticize Romneycare, this too wouldn’t come from racism. It might come from those who want to accentuate Romney’s positives in order to win.
Obama’s comments about if he had had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin were stupid on their face. As was the case with Skip Gates and Sgt. Crowley, Obama weighed in on a situation without knowing all the facts. By the way, ANY president weighing in on a local law enforcement issue is pointless unless he’s trying to gain political points. And once again, this has nothing to do with Obama’s race.
5. If one of Obama’s teenage daughters was unmarried and pregnant, it wouldn’t be considered a “private” matter.
As author Tim Wise put it [HEAVY ON THE TIM WISE BROMANCE DON'T YOU THINK?]:
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
(It’s me) This gets into a deeper issue than a pregnant daughter. Your hypothetical racism scandal that would surround a hypothetically pregnant Obama daughter wouldn’t last long because, as Obama has said, his daughters wouldn’t be “punished with a mistake.” Clearly you don’t know this, but Barack Obama is a big supporter of abortion. But you brought up the Palins so let me again ask your whereabouts since the 2008 election season. Every vile remark possible and some I didn’t know existed have been leveled unfairly at the Palin family so don’t give me that stinking pile of crap that an Obama daughter pregnancy would be any worse.
(Back to Sirota) To reiterate: This persistent double standard of racism and White Privilege doesn’t mean all criticism of Obama is rooted in bigotry. It simply means that A) at least some of that criticism is and B) that over the long haul, that double standard distorts our politics in ways that run counter to the American ideals of equal opportunity. If the first step to recovery is to stop denying a problem, then acknowledging this bigotry is the first step to finally ending it.
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That you and Tim Wise capitalize White Privilege is yet another sign of how deeply entrenched skin color is into your values, and your arguments are wholly without merit not just because racism doesn’t exist as you wish it to but also because you never speak of Obama’s white half.
David Sirota, you are a racist white guy looking for racism — especially against blacks — where there is so little as to be effectively none.
If Salon.com and KHOW pay you more than $1,000 a year, it’s $999 too much.
