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Race - A Four Letter Word

Gone But Not Forgotten

By Wayne McLaughlinPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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It is used to proclaim moral superiority over the object of this epithet with variations like racist, racism, white supremacy etc. and is most often used to defend the indefensible. It is used to end discussion of the need to control immigration, for example, since there is no logical reason to yield a nation’s sovereignty.

In truth, the users of this tactic will never disclose the real reason for objecting to border control in such strenuous terms. In the 2016 election, 392 Detroit precincts couldn’t be recounted because they had more votes than voters. During the eight years prior to Trump’s election, a lax border policy allowed millions of people to cross over into the U.S. illegally and were immediately resettled in cities all across the country.

The real reason the indefensible is so rudely defended is survival for politicians of one particular governing philosophy whose only goal is control of the political process and the lives of the governed without regard to their self-interests.

White Racism Gone

In truth, the bogeyman of "white racism" died several decades ago but continues to be weaponized by a few to justify their anachronistic existence and to attract financial contributions necessary to support their lifestyle.

To those who insist that racial discrimination still lurks deep in the hearts of white folks in this country, take a good look at our current panoply of TV commercials.

A husband and wife, driver and passenger seats respectively, and two young children in the back seat on a road trip is the setting for an auto insurance TV commercial. All, but the driver, have wires hanging out of their ears absorbed in culture’s trivia. The driver is doing a monologue about the detached state of his passengers and it is clear that no one can hear him, nor do they seem to have the slightest interest in conversation. By their skin color, we assume that they are African American.

Cost to the advertiser is upwards of a half-million dollars each time it appears which raises the question, in a country dominated by white racism (according to a few people with TV face time), why wouldn’t a costly commercial feature only Caucasians? Simple answer—America is not the racist cesspool that a few people preach to support their radical politics and for their personal aggrandizement and gain.

There Was a Time

I am old enough to remember a time when proximity to a person with different skin color was uncomfortable. It wasn’t racism, as that word is bandied about today, but simply a fact of life as we understood it. People with darker colored pigment simply weren’t as intelligent or trustworthy and contact was to be avoided.

War changed all that. Seven million young Americans under arms living in integrated conditions and relying on each other for survival made judging people on the basis of skin color just seem silly. Orders were followed regardless of the source without a hint of a second guess.

“Why, he’s a negro.” That was the epiphany which struck me as I strolled across Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1955 with my good friend. He was a civil engineering graduate, a goal I had set for myself upon discharge from the Army and with that, and other things in common, we had become "service buddies."

A realization that his skin color had long since escaped my notice was a personally liberating event in many ways and was well in advance of the civil rights movements a decade later when institutional and personal racial discrimination disappeared altogether. That is not to say that a few scattered twisted souls may not use a racially insensitive expression, but they will never express sentiments of any group that I want to be a part of.

The R-Word Oppression

Big city ghetto life is tragic, and it is rank hypocrisy to attribute blame for that to anyone except the same people who use the “R-word”; and they have used it to control the lives of those city folks for the better part of eight decades. Boston, for example, has been ruled by Democrats for 87 years and according to the “Boston Globe,” the average black person has a net worth of $8. That’s right, eight dollars.

National Football League New York Giants defensive end Olivier Vernon says that he will not end his kneeling during the national anthem until the public understands the real message behind his actions.

Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL quarterback who started these demonstrations a year ago, said, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color."

If I were ready to respond to these calls to action, what would be the first thing I’d do? I have no idea. Now, when Black Lives Matter takes to the streets, they express their goals explicitly; they want dead cops; now. Vernon might take note and refine his message.

Kaepernick, on the other hand has a somewhat clearer message, in that he seems to infer a need for leadership change in the inner cities where the most compelling case could be made for oppression of black people.

A logical conclusion is that players who kneel are ready to support conservative Republicans in future big city elections and party operatives should get busy and start organizing them.

OK. So that was the political version of fantasy football. I get it. Logic has never driven the apparent thought process of those whose fallback position on these sensitive issues is to proclaim racism on the part of all who disagree.

The New Segregation

A segregation is taking place which has nothing to do with ethnicity or skin pigment. It is between the self-proclaimed intellectual elites and the woefully ignorant, sometimes referred to as fly over country. (I’m in the last category.) IE’s seek political power through the accumulation of support from a segmented population that they purport to serve and an imaginary racism is their only defense.

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