Chuck Morse Amazon Kindle Page
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary
Clinton floated the rumor that Barack Obama, was not born in the United States
and was therefore not c0nstitutionally qualified to serve as president. Almost
three years later, April 2011, President Obama responded by authorizing the
release of a long form birth certificate which he claimed proved his American
birth. Pressure from Republican presidential aspirant Donald Trump had forced
his hand as did Where’s the Birth
Certificate by Dr. Jerome Corsi, published by WND Books, which reached number
one on the Amazon Bestseller List. Dr. Corsi damaged the presidential campaign
of Sen. John Kerry in 2004 with a book about the swift boat veterans.
Donald Trump responded to the birth
certificate release by Obama with a request for additional information such as the
president’s college records. Such requests of public officials and candidates
are routine except it seems when they are made of Obama who acknowledged, in a
humorous context, that he is given a pass by the media. As a candidate and to a
certain degree as president, Barack Obama receives scant scrutiny and lots of
adulation. Indeed, a protective bubble seems to hover around Obama and this has
been the case since he started running for president a month or so after
winning his Senate seat in a special election in Illinois.
After Obama finally released the birth
certificate, and after years of marginalizing and smearing those who had simply
asked him to do so, Trump was publically denounced as a racist. While real
estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump could certainly be criticized for
a lot of things, racism was obviously not one of them. To suggest that Donald
Trump did not like African-Americans or to suggest that he would seek to
prevent a person from any form of advancement because of their race was
ridiculous. Yet this very serious and ugly charge was lodged against him on
national TV by CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer who stated that Trump had displayed
an “ugly strain of racism” by his requesting Obama’s college records. Schieffer’s
attack was echoed by late night TV talk show host David Letterman. These charges
were based upon the assumption that Trump had claimed that Obama had benefited
from affirmative action when he was admitted to Harvard and Columbia Universities.
Such charges, it may be recalled, were made against now Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas by many liberals during Thomas’ confirmation hearings.
Affirmative action, which is a legally
protected program that has garnered support from Americans over the years as a
means to redress centuries of state sanctioned racism, had little if anything
to do with the request that Obama
release his records. Really no one cares how Obama got into college or about
his report card as Barack Obama is obviously and without question a highly
intelligent and accomplished man. The salient question regarding Obama’s
records is why he engaged in such a high degree of secrecy around this and
other issues. The release of Obama’s college records would offer possible
insights into his political thinking by studying his writing and his activities
in college. It is reasonable, after all, for the public to know such things
about the man who holds the most important position in America.
Yet President Obama has gone to great
lengths to conceal many aspects of his professional as well as his private life.
While it is understandable for any politician to seek to maintain the maximum
level of control over their public image, Obama has taken secrecy to an unprecedented
level. This penchant for secrecy on his part is reflected in his administration
which has classified more information than any in history. Such secrecy breeds public
distrust. The American people have a right to know about the President and his
actions as well as the activities of the administration and the media has a
professional obligation to find out as much as possible. This obligation should
be intensified when the office holder is deliberately evasive and the
administration is particularly censorious.
When I asked Dr. Patrick O’Heffernan, my
liberal co-host on our daily radio program “The Fairness Doctrine – left, right
and uncensored,” if he believed that Donald Trump was a racist, as stated by
Schieffer and Letterman, he demurred by stating that while he did not think
Trump himself was a racist he believed that Trump was sending out coded
messages, what he referred to as “dog-whistles” to racists. He further claimed
that Joseph Farah, the CEO of World Net Daily, who he also stated was not a
racist, was also sending out these same “dog-whistles” to racists through the
World Net Daily superstore page. My good friend Patrick O’Heffernan could not
furnish any examples of these so-called dog whistles yet he attempted anyway to
impugn the characters of both Donald Trump and Joseph Farah, who is the
publisher of my book “The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism.”
I took the bait by offering to prove to
Patrick that World Net Daily and conservatives were not racists. After
wrangling over the fact that Patrick had called conservatives racists by
smearing World Net Daily, a publication with a largely conservative following,
I proceeded to point out that World Net Daily had published a long series of columns
over many years by former UN Ambassador Dr. Alan Keyes. I pointed out to
Patrick that Dr. Keyes, who is African-American, drew his support for his
presidential campaigns from the same conservatives that Patrick was attempting
to smear as racists.
If conservatives did not want Barack Obama
to be president because of his race, I asked, than why did these same
conservatives support the presidential campaigns of Alan Keyes? World Net Daily
has recently written about and has carried links to articles about congressman
and presidential aspirant Allan West, an African-American conservative, and
features columns and has published a book by Erik Rush, also an
African-American conservative and the author of “Negrophilia: From Slave Block
to Pedestal, America’s Racial Obsession.”
Does racism exist in America? Of
course it does. Objectivist author Ayn Rand once referred to racism as
“barnyard socialism.” There certainly is a tendency, perhaps hard wired into
the human psyche, in which people at times and in certain settings view
themselves and others in a collective context based upon perceived racial
differences however the term is defined. Obviously racism is not unique to America as race
awareness appears to be part of the human condition to varying degrees. America, unlike societies such as Sweden or Japan which have been historically
dominated by one race, is a multi-racial society that has been therefore prone
to varying degrees of racial tension. In addition, America remains tarnished by the
great sin of our history, the fact that African-Americans are mostly descended
from an ancestry that arrived on our shores as chattel slaves.
It is true that America
has been dominated by the white race and it is a fact of history that America
embraced white supremacy as an acceptable creed from colonial times until
recent decades. This is an ugly part of American history and culture that
cannot be denied. To a certain degree white people still hold a privileged
position in America
and this remains a continuing cause of tension and inequality with regard to
opportunity. This book examines the recent history of racism, the use of racism
for political purposes, left-wing racism in particular, and whether racism is specifically
a part of the conservative movement.
Race, ethnicity, language, religion,
regionalism, and political economic and societal differences between
individuals and groups of individuals exist and will always exist. Jewish and
Islamic texts maintain that a biblical era leader named Nimrod attempted to
build a tower into the heavens, known as the Tower of Babel,
in order to reach God and to dominate the world with one language and one
government. The God of the Bible responded to this utopian scheme by knocking
down the tower and by scattering humanity across the planet and confounding man
with different languages.
A theme that is fundamental to the Bible,
and one that is reflected in secular human understanding, is the concept of
separation. Man is separate from God, time is separated by days, weeks, months,
years centuries etc. Individuals, man and women, families, tribes, and nations
are separated from each other. In the beginning, God separated the heavens from
the earth. Judaism developed the concept of separation to a high art form as
the Sabbath is separate from all other days, food is separated between kosher
and non-kosher, the sacred is separated from the profane, certain sexual
relations are allowed and others forbidden as, for example, adulterous
relations are forbidden.
Thus for reasons that are clearly intrinsic
to our nature as human beings, we tend to congregate with each other based upon
complex sets of factors and we tend to naturally separate ourselves from others
in the process. This basic part of our nature will never change nor should it ever
change. The core mission of the negative side of the late 18th and 19th
Century European social enlightenment movement was to change this aspect of
human nature, to create a worldwide human collective in which mankind would
forget his differences with each other and would form a new and more socially
evolved consciousness. Political philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau,
Karl Marx and many others claimed that this idea was virtuous.
The attempt to eradicate human difference,
and to thus create a collectivist utopian society, was made in the 20th
Century and could be exemplified by the two great European socialist
experiments, those carried out respectively in Bolshevik Russia and in Nazi
Germany. The results of those two attempts to ultimately eradicate racial,
ethnic, economic, and religious differences between human beings are recorded
in the most blood stained pages of human history as is understood by reasonable
people. The Nazis believed in a super race that would ultimately dominate the
planet with all other races, viewed as less evolved sub-humans, living in a
condition of subservience. The communists sought to end all races by ending
individual identity and all the institutions that foster individual consciousness
such as property, family, religion, and ultimately government itself. While the
negative side of racial and other differences must be addressed by the just and
moral society, the idea of eradicating these differences, the idea of
collectivism, must be seen for what it is, immoral and unnatural, and must be therefore
completely and utterly rejected.
Chauncey DeVega, a columnist for the
left-wing online publication AlterNet, wrote an article on April 29, 2011
entitled 10 Ways That the Birthers Are an
Object Lesson in White Privilege. This article, written in response to
President Obama’s release of his birth certificate, serves as a rich illustration
of a left-wing view of race in America,
and how race is used as a political football by the left. Significant portions
of the article are reprinted here with commentary. DeVega begins with the highly
sarcastic assertion that: In an era of racism without
racists, the Tea Party GOP Birther brigands provide one more lesson in the
permanence of the social evil known as White privilege. The author defines our era as one of racism
without racists and at first glance this appears to be a sarcastic
rejoinder to the assertion by conservatives that they are not racists. Yet this
comment raises the question of whether America is a society of racism without
racists. Going one step further, this comment begs the question regarding how
racism is defined in America
today. Who is a racist? What did pressure for Obama to release his birth
certificate and other classified information have to do with White privilege?
Of course there are racists in America today
as the term has been classically defined. There are still KKK men who parade
around in white sheets and who burn crosses on lawns. There still are fringe
organizations, neo-Nazi groups come to mind, which adhere to white supremacy
which was mainstream in America
before World War II and even into the mid 1960’s in some quarters. The image of
George Wallace, the Democratic Governor of Alabama, blocking the school door to
stop an African-American child from attending school comes to mind as does the Birmingham Alabama
police chief Bull Connor turning water hoses on civil rights protesters. In
1968, the Republican civil rights leader, the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
was brutally murdered, shot down in the prime of his life and at the peak of
his creativity, by a white supremacist. Lynching was a not an infrequent
practice in America
until the 1950’s.
While noting the extraordinary
accomplishment brought forth by the election of an African-American President,
an aspect of President Obama’s election that was universally celebrated by the
vast majority of Americans from all sides of the political spectrum, DeVega proceeds
to paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa with the following observation: During this same moment America
witnessed the rise of Sarah Palin to fame and glory, a woman who rides White
populism and racial resentment in the same way that a witch rides a broom. Much could be written in criticism about former Alaska Governor
and Republican Presidential nominee Sarah Palin but the charge that she is
promoting racial resentment, for that matter that populism is particularly a
white phenomenon, is wrong.
Sarah Palin is an easy target for scorn from the left and the ugly
attack against her has more than a whiff of sexism. Palin didn’t attend an Ivy League
College and she doesn’t
talk like, walk like, or look like your typical liberal eastern seaboard
liberal establishment type. President Obama, on the other hand, has the Ivy League
College cred, the language,
the look, and the walk of the liberal establishment type down to a tee. Like
many conservatives before her, Palin is marginalized by the left as “stupid”
and therefore as a person who is not to be listened to or taken seriously.
With the type of scorn that has been heaped upon her, it is easy
for the left to take the next step and label her as a racist and DeVega
performs this hit is classic left-wing style with snide and indirect references
to her engaging in racial resentment while calling her a witch on a broomstick
to boot. The very idea of actually taking what Palin has to say seriously is
not considered as she is instead denounced in classic left-wing agitprop
fashion. Palin, who in her at times awkward way is a plain spoken truth teller,
poses as a threat to the edifice of left-wing ideology. The populism that she
at times espouses is universal to all Americans and that is socially
conservative values, limited and honest government, low taxes, and national
sovereignty. There is nothing white about these ideas unless DeVega and the
left entertains the racist idea that African-Americans are not capable of
making up their own political and philosophical minds. In a sense, Palin, by
posing as a threat to the left, threatens the attempt by the left to influence
the thinking of African-Americans.
DeVega goes on to write that as
a second addition to the Tea Party GOP's Rogues Gallery there is a carnival
barker named Donald Trump, a man
who once lurked stage left but
is now the GOP front runner as he perfectly embodies PT Barnum's famous
observation that "there is a sucker born every minute," while
shilling for the worst and most ugly nativist and xenophobic impulses of the
White Conservative Soul. While mean, this actually starts
out as a fairly hilarious send-up of Donald Trump until you get to the punch
line at the end of the sentence. Why does DeVega call Trump as nativist and a
xenophobe? This is because Trump has been vociferously attacking the concept of
free trade while advocating, in his many public appearances, an economic policy
that puts America
first. Specifically, Trump as called for tariffs on foreign imports as a means
to protect American industry and American jobs, particularly blue collar jobs.
Trump is the only presidential candidate to raise this issue and
he is motivated by concern for the American economy. Trump, a businessman, has
pointed out that he would rather do business, place orders for products for his
hotels and properties for example, that manufacture their products inside the
United States. Whether one agrees with Trump’s approach, his intention is to
protect American manufacturing which means protecting American employment.
American workers who would be employed by such protected American companies
would include African-American and other minority workers. What DeVega calls
nativism is actually an advocacy of an American economic system that puts
American workers, all American workers first. Perhaps DeVega and others who
would make this scurrilous charge might be asked what they think would serve as
an alternative to Trumps idea of saving American industry and jobs. Or maybe
they just don’t care about the interests of working people.
DeVega continues: Imagine if
Sarah Palin, a person who wallows in mediocrity and wears failure as a virtue,
were any race other than White. Would a black (or Latino or Asian or Hispanic)
woman with Palin's credentials have gotten a tenth as far? Treading very
carefully here, it might be suggested that Sarah Palin got where she today is
because she was picked out of relative obscurity as the Republican Vice
Presidential nominee in 2008 by the Republican nominee Sen. John McCain at
least partially because she was a women. Indeed the mainstream liberal media,
if the Boston Globe is any representative of the same, had been focusing on the
race, gender, and ethnic backgrounds of the perspective presidential contenders
of both parties and of congressional candidates for well over a year leading up
to the general election. Virtually every article in the Boston Globe covering
the campaign would mention the race, gender and ethnicity of the candidate, why
this was important, and what this would potentially mean if the named candidate
were elected.
Indeed, might I suggest, the liberal media, and liberals in general,
were obsessed with these factors. The women Hillary Clinton versus the
African-American Barack Obama, versus the Hispanic Bill Richardson and what it
all meant for the nation. Much more time was spent on this than on issues that
might actually affect the future. Hillary Clinton specifically was touted as a
woman first and foremost and that it was important to elect a woman as
president because she was a women. Perhaps, just maybe, John McCain made note
of the enormous spade-work done by the liberal media to promote a woman as a
presidential candidate when he chose a woman, Sarah Palin, to be his running
mate.
Conversely, and in direct response to the question posed by
Chauncey DeVega in her article, I would respectfully ask the reader to imagine
if an African-American, or a Latino, or an Asian, or a Hispanic, or for that
matter if a liberal white man, assuming for the sake of the discussion that all
of the aforementioned were liberal and not conservative, were referred to in
such an insulting manner, as a person who
wallows in mediocrity and wears failure as a virtue. Imagine indeed.
DeVega proceeds to entertain another scenario: If the Tea Party and their supporters were a
group of black or brown folk, who showed up with guns at events attended by the
President, threatening nullification and secession, and engaging in treasonous
talk, how many seconds would pass before they were locked up and taken out by
the F.B.I. as threats to the security of the State? This is, of course, a
vicious lie and a piece of propaganda. Indeed, left-wing rallies were organized
in American cities by the radical left-wing group International ACTION in the
wake of the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. These rallies were, by any
objective standard, seditious and treasonous in their tone. The rallies also
contained well documented degrees of anti-Semitism. While there were no doubt a
couple of bad apples at the Tea Party rallies, possibly agents provocateurs,
the attendees represented a cross section of Americans concerned about the
future of the country.
The Tea Party movement is a genuinely organic movement that
started in the final years of the Bush Administration and grew during President
Obama’s tenure. The movement started out on opposition to the big financial
bailouts conducted in the final months of the Bush Administration and the
collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which precipitated the mortgage meltdown
and the loss of billions of dollars in equity and credit. President Obama,
while promising change as a candidate which garnered him a share of the
moderate and conservative vote, instead continued the Bush economic policies by
bailing out AIG and General Motors and by expanding the national debt with a
stimulus package that favored government employees. The concerns of the Tea
Party movement were and are shared by Americans of all racial and ethnic
backgrounds. The majority of Tea Party supporters are working class people
concerned for their jobs.
Scholars and
activists have described Whiteness as a type of property, unearned privilege,
normality, and invisibility. Donald Trump and the Birthers exhibit a surplus of
all of these traits...and more. There is
undeniable truth in this statement. Indeed, it is easier to get along in this
country by passing as White, this cannot be denied. Whiteness does, indeed
offer the person passing as white a level of unearned privilege, normality and
invisibility. Most Americans sincerely hope that our society evolves out of
this condition as evidenced by the incredible successes that African-Americans
have achieved in American history in spite of racism, achievements that have
greatly accelerated in the last half century. Today African-Americans occupy
positions of power and success in every field and all indications point to this
as a factor of American life that is universally celebrated. Indeed the
election of Barack Obama represents a milestone in this regard for most
Americans.
Yet America
is, essentially, a society that is based, even within the context of racial
struggles, on the achievement and rights of the individual. As such, Americans
tend to hold themselves, their fellow citizens, and particularly their leaders,
to a very high standard. While President Obama has achieved that standard at
least as well as any American president, nevertheless he ought to expect to be
held to the same tough scrutiny as most other American leaders have been held
to. The notion that such a vigorous test for President Obama is racist should
be rejected because it is not true. President Obama himself seems to understand
this yet many of his left-wing followers, who view reality through the prism of
collective identity such as race, would rather focus on a type of societal divisiveness
that would tear at the fabric of our American unity to the degree that we share
common interests. Their agenda, when placed in the context of socialist
ideology, is entirely self-serving.
The Chauncey
DeVega column concludes with the following ten points, re-published here with
commentary.
1. Just as
Pat Buchanan did with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Birthers have sullied
President Obama as being an unqualified,” affirmative action”benificiary.
It is impolite and impolitic to raise the question of
whether Affirmative Action might have played a role in the career advancement
of, in this case, an appointee to the Supreme Court and a President of the United States.
Nevertheless affirmative action has been and remains a public policy that has
largely been supported by liberals. Indeed Justice Sonia Sotomayor herself, as
a judge ruling on the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, a case brought by white
applicants who were denied jobs with the New Haven Connecticut Fire Department,
ruled that even though the applicants had scored higher on exams they would be
passed over in favor of minority applicants who had scored lower.
Affirmative Action addresses one evil, an unjust history of systemic
racial discrimination, with another evil, reverse racial discrimination. There
is justification for affirmative action as there has been state sponsored
racial discrimination going back centuries and therefore it could be argued
that the state ought to play a role in “leveling the playing field” so to
speak. It is, however, always unjust and unfair for any person to be denied an
opportunity based upon their race whether the person is white or a minority. It
is true that, as matters of state policy, some minorities have obtained
advancement based upon their race and that this advancement has possibly
occurred at the expense of others who might have been more achieving. We can
hope that the day will arrive in which racial discrimination will be reduced to
such a degree that the perhaps necessary but inherently unfair policy of
Affirmative Action could be abolished. Meanwhile, it is no more racist, per se,
to question whether a person has benefited from Affirmative Action than it is
to question whether a person has benefited from any other form of patronage.
During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Sotomayor
there was a great deal of talk from the establishment left regarding the
nominees Hispanic ethnic background and gender. Indeed this focus bordered on
fascination which bordered on an obsession as liberals seemed to fall all over
themselves as they dissected every minute permutation regarding the race,
ethnicity, and gender of each of the Supreme Court justices and what this meant
to judicial philosophy. The general consensus of liberal opinion was that these
factors related to how a given justice viewed the world and how they would render
judgments. Clearly the assumption was that an individual who was not a straight
white male would be liberal. The consensus of liberal opinion was based upon
the assumption that all minorities think alike and this is, indeed, the very
essence of left-wing racism.
This author recalls an interview on NPR during the Sotomayor
hearings with a liberal analyst of the Supreme Court who stated that when
Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to hold a seat on the Supreme
Court, entered the room the conversation changed in a progressive direction and
that Marshall’s
presence as an African-American was therefore important. In very sophisticated
tones, this commentator spoke of this as proof of why it was essential for a
minority to sit on the Supreme Court. Based on the overall direction of the
commentary, however, it would be safe to assume that this did not apply regarding
Thurgood Marshall’s successor on the court, Justice Clarence Thomas who, it
should be noted, is African-American.
Regarding DeVega’s comment that the Birthers have sullied President Obama as being an unqualified,”
affirmative action” beneficiary, two points should be made. Firstly, the release
of President Obama’s birth certificate, which the President refused to release
to the public for over 3 years, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
affirmative action. The question raised around the birth certificate was not
whether Barack Obama was qualified to be President in terms of his
intelligence, capabilities, and skills as a leader, these qualifications on the
part of Obama were absolutely and universally accepted. The question was a rather
simple one and that was whether Obama was born in the United States
and, if not, than this would have raised constitutional questions regarding his
qualifications to serve. The second point, which was whether Barack Obama was a
beneficiary of affirmative action, when approached separately, is a more
difficult and sensitive question, one that might be examined without getting
into demagogic charges that to do so would be racist.
As mentioned, many liberals, obsessed with the advancement
of various individuals in society because of their minority status while
operating under the assumption that such individuals would be supporters of
liberalism, are proud and unabashed expositors of the concept and practice of affirmative
action in those cases. Yes, affirmative action played a role in the advancement
of Barack Obama in that his support was derived at least partially because of
his race. There were other candidates running for the Democratic nomination for
President in 2008 that were as qualified as he, Hillary Clinton comes to mind. Yet
Barack Obama maintained an edge in the competition, with the media and with the
public at large, at least partially because of his race. Virtually all
Americans felt the time was right to elect an African-American as President and
Barack Obama scored on three counts, he was African-American, he was a
brilliant and qualified candidate, and he was liberal.
Barack Obama had been a local Illinois
politician from Chicago until he won his senate
seat in 2004 after being granted national exposure with a keynote speech at the
2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Upon his election to the US Senate, Obama almost immediately began running for
president. The race issue, the idea that it was time to elect the first
African-American president, was central to his candidacy from day one. Indeed,
it is a great accomplishment for our nation and for our society to have elected
an African-American as president. Such an event was a long time coming and was
a watershed event for America.
I proudly remember the morning after the election when, as I walked toward by
favorite take-out coffee establishment on my way to work, walking by a group of
smiling African-American men and spontaneously reaching out my hand in
congratulations. The whole country cheered, liberal as well as conservative. It
should be noted, however, that Barack Obama became president not merely because
of his race but also because he was a liberal. When it comes to politics,
particularly national politics, affirmative action only applies to minorities
who are liberal.
DeVega continues: His
academic and professional accomplishments are irrelevant. The fact that he won
an open and honest election are unimportant. We should know at this point that
the life successes of people of color (and to a lesser degree some women) are
always questionable and suspect when viewed through the gaze of Whiteness (and
sexism). White men are never burdened with the question or doubt of being
qualified for any job, at any time, or any place. Their greatness and ability
is a fact not a question, never is it to be interrogated. This self-delusion
exists despite the fact that white men have historically been the greatest
beneficiaries of unearned privilege in the history of the United States.
Their mediocrity has been rewarded at every turn.
On this point DeVega is at least partially correct. Indeed
white privilege continues in many respects to be the dominant creed. Those who
pass for white often assume levels of privilege and this remains true at all
strata of society including the lower strata. It is also true that minorities
have to work harder and have to be smarter and more motivated than do white
people in order to succeed. This may partially account for the extraordinary
level of both success and failure within the African-American community in
particular. This has absolutely nothing to do with liberal vs. conservative but
is rather a more systemic phenomenon. In practice, as opposed to in rhetoric
and posturing, conservatives are no more or less a part of this social milieu
than are liberals. From a public policy standpoint, the issue ought to be
studied from the perspective of which policies lead to the most success for the
most numbers of people in the long run.
2. Naturally,
the President should be White. Of course, the leaders of trade and industry
should be White. The natural order of things equates being White and male with
having natural authority and ability--a set of traits which exist without
question or doubt regardless of competence or ability. Whiteness deems the
inverse for people of color.
While a persistent milieu of white privilege continues to
permeate our multi-racial society this comment is nevertheless outdated. Other
than some fringe groups such as the KKK, very few Americans believe that the
President or leaders of trade and industry should be white. African-Americans
have achieved the highest levels of success, wealth, and authority in virtually
all avocations in this country and this is absolutely accepted as the norm today.
While the natural order of things equates
being White and male with having natural authority and ability this no
longer applies in the literal or practical sense. The relevant question is
which public policies are most likely to reduce the vestiges of this outdated outlook
to the degree that the most of the remaining barriers melt away.
As President Obama has learned, by mere fact
of his birth, and coincidence of the color of his skin, his legitimacy will
always be in doubt. This is absolutely false and is
a smear against those who asked for the President to make his birth certificate
public. Disagreeing with some of the presidents policies, and criticizing the
president and his administration for those policies, has nothing whatsoever to
do with questioning the president’s legitimacy to hold office. This question
pertains entirely to questions regarding the jurisdiction of his birth. It may
be recalled that there were those who questioned the legitimacy of the
presidency of George W. Bush, and many who still do, due to the false
allegation that he stole the election of 2000 in Florida but this is a topic for other books.
3. Whiteness
equals authority. Thus, any White person, at any time, can question the
accomplishments of a person of color. The most mediocre of White people, the
sum total of whose life has amounted to 1/100th of President Obama's successes
(or that of other people of color) can feel legitimate in questioning how the
latter came to find their "unnatural" position in the social
hierarchy.
The questioning of the authority of a person of color is due
to affirmative action and is not motivated by race. Such questioning does not emanate
from a belief that people of color are less capable or qualified per se, as
this was the emanating idea of Eugenics which was common, particularly amongst
American elites before World War II. Notions of eugenics have largely been
dispelled. It is widely understood and accepted, even by hard-core racists,
that African-Americans in particular are absolutely as capable as white people
in all fields, indeed, if anything, that African-Americans in positions of
authority are probably more capable. The only degree in which an African-American
would be viewed as holding a position that would be “unnatural" in society would be due to the suspicion that the
person in question benefited from state intervention or affirmative action.
This is not a condemnation of affirmative action per se as
some white people have been advanced in their professions over the centuries
due to the fact that they could pass as white. Mediocre people are, indeed,
often advanced due to family connections, inheritance, or sheer luck and such
people are also held up to suspicion. It is unfortunate that affirmative action
has caused such questions to be raised regarding certain people of color in
certain circumstances yet the person in question would likely bear some
responsibility for such questions being raised. To re-iterate, while President
Obama benefited politically from his race, and therefore informally benefited
from notions associated with affirmative action, there has been no question
regarding his qualifications as a person or as a professional to hold the
office of president.
The issue of white privilege is used as a standard cudgel
against capitalism and against the world’s most prominent capitalist nation,
the United States.
Yet racial and ethnic privilege has been a part of almost every society since the
beginning of recorded history. In African societies, for example, members of
the black race dominate their respective societies and likewise in Europe which has been dominated by whites. Japan is a
society with a small white indigenous minority on their northernmost island and
this group is on the lower rung of Japanese society. India has a traditional caste
system. The Arab and Islamic nations have a two tiered system in witch
non-Muslims are considered to be dhimmi’s, or second class citizens.
The communist movement, the most dominant movement to emerge
from the so-called progressive social movement of 19th Century Europe, promised to abolish all forms of privilege by
abolishing all aspects of human nature that led to any form of inequality. This
included private property, family, committed relationships based on love,
religion, political sovereignty, and ultimately individual identity itself.
They believed in the creation of a new collectivist social order that would
transform the world. The results of their experiments, wherever they were
tried, have been poverty, disease, suffering, and death to the tune of hundreds
of millions of innocent people. It is contended here that the American
capitalist system, with all of its faults, is the better way to go in terms of
addressing any form of supremacy by any group.
Whiteness is an advantage in the Marathon of life. Through this unearned head-start a
psychic wage is paid, one that allows any White person, anywhere, to question
how a black or brown person came to be ahead in life for such a thing can never
happen in a "just" world. Whiteness allows white folks to not feel
embarrassed or ashamed in asking such impolitic and rude questions.
Actually, most people understand that such questions as
whether a person earned their position in society, for whatever reason the
question is raised, is sensitive and impolitic and should be as such. Regarding
rudeness or impolitic sentiments that may be directed toward President Obama
there have actually been very few, certainly less than those directed toward
his immediate processors. Generally, President Obama has been criticized for
his policies and legitimately for aspects of his public persona in a manner
that ought to be directed at any person in a position of authority. This is
particularly true regarding any president and indeed such criticism is
essential to a free society and serves as a natural aspect of our system of
checks and balances.
Real rudeness, the type that should have made folks feel
embarrassed but did not, was the impolitic remarks routinely leveled at former
President George W. Bush and members of his administration. As a conservative
who is surrounded by liberals, this author was exposed to some of the vilest
and hateful language directed at Bush. One example shall suffice. I was driving
my 10 year old daughter home from school and I was giving ride home to two of
her classmates that day. In the back seat, these two ten year old girls started
singing songs about President Bush that were so vulgar and obscene that the
lyrics shall be omitted from this text. This type of attitude, heard time and
again by this author, was no doubt learned at the dinner tables of these two
girls.
If I had ever spoken in such a manner then I was that age,
about anyone let alone a president of the United States, and my parents heard
of it, I would have had my mouth washed out with soap. Yet, there was no shame,
no embarrassment attached to such hate and ugliness. It made me wonder if Nazi
children had come up with such charming ditties regarding Jews. Yet most people
on the left, if they heard these nursery rhymes even today, would think they
were uproariously funny.
4. Whiteness
is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Whiteness is also the freedom to be utterly
unreflective regarding the foolishness and madness of one's deeds and
statements as long as the target of such madness is the Other. The Birthers,
Buchanan, Trump, Palin, Bachmann, Limbaugh, Breitbart, and Beck engage in
routine crazy talk. But Whiteness allows them to be taken seriously (at least
at first) for White privilege allows the luxury of being utterly unreflective
in most things.
It is an all too common tactic for liberals and left-wing
activists to call their opposition crazy or stupid. This type of schoolyard
bullying is an easy and cheap way to divert attention from what the opponent is
saying. Doesn’t pay any attention to anything that person might bring up, they
want you to think, he’s crazy or stupid. What they are really saying when they
launch this type of character assassination is that the person is mentally ill
and should therefore be ignored. It should be noted that this type of tactic is
employed in a particularly vicious manner when the opponent to the left is a
person of color.
5. White
privilege is freedom from accountability. Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, and the
rank and file Birther brigands will not face any consequences for their ill
deeds in slandering the President of the United States, or for openly fomenting
sedition and rebellion against the government of the United States.
Fomenting sedition and rebellion against the United States?
This is a very serious charge to make against an American citizen, one that
should be made with carefully documented evidence that is brought to the bar of
judgment. The American Communist Party, the Nazi Party, the KKK, the Black
Panthers, the Weather Underground, these groups fomented sedition and rebellion
against the government and as such they were engaged in a conspiracy to
overthrough the US government and alter the social order by means of a
combination of violence and subversion. They deserved to be investigated by the
government and were investigated in most cases. Such charges should not be lightly
tossed around. If Donald Trump or Pat Buchanan were involved in sedition or
rebellion than a congressional committee should be convened at once and an
investigation should commence with testimony and the naming of names.
6. The Obama
birth certificate debacle has exposed how to be truly American a person must be
white. This is one of the central unspoken (and widely accepted) truths of race
in America.
There is historic truth to this, as indeed America has a
white supremacist past and this must not be denied, but great progress has been
made, progress that seems to have been lost on DeVega. There is not question,
none whatsoever, regarding the Americanism or the citizenship of
African-Americans. There was no question regarding the Americanism of Barack
Obama, only questions regarding the constitutional technicality of the exact
location of his birth. This controversy existed because the Constitution has
two qualifications for an individual to be president. Those qualifications are
that the president be a natural born citizen and that he or she be at least 35
years old.
Challenges to residency requirements are common routine
matters. Hillary Clinton, when she ran for the Senate in New
York, was described as a carpetbagger because of her short time
residing in New York.
Mitt Romney, when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, was challenged by his
Democratic opponent, Attorney General Shannon O’Brien, who claimed that Romney
had not resided for enough days in Massachusetts
to qualify as governor. Romney had spent the previous two years as the head of
the Olympic Committee and in that capacity had spent a great deal of time in
Utah and elsewhere. Romney, to prove his residency, spent a day before a local
judge with records proving that he had spent enough days at his home in Belmont. His records,
including how many times the toilet was flushed in his home, were pored over.
Romney recounted that it was one of the most depressing days of his life. When
this author ran for Congress in 2004 against Rep. Barney Frank it was suggested
that Frank’s residency be challenged, a suggestion that was ignored.
For example,
Sarah Palin channels The Blood Countess Erzebet Bathory and bathes in this
bigotry with all of her "real America" talk. Although it is
a lie in the face of history, because America is a mulatto culture where the
majority of black folks (and of course our Native American brothers and
sisters) were in the U.S. many decades (if not at least a century) before the
great unwashed masses of white ethnics arrived here, Whiteness still imagines
African Americans and other people of color as semi-permanent outsiders. In
total, to be American is to be Black. The Birthers in their racial
heliocentrism--where to be White is to be the center of the world--are repulsed
by this fact. There is no information available, at least none to be found by this
author that would indicate the race or ethnic background of those who asked
President Obama to release his birth certificate. Joseph Farah, the publisher
of World Net Daily and one of the main point people in the effort to pressure
President Obama to release his birth certificate, happens to be an
Arab-American and, it could be argued, Arabs are Caucasian but are Semitic. For
that matter this author, it could be argued, is not Caucasian but, as a Jew,
Semitic. All of this would depend on how race is defined. Either way, race had
absolutely nothing to do with concern over the president’s birth certificate.
7. White
privilege is the ability to be "normal" and "invisible."
Whiteness is never interrogated. Consequently, the White nationalism of the Tea
Party GOP and its embrace of the Birthers has been long able to deflect the
charge that they are racist or tinged by yearnings for a return to "the
good old days" when "those people" knew their place. There is simply no evidence that the organic movement that is
known as the moniker “tea party” is white, embraces any particular form of
white nationalism, or is in any way racist or concerned with racial issues. It
is true that those who loosely identify with the ideas embodied by the tea
party are nationalist, in that they seek to insure that America and American interests come
before those of other nations but this is based on common sense and has nothing
to do with the particular race of any American citizen.
Indeed, the motivation to place ones nation first is based
upon the same principle, natural to human nature in the best sense, as the
motivation to place ones self or ones family first. After all, if the
individual, the family, or the nation does not put itself first that who are
they placing first and why? Certainly the idea of self interest, private
interest, and national interest, as such concepts that are an inherent and necessary
aspect of human nature, necessary for survival, are instincts that serve all
people of all races and backgrounds. One would expect the people of France, or Chile,
or Zimbabwe,
or any other nation to place their nation in front of other nations and for
obvious reasons.
Because
Whiteness is invisibility it works like chaff to obscure the obvious fact that
much of the opposition to President Obama has always been about his race and
not about policy. This is obviously false.
Indeed, a portion of support for President Obama is because of his race and the
justified good will, good feeling, and pride that the vast majority of
Americans feel about electing the first African-American president. Opposition
to President Obama has been based upon his policies, not his race. Even those
Americans who might be inclined toward racist views either support or oppose
President Obama essentially because of his positions whether real or perceived.
Ultimately, opposition to President Obama is based, in general, on lack of
confidence in the economy, high unemployment, the credit and mortgage
implosion, and the weakening of the dollar. Such opposition was lodged against
President Herbert Hoover, who was white, and this was based on the bad economy
to which he presided. Whether or not the economic stagnation is President
Obama’s fault, or for that matter whether the depression was the fault of
President Hoover is beside the point. Presidents are always held to account for
the economy that exists on their watch.
The signs of the Tea Parties are ignored or
explained away, the racist emails laughed at and/or minimized as trite and
silly, and bigoted White folks who display their bonafides whenever given the
opportunity are labeled as outliers. There is slippage in naming the White
racism of the Birthers as such because so many are invested in denying the
semi-permanency of White supremacy in America, a sentiment that still lingers
decades after the end of Jim and Jane Crow. The
Tea Party and the Birthers are no more or no less racist than most any other
American group and that would include most liberal or progressive groups. That
would also include groups made up of people of color. DeVega perceives the Tea
Party as racist because it is primarily conservative and in this regard DevVega
is displaying a form of bigotry. Conservatism whether one agrees or not with
its principles, stands for a set of political and economic principles that have
absolutely nothing to do with race. Conservatism is embraced or rejected by
members of all races. Indeed, it is contended here, that a great deal of credit
for the level of success that is experienced by the African-American community
is due to their embrace of conservative political and economic principles.
8. Whiteness
is the default position for viewing the world. It is a cognitive map and means of
processing reality. This statement goes to the
very core of the leftist view of society and speaks directly to the dialectical
process that defines the activism of the left. Leftism instructs its adherents,
either by open or subtle means, to view individuals as cogs in a collective
wheel. Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, drawing from social revolutionary ideas
that were forming in their time, theorized that modern man, as opposed to those
who were either in the primitive or feudal stage of human social progress, were
divided into two distinct groups which they called the bourgeois and the
proletariat. In the 20th Century, left-wing theoreticians,
particularly Franz Fanon, the author of The
Wretched of the Earth, extended these two categories to include divisions
of society into racial, regional, and ethnic collective categories. In our own
times, these categories have become numerous and even at times minute when
various sub categories are included. Thus the left looks to collective categories
based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, region, and even
physical and medical conditions such as deafness.
Once these categories are established, various attributes
are observed and emphasized as this is partially the work of sociology and
anthropology when these disciplines are conducted within a political context.
Once the individual is placed within any particular category or group of categories,
the left, and this is subtle and generally not conscious, actually believes
that the individual, within this manufactured collective context, processes
reality differently than those of other categories. When taken to the extreme,
as it was by the Eugenic followers of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton, this
different perception of reality becomes a matter of genetics and biology. The
materialistic and atheistic nature of leftism serves to further emphasize this
outlook. In other words, left-wingers, whether consciously or otherwise,
actually believe that people are literally different not as individuals but because
of their race or designated category.
This idea, which is inherently racist as opposed to racist
in the old fashioned sense, which would be a backward and regressive belief
that one race is superior to another, is based on a collective as opposed to a
view of the uniqueness of the individual. This idea completely contradicts the
American conception of society, based upon the Biblical principle that every
single human being is created in the image of God, which is that each individual
life is sacred and unique and that rights are inherent and natural to the
individual and not to the collective. Indeed America, furthering the process set
forth by the Bible, represents the process by which mankind moved away from the
collective state and toward individual rights. The American conception is that
rights come not from a collective, or from the state, but from the creator,
from nature and natures God.
The election
of Barack Obama upsets this world view. Many of those drunken on Whiteness and
invested in the version of events that are offered by the White Racial Frame
really do think they are operating as a "principled" opposition or
that they are "colorblind," when in reality race, and fears of the
racial Other, are driving their behavior. Here, Whiteness and white privilege
work as pathologies that make a person immune to the real motivations driving
their anti-Obama derangement syndrome. Nothing
could be further from the truth. The election of Barack Obama as president was
the culmination of a rejection of collectivism that harkens back to the
struggles of the American founding generation. The American Republic,
established with the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789, established
the right of white men of a certain age who owned property to vote. The same
republic allowed the continuation of the barbarous institution of chattel
slavery with all of its horrors and injustice. Yet even in that context, America
established freedom and individual and religious rights to a greater degree than
had ever experienced such rights in human history.
Since the founding, indeed, the quest of America, the true
meaning of our creed to borrow a phrase from the late great Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, has been to move our society toward freedom and away from the
regressive hold of those who still clung to collectivism. Founding fathers such
as Alexander Hamilton were vocal opponents of slavery and slave holders such as
Thomas Jefferson, while hypocritically benefiting from slavery, sought its
eventual peaceful dissolution. America
endured the Civil War, the bloodiest in history up until that time, which led
to the abolition of chattel slavery. The Civil Rights movement, the labor
movement, Feminism, and Gay Rights are all movements that have been motivated
by a need to further expand individual rights to more people yet the left has
often attempted to subvert these movements based on the American ideal, with
regressive notions of collectivism.
9. Whiteness
is the ability and power to reframe reality. This
goes to the foundational principle of leftism which is one of nihilism, that
ultimately there is no objective reality and therefore no reality at all.
Reality, as such, can be manipulated by means of deception and fraud, but
reality cannot be reframed. Reality is real. There is only one reality and it
is reality. The left-wing ideal, as embraced by social revolutionaries starting
with the Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt, the Jacobins of Robespierre, the
egalitarians of Gracchus Babeuf, the science of Henri Saint Simon and Charles
Darwin, the dialectic of Hegel, and the political action of Karl Marx were
based upon the principle that the human social condition was based on a false
and manufactured paradigm.
Marx called this false consciousness and he contended that
the false consciousness was manufactured by a cabal of power hungry exploiters.
He believed that groups of people were hypnotized into a condition in which
they were willing to be exploited. In his essay On the Jewish Question, Marx contended that the Jews were responsible
for manufacturing such human attributes as self interest and what he called
huckstering. By huckstering, he was criticizing the need for people to trade in
goods and services. Marx felt that by annihilating Judaism, these human
attributes could be abolished and mankind would move toward the ultimate state
of social existence, the collectivist stage that he called Communism. Contrary
to the beliefs of Marxism, that reality could be reframed, the American idea is
based on a more scientific notion which is that reality is objective and by
understanding and studying that objective reality, mankind could progress in
the real sense.
Despite
whatever documents or evidence that President Obama may offer to silence the
growly, rabid hostility of the Birthers and the White Conservative Soul, the
terrain for debate will be continually shifted. Conservatives are not necessarily white as, obviously,
conservatism knows no race or collective category. Indeed conservatism is a
rejection of all ideologies. Conservatism seeks a society that reflects human
nature in all of its natural imperfections. In other words, conservatism
reflects reality which is accessible equally to all human beings. This is a function of ideology plus
partisanship mixed together and combined in the Right-wing echo chamber. This
reframing of reality is also born of the narcissism that is Whiteness, for the
world is what they/he/she says it is.
As a courtesy Chauncey DeVega has the last word: 10. White privilege is also surprising. Many
black and brown folks (as well as others) have been saying from day one that
the opposition to President Obama, and the silliness suggested by the
conspiranoid Birthers in particular, have been motivated by racism. Those
voices were often silenced and attacked as being too sensitive and wedded to
some outmoded notion of political correctness. The pundit classes have finally
seen the obvious: race is the driving force behind Trump and the Tea Party
GOP's obsession with Obama's birth certificate. When those not White said as
much they were dismissed. Lesson for us all: Despite our protests and the
evidence that black and brown folks may bring to the table, racism does not
exist until good White folks say that it does.
Who is a racist?
