Roger L. Simon is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, novelist and blogger, and the CEO of Pajamas Media. Today he posts a brief, wise, and eloquent essay "Sharpton and Obama: There’s No Business Like Race Business"
Simon's essay is something for which Americans seeking to make this a better country should give thanks.
Simon begins - - -
Al Sharpton criticizing Barack Obama for urging non-violence in the Sean Bell verdict protest puts into dramatic relief the major racial conflict of our time – and it is inside the African-American community, not outside.
Outdated racial profiteers like Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and now the formerly obscure Reverend Jeremiah Wright are clinging for dear life to their reactionary views that have impeded progress in their own community for years. (emphasis added)
Unfortunately for all of us, Obama — whose instincts should have been better on this matter — has found himself trapped between appeasing these race baiters (and their constituencies) and taking what is truly a progressive (note the use of the word) stand against them because of his twenty year association with Reverend Wright.
The candidate’s speech on racism, so lauded in the press, actually worsened the situation by implying an equivalency between the reverend’s excrescences and his own grandmother’s fear of being mugged. That Obama could even think this way makes us wonder about his ability to lead us out of these particular woods.
And woods they are indeed. The situation is close to tragic and this election year shows a real chance of running off the rails in a way few of us would have predicted. It has a potential for pushing race relations seriously backwards in a society that was already relatively open handed.
People do not like being accused of racism when it is not there. The original attraction of the Obama campaign is that it was post-racial and now it is anything but.
This is not the fault of America or of the American people. It has been caused by the race baiters and the spinelessness and opportunism of Barack Obama. He made his compact with the race-baiting devil twenty years ago and now, in the immortal words of Reverend Wright, “it has come home to roost.” ...
The rest of "Sharpton and Obama: There’s No Business Like Race Business" is here.
Thank you, Roger Simon.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Simon on Obama's opportunism and race baiters
Posted by JWM at 12:17 PM
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1 comments:
Simon says it succinctly and correctly. The race-baiters have poisoned relationships in our society and actually increased the distance between the Blacks and the Whites. Rather than following the advice of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and judging "by the content of our character," the race-baiters have gone to great lengths to make Black skin color the determining factor in everything from college entrance to political appointments. For myself, I'm sick and tired of being told by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright that I'm a racist and my country is racist. Race relations are not what they should be, but I believe the fault lies in the race-baiters who have persuaded too many Black people that they're still living in slavery and the White devils mean them harm. If Jackson, Wright and their ilk would shut their bigoted mouths, maybe some progress could be made.
Tarheel Hawkeye
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