The New Racism

I've been hearing that word an awful lot recently. Particularly since Obama began his run for President, and even more now that he has taken office. The cry of "racist!" or "racism!" is so strong now that nobody on the Left questions the absurdity of labeling thousands of people (people of numerous and varied ethnical backgrounds) as racist just because they showed up at a meeting protesting unwise govn't spending.

"Racism" is real. I grew up around it, and so did my mother. I went to school and church with children who tossed the word "nigger" around as if it were the technical term for "person of color"...and actually believed it was. When I took a childhood friend to task about using the word, she told me that it wasn't a put-down; that's just what they were called.

My mother, as a child, went on a shopping expedition with an aunt. After nearly hitting a young black woman with her cart, my mother said "Oh, excuse me." Her aunt pulled her aside and casually admonished "We don't say 'excuse me' to niggers."

However, despite being raised around it, neither my mother nor myself was raised to think it was normal, or good. My grandmother taught my mother to treat everyone equally, regardless of their skin color. And in turn, my mother taught me the same. My mother was shocked at her aunt's casual dismissal of another person based on nothing but skin color, but as a result she was able to warn me that my friends, and possibly even adults in authority over me, might behave in the same way. And they did.

I had childhood friends show me their KKK membership cards. I lived in a town where it was a big joke to shout race-baiting trigger words at black people from your car. (Where I lived, the trigger word was "Rayfield", which I think was the name of a prominent racist family, or something.)

Trust me, I know racism. I not only have witnessed it, I've been the victim of it. And I'm white.

From ages 0-9, I lived in the southern US, in very small, isolated towns with the exception of Memphis, Tennessee, where I arguably encountered less racism than in the smaller towns I lived in. One of the smallest towns was a little redneck paradise called Holly Grove. This was the place where the friends I made used the word "nigger" as casually as they would "blonde" or "freckled." It was also where I was placed on the receiving end of racism.

Most of the white families in town, even those who couldn't afford it, sent their children to a prestigious private school in the next county. My parents couldn't afford it, either, but wouldn't have sent me to that school even if they could afford to, as the only reason the other parents did so was because this school didn't let black children in. Oh, they didn't state this outright, but they had a screening process, and they always found ways to deny black students admission. So the black students, and the poorer white ones, went to the same public school that my mother taught in. The school was 90% black. The teachers were about 50% black. I was one of two white students in my class, the other being a boy whose parents managed to get him transferred to the private school before year's end. I'll confess it felt intimidating to be the only white kid surrounded by black students, but it was less their skin color that I was afraid of and more the fact that being the lone student who is noticeably different is never a comfortable experience.

I didn't care about my classmates' skin color, or my teacher's (who was also black) but you better believe they cared about mine. I recall once that when my teacher was teaching us about adjectives, she used an example by using three adjectives to describe a female student in our class: "Latonya is tall, sweet and beautiful." She then decided to move on to another student to make an example of: me. "Josh is long, fat and white." I didn't even realize that I was under verbal attack then, but I can remember the incident as if it were yesterday.

Another time, several students in my class, boys I had always treated with respect and considered most of them to be friends, gathered around me and started demanding that I call them "sir." I didn't understand what was going on, and couldn't fathom why they would want me to call them that, but I could tell this was not friendly and went the principal about it. The boys were made to apologize, but before that they tried to accuse me of saying things I did not say. What saved me, besides the fact that my mother worked as a teacher at that school, was that the principal had gotten to know me and understood that I would never talk that way.

Oh, yes, I'm very familiar with racism. From both ends. Which is why I can't understand why the word "racism" has been warped and twisted and no longer resembles anything like the kind of racism that has existed previous to the reign of His Majesty Obama.

In the age of Obama, asking a presidential candidate to release his birth certificate, which all presidential candidates before him have also been required to produce, is racist. So to is protesting giant tax increases to fund reckless government spending, a police officer asking a man seen forcing open a door to produce ID, speaking up at town hall meetings because you don't agree with nationalized health care, and voting Republican. At all.

Other signs you might be a racist is if you listen to Rush Limbaugh, don't like Keith Olbermann, don't read the New York Times, watch Fox News and don't think the Stimulus bill was a good bill. This is just the tip of the iceberg. You can now be called a racist for nearly any action that might possibly go against the plans of the sainted President Barack Obama. Even mentioning his middle name is grounds for being dismissed as a racist.

Real racism, the kind I was exposed to often as a child, is mostly dead. No, it's not gone away entirely, sad to say. In isolated rural communities you may still find people like those I was raised with, both black and white racists. But they are hardly the majority. They are ridiculous, simple people who wield absolutely no power. And you've probably listened to more Rush Limbaugh and watched more Fox News than they ever will. The only radio they likely listen to is their police scanner and the only thing they watch is their back porch bug zapper.

But I keep hearing about "widespread racism". Where is it? I hear people talk about how racism is still a huge problem, but other than conservative politicians (who can be safely called racist just by virtue of being conservative), nobody can point these racists out, or figure out where they all go when the fingers are pointed. You hear the cry of "racist" every day, fingers pointed at several people, but where is the actual racism exhibited by these supposedly racist people? What is it they're doing to merit the dreaded title?

The simplest answer is: nothing. Because "racism" has lost its meaning. It is no longer a word that can be used to describe someone's beliefs or behavior where race is concerned. It is now an epithet. It is a trump card to be played in any debate wherein the Left is losing. It's an automatic win for those brave enough to play it. There is no way to recover from being called a racist.

You don't have to say anything racist. You don't have to behave in a way that suggests you believe white people to be superior to black people. All you have to do now is be on the conservative side of an issue. Don't like being taxed in order to fund programs that you don't agree with? That's racist. Don't like the idea of a bill that will cause the cost of energy to skyrocket? You're a racist. Don't think socialized medicine will fix the current problems with the health care system, and may in fact make them worse? Well, gosh-darn it, you might as well put a hood on and proudly admit that you're a Klansman.

Yes, this is the age of President Obama, the first black US President. The Golden One. The Dear Leader. The man who can do no wrong. You know he can't do any wrong because he never has, and he always has our best interests at heart, and he's such an eloquent public speaker, and he looks good on a commemorative plate, and he has such a warm personality and dammit, he's black! It's an automatic win for him in any situation. He's the liberal, the Democrat, and he's black. Therefore, he can't be racist, because no blacks are racist, and he can't be anything but a good man, because those racist fascists are all Republicans. In fact, Obama is such a symbol, such an embodyment of all that is good, that to disagree with him on any subject is to reveal yourself as the scum-sucking racist you are.

This is the new racism. It doesn't have anything to do with your actual position on race. You can be a CEO who hires black people by the score, and promotes them into positions of power. You can have as many black friends as you want. You can date, or marry a black person. Heck, you can even be black. It doesn't matter. If you disagree with President Obama, or anyone in his cabinet, you are a racist.

You may be wondering how a black person could also be called a racist. Well, they don't use the word "racist" when it comes to black people who dissent. Instead, they are called "self-loathing", "race-traitors" or "Uncle Tom's" or any combination of the three. It amounts to the same thing.

There are only two reasons to ever disagree with The Golden One.

1. You're a white person, and a racist.

2. You're a black person, and a self-loathing Uncle Tom.

Now, I could point out the juxtaposition of the Left, who scream for racial equality and then demand that all black people think, act and vote the same way or they're "self-loathing race-traitors" who must be suffering some form of Stockholm syndrome, but that's not the main thrust of this argument.

Instead, it's to introduce you to a new era that Obama calls "post-racial." It is a new era, where racism has nothing to do with race and everything to do with undesirable ideals. It is a world where a black professor can pretend to be the victim when he verbally assaults a police officer in the course of his duties, and then be vindicated by the President himself. It is a world where if tens of thousands of people all across the country, of all colors, are gathered to protest government spending, they can be dismissed as a bunch of racist rednecks. It is a world where a black man shows up at a town hall meeting with a gun strapped to his back, and the "news" reports this, after carefully doctoring the footage so that the man's head is never seen, as "white people" showing up to town hall meetings with guns now that we have a "person of color" in the White House. It is a world wherein a man can be called a "nigger" and have the life nearly beaten out of him by Presidential-backed SEIU thugs, and still be thought of as the instigator, when all he was doing was handing out flags that said "Don't Tread on Me."

In short, in Obama's "post-racial" America, "racism" is now defined as being a dissenter, conscientious or not, to anything President Obama has to say or do.

This, supposedly, is progress. Now, instead of white people oppressing black people, we have a black President who is encouraging the oppression of white people who disagree with him, by labeling them with the one epithet they can't fight, no matter what they do.