The Response to Obama’s speech on race.

March 23, 2008

Having read it, I think I am going to go turn my brain off for a little while. After a diatribe about what constitutes a “nigger,” the blogger “Instapunk” says:

You see, you’ve just given life to the suspicion that black people in America are, and have long been, a fifth column — unanimously hating the very country that has afforded the highest standard of living ever achieved by black people in human history. We’re teetering at the edge of believing that you’re a secret society, a massive collection of sleeper cells just waiting for your chance to do serious harm to the rest of us. You’ve made it possible for us to believe that. Because you’re never outraged by what the worst black people do. Because you continue to make excuses for what should be inexcusable to everyone. [ Quoted from Instapunk by Glenn Greenwald ]

Let’s be clear that this quote is not cherry-picking some Q-list blogger in a corner somewhere but someone frequently referenced by Glenn Reynolds, a highly respected right-wing “libertarian” blogger.

I know that some white people are upset by the angry tone some black leaders and preachers use. But it is not substantively different from the angry, occasionally homicidal, frequently vindictive threats and anger expressed by adherents to the mostly right-wing political parties.

Segregation is not that long gone. My parents graduated from a segregated high school. The memory of legally-supported race hatred is still here, alive in the memories of people who actually experienced it. White people often killed black people because they were black. This happened in the lives of many people still living today. It happened in the lives of many people running for President today. Is anger that surprising? Apparently so, because to the Instapunk black anger over the discrimination and lynching of their parents, grandparents, and ancestors back for some four hundred years in this country represents a “fifth column” seeking a means of destroying the country. He wants them to beg forgiveness, to prove they are loyal to the flag, and to admit there’s such a thing as a “nigger.”

Here’s the dirty secret all of us know and no one will admit to. There ARE niggers. Black people know it. White people know it. And only black people are allowed to notice and pronounce the truth of it. Which would be fine. Except that black people are not a community but a political party. [ * * * ] However much they may scream and protest, black people will know what I mean when I demand they concede that the following people are niggers:

Included in this list is Obama’s pastor, who gets excoriated by the right for doing little more than folks like white preachers Hagee and Falwell have done: condemn America for doing things they disagree with.

It makes me more than a little sick to my stomach.

Posted in Race