Why is race an issue in 2009?

The other day I was angry because the arrest of a lunatic, race-baiting professor was at the top of the news. Perhaps I was a bit naive. You see, I have worked with, gone to school with, been friends with and live near people of all races. We all get along just fine. While I’m aware there will always be racists in the world, I’ve never really believed racism is a big problem in America. Especially after the last election.

I guess I was wrong. Although I was aware that President Obama has surrounded himself with whitey-hating folks for his whole life, I hoped he was above that. Or would have gotten over it after being elected President of the United States of America. I underestimated Barack Obama.

Thomas Sowell has two great columns out today regarding Obama and race. I urge you to read both.

A Post Racial President?

Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a “post-racial” era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us.

That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially.

Barack Obama has been allied with such people for decades. He found it expedient to appeal to a wider electorate as a post-racial candidate, just as he has found it expedient to say a lot of other popular
things– about campaign finance, about transparency in government, about not rushing legislation through Congress without having it first posted on the Internet long enough to be studied– all of which turned to be the direct opposite of what he actually did after getting elected. [...]

For “community organizers” as well, racial resentments are a stock in trade. President Obama’s background as a community organizer has received far too little attention, though it should have been a high-alert warning that this was no post-racial figure.

What does a community organizer do? What he does not do is organize a community. What he organizes are the resentments and paranoia within a community, directing those feelings against other communities, from whom either benefits or revenge are to be gotten, using whatever rhetoric or tactics will accomplish that purpose.

To think that someone who has spent years promoting grievance and polarization was going to bring us all together as president is a triumph of wishful thinking over reality.

It ties well into Sowell’s piece noting how racial divisions can destroy a nation. Is this what Obama has in mind?

Disaster in the Making?

The desire of many Americans for a “post-racial” society is well-founded, though the belief that Barack Obama would move in that direction was extremely ill-advised, given the history of his actions and associations.

This is a president on a mission to remake American society in every aspect, by whatever means are necessary and available. That requires taking all kinds of decisions out of the hands of ordinary Americans and transferring them to Washington elites– and ultimately the number one elite, Barack Obama himself.

Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the prospects of what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power. Often this has been accompanied by an ignorance of history, including the history of how many people before him have tried similar things with disastrous results.

I apologize for my naivete.  Racism is alive and well in the United States of America. But it isn’t the “white man keeping the black man down.” No, it’s politicians and race hucksters fanning the flames of racism for political reasons. And it’s despicable.

Update: Here is Glenn Beck’s take on it. He believes Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people.