How To Make A Racist
I raised my children to be colorblind. I took no pride in doing so other than the pride I took in teaching them to walk and eat. In fact, you don't teach colorblindness. You teach racism.
At the appropriate age, I sent my children to school. There, they interacted with black and white on an equal level. They had good and bad teachers who were white, and good and bad teachers who were black. They had friends of every color and, I hate to say it, enemies, too. After all, you can't get along with everyone all the time.
This lasted up until about third grade, or about eight years old. Around this time, in January, they started bringing home handouts on Martin Luther King. Projects were assigned. This lasted most of the month. February rolled around and they began their black history studies. Neither of these things bothered me. What bothered me was the flavor and intensity of the material. Unlike the rather sparse learning they'd been exposed to in other areas of history, and to other people, the black history and MLK assignments had the flavor of propaganda. With George Washington my children learned that he was the first president, crossed the Delaware to do battle with the British (which were actually Hessians), and never told a lie. With Dr. King, they learned that through his bravery he prevailed against the tyrrany of the white man and ultimately led his people out of oppression to a promised land. It was personality cult stuff.
I didn't say anything. We did the assignments and turned them in. It continued year after year.
Now, kids are smart. They are people just like us and they know when someone is pulling their chain. It didn't take long for my children to grow weary of the propaganda and start asking questions. While what Dr. King did was important and noteworthy, it certainly doesn't eclipse what George Washington and the founding fathers accomplished. And while George Washington Carver was a brilliant scientist, what he did should not be exalted above the discoveries of Watson and Crick - a revolution that changed everything. By the time my kids got to Middle School, they despised both Martin Luther King and Black History Month. The public school system was turning my kids into racists.
We now have the same thing happening at a national level. Conservatives who are opposing Obama's healthcare overhaul are saying and doing the same thing they did to Clinton when he was trying to restructure health care into a government institution. In fact, there was a huge turnover in congress because of what Clinton did. And, unless my memory is completely faulty, Clinton was a white guy.
If there is anything people hate, it is being told that they are something they are not. And telling people they are racists because they oppose something they are opposed to, is going to turn them into racists as certainly as making someone sit in the back of the bus. The idiots making this charge are destroying years of progress. And they have not a single, credible example of what they are claiming. Indeed, to assume a person is a racist because of the color of their skin, is the height of being a racist yourself. Many whites once assumed that the black people they met were unintelligent, based solely on the color of their skin. How are today's accusations any different?
There is a ground swell of opposition to a government takeover of healthcare. The left knows this. They want to stop it. What has worked consistenty when whites are opposing blacks? The race card. Whites back down. The leadership of the left knows this, too. Maureen Dowd says she can almost hear Joe Wilson tack "boy" onto the end of "You Lie!" This isn't news but it's being repeated by multiple new outlets. This is propaganda. Maybe even libel. Josef Goebbles level subterfuge. It never happened. But I'll wager that in a year a lot of people are going to think that Joe Wilson said, "You lie, boy."
Now Jimmy Carter isn't so stupid as to really think this is racism. He has been places where there is real racism - North Korea, Darfur, Palestine - and this ain't it. But he is a good enough politician to get himself elected president. He is a consummate Washington insider and has a vested interest in the the success of his party. He knows how to herd lemmings, and that is what he is doing.
For someone who claims to be such an elder statesman, he is doing a pretty good job of inciting division, hatred, and yes, racism. But should we really be all that suprised, because he was a lousy President.
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