Month: May 2014
Here we go again……
The American Right rears its ugly head again…..it has no particular target; it hates EVERYONE who is not a white male. That it finds adherents in any other segment of American society, particularly females and some minorities is beyond me. What raises my ire today is the pronouncement by some of who is and is not entitled to First Amendment protection in America.
First to cross over into the land of ascribing to himself the three branches of government all rolled into one is the chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court who declared
the First Amendment only applies to Christians because “Buddha didn’t create us, Mohammed didn’t create us, it was the God of the Holy Scriptures” who created us
Now in case you’ve forgotten or don’t know what the First Amendment is and says it’s explicit in its pronouncement
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
What Moore wants to do with his unilateral revocation of the First Amendment to a large part of American society is simply to silence them. He wants the ability to defame, disgrace, defile anyone of his choosing and at the same time not let them have the ability to respond to his xenophobia because the First Amendment is not just about religion but it’s also about speech. In other words, Moore wants to exert ‘white privilege’ to have the ability to make uneven the playing field of dialogue and ideas to give him and all like him an undo advantage gained solely because he says so to decide who controls what is said, practiced and even brought before the courts.
It didn’t take long for that to resonate with the rest of Right America, so there is this shameful display that took place in Cliven Bundy’s world
What’s on display in the video is the mob mentality that has been so pervasive throughout American history; it’s intimidating and always leads to incorrect conclusions such as the one shouted out at the end of the tape that echoes Moore’s erroneous proclamation that the object of the mob’s derision doesn’t deserve guaranteed protections and by extension anything can be done to him because he is stateless, inhuman, unprotected. Did you see the mob encircling the reporter Antonio Castelan and did you hear someone shout out how Bundy is a God fearing man and therefore the the reporter’s questions mark him as someone who couldn’t possibly be?!? This is America today; it’s ugly and vile and unless it’s fixed by strong leadership throughout the political spectrum which doesn’t appeal to the divisiveness gripping the country it will only get worse before it gets better.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was right
when he said ‘more whites believe in ghosts than believe in racism’ during an appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and as usual this statement brought out the worst in America and underscored his point. One only need to look at remarks overwhelmingly negative made on the comments section of any media source that reported on this story to see he touched a nerve. Abdul-Jabbar was on the show to talk about the latest example of American racism…unsolicited by him but for which he was asked to comment, the Donald Sterling affair, where the former owner of an NBA
franchise made some extremely salacious, racist remarks about African-Americans and how they are not welcomed at his team’s basketball games, despite the fact more than half of his team’s members are black themselves.
The Donald Sterling fiasco happened shortly America was given another example of its racist nature when lectured by one Cliven Bundy about the Negro when he wondered
are they(African-Americans) better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.
Bundy made these remarks during the stand-off with an administration of an African-American president over land rights in Nevada. Why and how is it that Bundy can make such outlandishly stereotypical, nonsensical, erroneous statements is a study in ‘white privilege‘ that is steeped in and indistinguishable from racism itself.
Even earlier than the Bundy example during the news media continuum, there’s the Hank Aaron story where Aaron, a baseball Hall of Famer who was the first person to break Babe Ruth’s homerun record during the days when steriods weren’t a factor in sports achievements, was vehemently castigated by unknown people for merely pointing out that 
We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts…..
It’s sad Aaron, successful on and off the baseball diamond has had to relieve vile racist insults for merely pointing out the obvious…..from his own experience, just as he had to have such insults hurled at him for being merely a record breaking athlete. This is the nature of racism in America. It is insidious, raw, ugly and meant to hurt and demean an entire group of people. Merely keeping quiet or turning a blind eye to it does not mean it doesn’t exist. Just ask Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Hank Aaron, or any other African-American you may know. Chances are they unlike white America get it and believe in racism’s efficacy more than they believe in ghosts.
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