But Whitey Started it!
By Erik Rush (06/20/07)
I had a tremendously interesting experience early last week when I appeared on a media venue broadcasted out of the Northeastern U.S. It was a Christian-leaning afrocentric radio station with a blowtorch of a signal that reaches from Ontario to parts of Pennsylvania. I'd been approached by one of the hosts to discuss - once again - "Obamination", my February 2007 expose on Trinity United Church in Chicago which is attended by presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Not to beat the proverbial moldering dead horse, but for the reader yet unfamiliar, the aforementioned column dealt with Trinity United’s borderline separatist doctrine and its militant pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright; it sparked national media controversy and made waves that reached Obama’s campaign, precipitating what one might call a course correction or two.
I suspected this interview might be an ambush, an instance of far Left propagandists hoping to bring on the race-traitor conservative columnist and rip him to shreds. Obviously, no one likes to be abused and it makes little sense to argue with ideologues, but after weighing the pros and cons and doing a little research, I decided to bite.
The host was friendly and cordial; his questions were intelligent, and I believe meant to be challenging without being confrontational.
The callers on the other hand, were a distressing and dolorous collection whose statements reflected the somnambulistic utterances of those under some sort of bewitchment. Angry and bitter, while no one descended to employing personal attacks, there was no reasoning with them, as it were. What I mean is that their rhetoric or arguments inevitably and repeatedly returned to the same premises and conclusions, which were often identical. I’ll elaborate upon this shortly.
This, of course is the direct result of 40 years of far Left propaganda, bought into and perpetuated by a disturbingly large segment of black Americans in every walk of life.
I found it necessary to remind one caller that I actually am black (by all outward appearances), since I don’t “talk black”, you see. Another took exception to my being of mixed race, as though this automatically called my credibility into question. Accounts of my personal experiences with bigots (having to flee for my life from young white thugs in my youth on more than one occasion, for example) were largely ignored.
Even more discouraging is the aspect that the younger you go down the scale, the more effectively indoctrinated I find these individuals in terms of obdurate adherence to the divisive far Left agenda that’s been fed to black Americans, the tainted logic, belligerence and abject dismissal of irrefutable facts, and cogent, constructive dialogue.
They have (in the case of the callers to the show as well as many who’ve written to me) learned to parrot the Poverty Pimps (far Left black civil rights activists and politicians) with unconscious alacrity and conviction.
My premise was that ethnocentrism itself is divisive and therefore deleterious to the fabric of our nation. It is also an unequivocal hypocrisy for those who allegedly hold Christian values to operate within ethnocentric parameters. Further, that afrocentrism specifically is harmful to blacks in the long-term, as is their continued political support for far Left leaders regardless of ethnicity.
These may seem familiar to you; what follow are some of the arguments with which I’ve been presented during my time as a columnist, and was so on this venue:
· The imperialist history of northern European peoples.
· The phenomenon of slavery of Africans in America (admittedly the most shameful blemish on our nation’s legacy and indeed the equivalent of a holocaust).
· The injustice of Jim Crow laws, segregation and the collective psychological humiliation associated therewith.
· The “lie” taught to American schoolchildren that although the United States was established upon lofty ideals, the entire foundation and legitimacy thereof is bogus due to the social injustices perpetrated upon blacks and indigenous people in America, which typically takes place wherever northern Europeans abide.
· The continuing “oppression” of blacks in America.
In short: But Whitey Started it!
Now, I’m not sure quite what black activists and their adherents mean in reference to the last point. When asked, responses generally range from references to the above past injustices, to propaganda indicting a faceless, monolithic “system” for perpetuating poverty and dysfunction in black communities, to outright conspiracy theories such as those which surrounded the government’s reaction to victims of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005.
Forget progress. Forget the fact that every race on the planet has engaged in ethnic oppression, slavery and genocide at one time or another and the ongoing enslavement of Africans by Africans to this day. Forget the abolition of slavery in America, the death of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal government’s war over State’s Rights, the white majority’s support for mainstreaming the black population (which seldom transpires in scenarios in which the preeminent ethnic group is opposed to such change), or the vast ongoing improvement in educational and economic opportunities for blacks. To these thoroughly brainwashed individuals, mired in the cult of resentment, victimization and entitlement, it is as if these things never occurred.
In the interview to which I referred, any reference to such progress was simply met with another of the aforementioned talking points, like movie zombies who continue to rise, ravening, regardless of how many times they are dispatched.
Afrocentrism, itself a form of racism, is acceptable because “whitey started it.” Childish? Indeed, but the rhetoric employed by far Left interests has historically gravitated toward intellectual immaturity and emotionism.
From whence will reconciliation then come? When does Dr. King’s “content of character” dream manifest, and for whom? Does this convoluted, disempowering logic mean there is no hope for true national unity in their eyes? Is no recompense sufficient? Will there never be a day when we simply call ourselves “Americans”?
The far Left will continue to promote the status quo while most Americans, aware of the facts at hand, I believe, become more color-blind with each passing year. The peril lies in ethnocentrism as an institution and these attitudes becoming mainstream; their malignant divisiveness is a thing America can ill afford, particularly at this juncture in our history.
Erik Rush
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