As the winds of prevailing opinion blow, I would seem to be
a pretty vile individual. I am a faithful Catholic which, in the
eyes of most liberals, makes me a bitter homophobe. I am a woman
who celebrates the differences and roles of men and women which,
in the feminist playbook, makes me a traitorous misogynist. And
worst of all, I have the audacity to be a white conservative and
therefore, according to the powers that be, I am a racist.
Now, in the real world where folks actually pay attention
to the meaning of the words they use and not to the baggage
attached to them by passing whims, I am none of the above. How do
I know this? Because the simple application of labels in of
themselves cannot dictate thought or behavior. Just as you can
judge a true Christian, not by any jewelry they might wear or
books they’re seen carrying, but by the way they carry
themselves, so too a real racist gives himself away by his
actions and words. True racism infects hearts and consumes them
with a hatred that cannot be hidden. And that is why we can say
that racism — at least the grand-scale type said to have
hindered minority access to the American dream — is dead in this
country; just take a look around.
Now, this hasn’t much to do with the election of our first
black president; he is but a beneficiary of a trend that might
have happened sooner had it not been for the mischief that has
been perpetrated on our nation for years by an odd alliance
between the Democratic Party and those who profit from racial
discord. They use the regrettable history of slavery in this
country as a way to foment the resentment they need to keep the
flames of hatred alive.
For years, many of us — including black conservatives who
of course have been branded as “Uncle Toms” — have been pointing
out that purveyors of class warfare use phrases like “black
robes, white justice” and “speaking truth to power,” which have
served them well, as they point out that all of their miseries
are the result of power in the hands of evil white (Republican)
men whose sole desire is to keep them in “their place.” But those
days are over. Again, take a look around.
A recent spate of political scandals involving black
politicos has engulfed the pages of some newspapers. I say
“some,” because due to the party affiliation of most of the
no-goodniks, their hijinks have, shall we say, flown under the
radar. In New York alone, a
raft of minority legislators, led by Governor
David Paterson, are in the political soup. And the plights of
black U.S. congressmen have dominated the news lately.
Rep. William Jefferson, former congressman from Louisiana,
was convicted in November on four bribery counts, three counts of
money laundering, three counts of wire fraud and one count of
racketeering, after investigators found $90,000 stashed away in
his freezer. Then there is New York’s own Charlie Rangel, whose
official charges include the non-reportage of over a million
dollars of income but whose general malfeasance was wonderfully
and graphically captured for posterity in a photo that ran on the
cover of the New York Post, where he
snoozes in the lap of luxury on the beach of his Punta Cana
Yacht Club complex in the Dominican Republic. And now, to
complete the coast-to-coast picture, it is
reported that Maxine Waters, (D-CA) will also face three
charges of House ethics violations later this year.
The key point in all this is that Rangel, Waters and
friends — Democrats accused by a Democratic Congress — won’t
have their old friend the race card to bail them out this time.
Proof of this is the advice to Rangel from President Obama who,
rather than fight for him along party and racial lines,
recommended a sort of political
euthanasia, telling an interviewer that the liberal warhorse
should end his career “with dignity.”
Am I celebrating the fact that these folks may be crooks,
liars and thieves? In a way, yes. It fulfills the dream of Martin
Luther King; that men should be judged, not by the color of their
skin, but on the content of their character. It proves what our
Founding Fathers stated in the Declaration of Independence: that
all men are created equal. There is no difference between the
races when each is given the same chance to grasp the reins of
power; a power that can easily corrupt the best of us. What a
wonderful place is America; where this is no longer true only of
evil white men.
