Calling All Crackers

As you know, “cracker” is the anti-white slur equivalent to the anti-black slur, “nigger.”  So, imagine if a white Fox News commentator said this on television:  “Those, you know, crazy niggers on the left, like, if they start with their very hateful language, that is going to kill them …”

The reverse of that virulently racist quote is precisely what MSNBC commentator Karen Finney said, on air, during a January 2013 program.  Specifically, she commented, “Those, you know, crazy crackers on the right, like, if they start with their very hateful language that is going to kill them …” 

Where to go in reacting to so vile and so irrational a comment?   Let’s start by briefly putting aside the hatefulness of the remark, and, instead, consider what it says about rationality and character.

Karen Finney decries the “hateful language” of others by volitionally choosing and using the most hateful language.  That speaks for itself.  But, perhaps you feel inclined to pardon her “unfortunate” choice of words.  She might be insufficiently accustomed to being in the public eye, or might be unaware of the power of how things are said.  Your decision about Ms. Finney’s rhetorical skill should be informed by the fact that she was the former Spokeswoman and Director of Communications at the Democratic National Committee.  That’s right, former Spokeswoman and Director of Communications at the Democratic National Committee:  Just one more example of truth being stranger than fiction.

Like our president, Ms. Finney is biracial, with a white mother and black father.  Like our president, she has a racial chip on her shoulder.  Maybe, like Barack Hussein Obama, Karen Finney personally was subject to racial slurs.  Maybe, like Barack, the slurs mostly came from persons intent on making her feel guilty and defensive about her white inheritance.  If so, her anti-white racism and irrationality is a “natural” response to the racial psychopathology inherent in American culture.  For that, we could forgive her.

To cite merely on fresh example of the anti-white bias of our American culture, consider this:  As I write today, Philadelphia Community College is hosting the 21^st Annual African American Children's Book Fair.   Of course, there is not, never has been, and never will be an Annual White American Children's Book Fair.  That kind of a Fair would be seen for what it would be:  a racist, exclusionary, anti-democratic, and anti-American perversion.