Racial Identity Double Speak Guaranteed to Confuse and A Potential Solution

On July 21, 2014, at My Brother's Keeper Town Hall meeting, the featured speaker addressed black male identity saying,

Sometimes African Americans, in communities where I’ve worked, there’s been the notion of “acting white” -- which sometimes is overstated, but there’s an element of truth to it, where, okay, if boys are reading too much, then, well, why are you doing that?  Or why are you speaking so properly?  And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.  Because there are a whole bunch of different ways for African American men to be authentic.

I had trouble following that speech, never really sure what he was attempting to communicate.  So I decided to deconstruct the essential phrases to see whether I could make any sense of them.  The phrases and my deconstruction follow:

THE SPEAKER:  “acting white” -- which sometimes is overstated­­­. 

INTERPRETATION:  Some people sometimes make too big a deal about the notion of “acting white.”

THE SPEAKER:  but there’s an element of truth to it.

INTERPRETATION:  There is something about the criticism “acting white” that is valid and proper.

THE SPEAKER:  where, okay, if boys are reading too much

INTERPRETATION:  Some black boys read too much according to the criticizer’s definition of “too much.”   And reading too much is a worrisome thing.  I naively had thought that blacks, like whites and all people, should read to succeed, but I guess I was wrong.

THE SPEAKER:  then, well, why are you doing that?

INTERPRETATION:  Blacks should question their own or others’ reading habits in order to be able to justify reading behavior to the criticizer.  Is this a thinly veiled fear of unholy thoughts reminiscent of Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2:  “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.   He thinks [reads]  too much; such men are dangerous.” 

THE SPEAKER:  Or why are you speaking so properly?

INTERPRETATION:  As with reading, speaking “so properly” might indicate some nefarious motivation.  The criticizer is not a “brotha,” not a brother's keeper, but an Orwellian Big Brother who monitors and evaluates black peoples’ thoughts, readings, and speech and decides what is and what is not proper.

THE SPEAKER:  And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.

INTERPRETATION:  Taken at face value, I fully agree with this, but it is a non-sequitur given the statements that preceded it.

THE SPEAKER:  Because there are a whole bunch of different ways for African American men to be authentic.

INTERPRETATION:  Once again, a patently obvious truth that the criticizer belies by the total context in which the statement occurs.  According to Merriam Webster, authentic means behavior that is not imitated and that is spontaneous whereas the criticizer has made himself the gatekeeper who must okay all thoughts, readings, and speech to ensure that they do not merely represent “just acting white.”

So who was the featured speaker at the My Brother's Keeper Town Hall meeting who addressed black male identity?  You guessed it: none other than Barack Hussein Obama.  How, you might ask, could so brilliant, eloquent, celebrated an orator give such a convoluted, indecipherable speech?   The answer: personal racial identity conflict.  He even has alluded many times to having had a conflicted identity in the past but he always erroneously then asserted that he managed to overcome the problem. 

To my way of thinking, Barack Obama’s July 21, 2014 muddled racial identity speech illustrates beyond a doubt that racial issues still confuse him.  Race clouds his thoughts and undermines Obama’s general leadership more than anything else because race is his perennial, conflictual preoccupation.   Unfortunately, Barack perceives racial issues almost everywhere and filters too many decisions through the colander of his racial preconceptions and biases.

Having said that, I do applaud Barack Obama for at least attempting to address the scourge of racial identity slavery.   A couple suggestions for improving the message are in order, however.  First, stop inviting to the White House foul-mouthed rappers like Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA “Common” and Cee Lo Green whose “songs” regularly including racist and misogynistic lyrics.  Second, celebrate and defend eminent black men and women who do not fully endorse each and every presidential policy, persons such as Dr. Benjamin Carson and Dr. Condoleezza Rice, two of many regularly maligned as "acting white."  Emphasize that such persons are not “acting white” when they think, read, and speak in ways authentic to them but discordant to you.  That would be a powerful statement to the effect that you truly believe “And the notion that there’s some authentic way of being black, that if you’re going to be black you have to act a certain way and wear a certain kind of clothes, that has to go.”

My final suggestion is that President Barack Obama publicize and consistently endorse the following addendum that I have written for him and that should have been included in his July 21, 2014 My Brother's Keeper Town Hall speech:

Take me for instance.  Everyone says that I’m the first black United States President, but that’s not true.  No matter what people say about me and no matter what people write about me, I am the first biracial United States President.  I had a white American mother and a black African father.  Case closed.

Now there was a time in some parts of America when any mixed race person with “one drop of black blood” was considered black.  That racist assertion was wrong, overturned in the courts and in the hearts of Americans.  Mixed race people simply are mixed race people who, like everyone else, must be judged on their own merits, not compared to somebody’s standard of what a white person, black person, or intermediate-colored person should be.      

I too expect to be judged on my own merits.  I am proud of my white side and I am proud of my black side.  I am proud of being biracial.  Let me give you a quote to contemplate: “The 2010 Census showed that people who reported multiple races grew by a larger percentage than those reporting a single race.”   That statistic represents more than a number.  It represents about six and one-half million individuals who want nothing more than to be themselves—to think, read, and speak in ways authentic to who they are.

It took me a long time to say unequivocally what I have just said.  Like so many black and white mixed race Americans, I felt I had to choose white versus black.  But there is no white versus black.  People are people.  I pray that mixed race people who hear my message will have the courage to be their authentic selves and to make no excuses for being the persons that they are.  And I hope that non-mixed-races persons will let them do that in peace.  Nobody needs to act in any particular way to be racially acceptable.  There is no “acting white,” "acting black,” or “acting mixed.”  

My February 7, 2012 Blog About the USA & Russia Is Relevant Today

In early 2009, the Obama Administration, with much giddy showboating, boasted how they were pressing a bright red “reset button” with Russia.  Although not directly condemning George Bush, they strongly implied that his mishandling of Putin et al had caused the USA to miss an alleged opportunity to develop American-Russian collaboration that would make both countries and the world better places.

From the outset, the gesture was laughable.  ABC.net documented the absurdity of the attempt on March 9, 2009 as follows:

Russian media have poked fun at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after she gave her Russian counterpart a "reset" button with an ironic misspelling.

Ms Clinton's gift to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at their meeting in Geneva on Friday evening was meant to underscore the Obama administration's readiness "to press the reset button" in ties with Moscow.

But instead of the Russian word for "reset" (perezagruzka) it featured a slightly different word, meaning "overload" or "overcharged" (peregruzka).

Daily newspaper Kommersant put a prominent picture of the fake red button on its front page and declared: "Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button."

For once the Russian media had gotten it right, laying bare the sophomoric attention-seeking antics of Obama and his not so merry men and women.  The gang thought that the red button would be perceived in our country and throughout the world as dramatically symbolizing the “I’m not George Bush” philosophy that served as the basis for Obama’s intended remake of America.  Instead, the red button fiasco presaged a wagon-train-long line of policy blunders.  Barack Obama proved one thing:  neither a president nor an administration can fashion a personality or practices that depend on not-being someone or something.  (Psychologists call that “negative identity” and it is negative in every sense of the world, the kind of identity adopted by many charlatans, crooks, and other criminals.)  

Since 2009 we have seen the results of the myopic not-George Bush governmental policies, especially as revealed in our interactions with Russia.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have empowered Vladimir Putin’s interminable anti-USA sniping and undermining.  On February 6 of this year, the Goggle search “2012 Russia condemns USA” produced 31,700, 000 results, including items illustrating negative Russian remarks and actions regarding  our country pertaining to Libya, Israel, Cuba, international law, violations, spying, and a host of others.

The Russian refusal to sanction Syria is only the latest of that country’s failure to cooperate with the USA, albeit the most inhumane one.  CNN reported that the United States, France, and the United Kingdom “were furious” with Russia for its February 5, 2012 veto.  The article noted that American Ambassador Susan Rice told their reporter, "Those that have blocked potentially the last effort to resolve this peacefully ... will have any future blood spill on their hands.  The people of Syria have yet again been abandoned by this Council and by the international community."  On February 6, Reuters quoted Rice as having used the word “disgusting” to describe Russia’s veto and its implications.

Syrian people lie dead in the streets because, having seen that Barack Obama supported the Libyans, they erroneously expected that our President would lead Russia, China, and the free world in supporting their rebellion as well.  

Susan Rice’s comments explain, then, why the Obama-Russia reset button had been colored blood red. 

Even the Brainwashers Are Brainwashed

Remember the “good old days” when racism was comprehensible.  You know, a time when white people demeaned black people and black people demeaned white ones.  That was the kind of bias that had been normative across the world since time immemorial.  Everyone—white, black, and all shades in between— “naturally” favored their own group, regarding their own people as superior to all the rest.  

Although racism always has been abhorrent on its face, in the past racial prejudice at least tended to strengthen affiliations within each racial group; racism was “honest,” loosely speaking.  In 21^st Century America, however, racist talk is mostly disingenuous manipulation intended to raise the profile of the racist speaker and to achieve his ends.  Racism always has been stupid, but contemporary racism takes stupidity to a whole new level.

Enter Harry Reid who on July 9, 2014 when speaking to reporters about the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision said,  “The one thing we are going to do during this work period, sooner rather than later, is to ensure that women’s lives are not determine by virtue of five white [emphasis added] men.”

What did race have to do with the Holly Hobby decision?  Answer: nothing.   

So why did Harry Reid interject race into his comments?   Because he was polita-speaking—double speak gerrymandering the boundaries of rationality and language to provide a sound bite intended to rally Democrats for the November 2014 election.  And nothing rallies the Democrat electorate or legislators as well as race baiting does. 

As in this case, polita-speak makes both speakers and listeners crazy, so crazy that Harry Reid forgot that one of the five male Supreme Court Justices—Clarence Thomas—is black.  You probably know that Thomas is a black man that no race mongering white or black ever forgets.  Justice Thomas is a number one target for racial slurs, most coming from black racial identity slavemasters who “Uncle Tom” him because they simply cannot tolerate an African American who doesn’t think, speak, and behave according to their racial orthodoxy norms.

Moreover, it was not Harry Reid’s first race-oriented public relations snafu.  Recall that on January 8, 2010 Reid “confessed” that during the 2008 presidential election he had referred to Barack Obama as “light skinned … with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."  The admission occurred because Reid’s comments were contained in the Mark Halperin and John Heilemann book Game Change that was being released the next week.  As expected, Reid called Barack and apologized profusely for his “poor choice of words.”   In another comical, unconsciously determined slip of the tongue, Obama responded by releasing a White House statement that said, “As far as I am concerned, the book [emphasis added] is closed."      

Regarding Reid's reference to “white men,” the term rarely is objectively descriptive in the so-called liberal progressive lexicon.  Rather, to Harry Reid and other progressives, “white men” is its own racial slur that they use mostly in polemic, political tirades.  The only greater progressive slur would be “OLD white men,” but that is an issue for another blog posting.       

The fact that Reid forgot that Justice Clarence Thomas is black illustrates that the good senator was operating on auto-think with gobbledygook flowing effortlessly from his vacuous mind.   It is noteworthy that Harry Reid, himself, actually is an elderly white man, presumably a self-hating, quasi-delusional one.

In America, demeaning remarks against white males are so hard-wired, so automatic a feature of political manipulation, that the demagogues—white and black—literally don’t even know what they are speaking about when they speak.

As Michael Jackson once sang, “It don't matter if you're black or white,” if you are a politician, you can proffer an automatic, mindless, outrageous anti-male, anti-white racist accusation at any time and expect to get away with it.  That feature of Harry Reid’s unconscious was on display in his latest fiasco and what it revealed about him and his progressive mentality was not pretty.

Barack Obama's Behind

From January to July of this year, over 52,000 unaccompanied children and 39,000 women with children have been apprehended at the south Texas border (http://dailysignal.com/).  That number, then, only summarizes those counted at one Mexico-United States border and does not begin to describe how many have crossed undetected or at other Mexico-United States borders.

Does the border crisis qualify as one that demands swift, decisive governance or is this a political issue wherein electioneering is front and center?  Should Barack Obama and his White House decide which actions will yield them the most November 2014 votes or which actions will be in the best interests of our country?  As you will read below, even Obama-loving NBC News personnel question the President’s handling of the problem and his motivations for what he has and has not done.

Consider NBCs July 2, 2014 Meet the Press exchanges between David Gregory, moderator of the show, and Chuck Todd, NBCs Chief White House Correspondent and NBC News political director, as they discuss the aforementioned issues.

Gregory:  So Chuck, from Secretary Johnson [United States Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson], I think an ambiguous [emphasis added] response to what they're going to do [emphasis added] and how exactly we got here [emphasis added].

Todd:  It's been that way.  It was that way Thursday in the White House briefing, when you could not get a straight answer out of the administration [emphasis added].  You couldn't get them to say should the President's image [emphasis added] be used to send this message in Central America, for instance.

Gregory:  Yeah.

Todd:  To send the message, "Hey, don't send your kids here, this isn't going to happen." There was ambiguity in his answer to you about is there going to be an attempt to increase-- you want the ability to increase the amount of deportations. They've been afraid to say that. And it's the politics of this, right?

Gregory:  Right.

Todd:  You know, we have immigration law conflation going on here.  This crisis is separate from the immigration issue that's been debated here in Washington.  But it's been conflated, obviously, back and forth.  And think part of the problem is you have an administration that, on one hand, has immigrant rights groups wanting them to expand some of the executive orders, including maybe Dreamers, this DACA thing, Dreamers for the Parents.  And in exchange, they know politically, in order to get away with that [emphasis added], they do have to increase--

Gregory:  Right.

Todd:  …  the deportations, but they don't want to say it.

Many Democrats, too, are frustrated with the me-first, politicize-everything President.  Obama refused to go to the Mexican border to see the illegal child immigrant problem firsthand because he believed that doing so would make him more overtly responsible for the catastrophe since his image there would be publicized in photos and news footage.  Instead, the President went to a Colorado fundraiser where he orchestrated his own photo-op showing himself having a beer* while playing pool with multi-millionaire Democrat state governor, John Hickenlooper.  In response,  Texas Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar complained: "He [Barack Obama] can get on Air Force One, be there [at the Mexican border] in a half an hour ... right after he finishes his fundraising in Texas…  One of the things he needs to do is roll up his sleeves, go down there to the border, talk to the community leaders there."       

But, of course, Obama did not go to the border as requested.  

No matter how dire the situation, the President and his policy of leading from behind is not “thoughtful reflection” as Obama lovers would have us believe.  No.  Barack Obama is mostly concerned with looking good and with milking crises for all they are worth; that is why he is so late in reacting to each and every catastrophe. 

Leading from behind is a deliberate strategy to delay, leak information about this or that approach to a crisis, wait to see how popular which approaches are with whom, and then proceed with the option that is most politically advantageous to Barack Obama’s image and political ambitions.  Regardless of the issue-Central American children flooding our borders, the slaughter of Syrian citizens, the annexation of Crimea, Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions, and so forth-Obama always has followed the maxim of his former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Barack Obama has tried to blame the Central American children crisis on the fact that the illegal immigrants are trying to escape their lethally dangerous communities.  Perhaps the President once again can call upon Rahm Emanual for guidance.  You see, Emanuel, now mayor of Barack's home town of Chicago, is uniquely qualified to advise the President about a violence crisis.  Quoting The Chicago Tribune, the July 4, 2014 weekend in Chicago unfolded as follows: 

In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park.

Five of the people were shot by police over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, including two boys 14 and 16 who were killed when they allegedly refused to drop their guns.

Many of the long weekend's shootings were on the South Side, clustered in the Englewood, Roseland, Gresham and West Pullman neighborhoods that rank among the most violent in the city.

The victims ranged from the 14-year-boy shot by police in the Old Irving Park neighborhood to a 66-year-old woman grazed in the head as she walked up the steps of her porch on the Far South Side.  Most victims were in their late teens and 20s.

Each night of the long holiday weekend, at least a dozen people were shot in the greatest burst of gun violence Chicago has seen this year.

• From Thursday night into Friday, three people were killed and 10 others wounded. An attack outside a West Englewood salon left two men dead and an East Garfield Park shooting took the life of a 21-year-old woman.

• From Friday afternoon into Saturday, 20 people were shot, one fatally. The man who died had been flashing gang signs in a parking lot in the Clearing neighborhood when someone told him to stop. When the man didn’t, he was shot, police said.

• From Saturday night into Sunday morning, four people were killed and another 10 wounded.

• The bloodiest stretch of the weekend was a 13-hour period between 2:30 p.m. Sunday and 3:30 a.m. Monday when four people were killed and at least another 26 wounded, many of them in critical condition. And the most chaotic scene was in South Chicago, where three people were wounded during a running gun battle.

Should the Central American refugee children be sent to Barack’s home town of Chicago where they will be safe?  Should Barack Obama’s leading from behind presidential approach to America and to the world be applied by United States mayors to enable them to manage our nation’s dysfunctional inner-cities as successfully as his advisor, Rahm Emanual, is managing Chicago?

*  P.S., While Barack was in the bar a patron asked if he wanted a “hit” of the patron’s marijuana cigarette.  Apparently, that patron was aware of Obama’s drug-taking history and/or of Obama’s joke last week about crack cocaine being in the White House pastry.

Like a Little Crack Cocaine in Your White House Pastry?

Most of us  have heard that on June 30, 2014 while hosting a reception celebrating Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, Barack commented about his White House pastry chef’s delectable goodies saying "I don't know what he does—whether he puts crack in them"  whereupon the crowd exploded in uproarious laughter to hear the swaggering, most excellently with-it president being  “very cool.”  Barack had so tickled the nation’s funny bone, in fact, that award-winning CNN journalist John King later gushed, “They must be pretty good though I think I want one of those pies!” to which Kate Bolduan CNN co-host of New Day chortled, “I want a piece of that pie too John that’s for sure!”

The President is just so clever that I can understand why Chris Matthews famously announced that when Barack spoke it sent shivers up his leg.  Still, I must admit that I had wondered where the “the most intelligent man ever to become president” (presidential historian Michael Beschloss, November 11, 2008) gets his material.  Now I know the obvious answer: he draws both upon his history and current perspective on life.

In Dreams from My Father Barack Obama recounted his marijuana and cocaine abuse, rationalizing that the problems issued from his conflicted racial identity.  Poor soul.  As Michael Medved (ABC News, 2005) observed, “Obama's drug confessions only add to the sense that he's a radically different sort of candidate -- and it's hard to see how the confessions will work against him.”  Medved, of course, was right on target with that.  As we have learned repeatedly, nothing seems to dampen the enthusiasm for our identity-challenged biracial president who thinks he is all black.

Surely Barack Obama’s leadership skills also account in part for his success.  David Maraniss in Barack Obama: The Story explains that the then-youthful Barry Obama was a drug-abusing innovator responsible for his Choom [choom is marijuana] Gang’s creative pot-smoking antics.  Mentioned were: “Total Absorption” (when a gang member exhaled marijuana too quickly he had to skip his next drag);   “Roof Hits” (closing all the windows in the car used for marijuana smoking to maximize the high); and “Interceptions” (Obama’s tendency to take an extra “hit” by grabbing the joint from the person next in line to smoke it himself).

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on Mr. Obama.  After all, he cares deeply about the welfare of crack users.  For many years, Barack and Attorney General Holder had been in favor of drug leniency: “Holder’s urging is the latest in the Obama administration's retrenchment on the war on drugs and crack-era mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately impacted poor minorities [emphasis added] and non-violent offenders” (Trymaine Lee MSNBC, June 10, 2014). [Note that in 2010 the Obama Administration successfully fought to reduce the disparity between prison sentences for the more dangerous and more black-abused crack cocaine versus the less dangerous and more white-abused powdered cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1 and in December, 2013 Barack pardoned eight crack-abusing federal inmates, six of whom had been sentenced to life in prison.]

As Gomer Pyle might say, “Well, surprise, surprise," Barack Obama has a race-based affection for crack cocaine because of his history and current mindset by which he confounds crack with racism.  Who would have guessed?  Perhaps Obama’s crack pastry joke is just the most intelligent president of all time wink-winking at American youth, especially poor black youth, letting them know that he understands their cravings and won’t be too hard on them since he shares the cravings too. 

A Sad But True Commentary About Intergroup Dialogue in Obama's America

SENT TO ME COURTESY OF MY FRIEND, CLINT

Two Black Superstars with Two Radically Different Racial Attitudes

On June 3, 2014 Don Lemon, black CNN newsperson (estimated net worth 3 million dollars), interviewed Morgan Freeman, black superstar (estimated net worth 150 million dollars), asking whether race plays a role in income distribution to which Freeman responded:

No. No, I don’t. You and I, we’re proof.  Why would race have anything to do with it?  Put your mind to what you want to do and go for that. It’s kind of like religion to me, it’s a good excuse [emphasis added] for not getting there.

Black commentator Jamelle Bouie of slate.com responded in a flash with “What Morgan Freeman Doesn’t Understand About Race,” dismissing the actor as a person who has “played the omnipotent old man for so long” but who has “a dubious view of income equality.”  Notice that Bouie managed to insert the term “old” to emphasize that Freeman’s opinions have no credibility.

Perhaps Bouie prefers another esteemed black actor and reputed former Black Panther acolyte, Samuel L. Jackson (estimated net worth 170 million dollars).  Jackson’s racial attitudes are recorded for all to see and hear in Todd Larkin’s video documentary entitled, The N Word wherein he said

I have to let people know that … I’m an actor, I’m a nice guy, and there are a lot of things that we can get along with. But the first thing you need to know about me is … I’m a nigger.  And they look at me like, what?  And I go.  I’m not just, you know, a really nice colored fella.  I’m a nigger.  And they go, “What?  Sam, I really don’t understand”

I’m one of those guys you really, really, really don’t want to mess with.  So… I’ve done things that, you know, people go to prison for, I guess, or, I’m really, you know, not gonna just punch you in the face.  I’m going to do some niggerly shit to you  [Big laugh].

Never have I found anyone—white, black, or any shade in between—who has criticized Samuel L. Jackson's remarks.  You see, Jackson’s attitude and rant are fully in accord with the “politics” of racial intimidation and racial division.  If Jackson were white, minutes after release of the N Word documentary there would have been outrage so massive that Sweet Sam never would have worked again.

Next time you have the chance to view a video or visit a theater featuring Morgan Freeman or Samuel L. Jackson whom will you choose?  You can be sure that Jackson will be happy to take advantage of your business and your money before he does some “niggerly shit to you.”  Freeman, on the other hand, truly is a free man---free of racial animosity and possessing the personal courage to speak his mind without fearing reprisal from the racial identity thought police.  Morgan Freeman deserves my support and yours.     

                                          (Estimated salaries were obtained from celebritynetworth.com)

The Racial Shame of 21st Century America: Slavery of the Mind

Most of us have heard about Ben Carson Sr., a 64 year-old black physician who first achieved national prominence in 1987 by being principal neurosurgeon of the first medical team to successfully separate Siamese twins joined at the skull.  Fast forward to February 7, 2013, at which time Dr. Carson, keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast and positioned on a dais with Barack Obama, says

We’ve already started down the path to solving one of the other big problems, health care. We need to have good health care for everybody. It’s the most important thing that a person can have. Money means nothing, titles mean nothing when you don’t have your health, but we’ve got to figure out efficient ways to do it. We spend a lot of money on health care, twice as much per capita as anybody in else in the world, and yet not very efficient. What can we do?

Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record and a health savings account [HSA], to which money can be contributed, pre-tax from the time you are born, to the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members so that when you’re 85 years old and you’ve got 6 diseases, you’re not trying to spend up everything. You’re happy to pass it on and nobody is talking about death panels. That’s number one. Also –

For the people who are indigent, who don’t have any money, we can make contributions to their HSA each month because we already have this huge pot of money instead of sending it to bureaucracy – let’s put it into HSAs. Now they have some control over their own health care and what do you think they’re going to do? They’re going to learn very quickly how to be responsible. When Mr. Jones gets that diabetic foot ulcer, he’s not going to the Emergency Room and blowing a big chunk of it. He’s going to go to the Clinic. He learns that very quickly – gets the same treatment. In the Emergency Room they send him out. In the Clinic they say, now let’s get your diabetes under control so that you’re not back here in three weeks with another problem. That’s how we begin to solve these kinds of problems. It’s much more complex than that, and I don’t have time to go into it all, but we can do all these things because we are smart people.

What do you think?  Does the speech offend your sensibilities?  Well, you obviously are not a United States President.  Dr. Carson wrote that “… within a matter of minutes after the conclusion of the program, I received a call from some of the prayer breakfast organizers saying that theWhite House was upset and requesting that I call the president and apologize for offending him. I said that I did not think that he was offended and that I didn’t think that such a call was warranted.” 

“The White House was upset.”  Hell, I didn’t know a house, even a White House, could be upset.  I thought only a person could be upset.  Maybe Ben should apologize to the House.  Doesn’t the President’s complaining representative have the integrity and temerity simply to say that Obama, himself, was mad?  

The White House representative was playing “silence the opposition while ensuring that the President is not implicated in the silencing” game.  Nothing ruffles Barack and his race mongering friends more than having a black man speak his mind in a public forum when his remarks are at odds with racial orthodoxy—a racial orthodoxy that, among other things, demands that black men unwaveringly support or make excuses about anything that the half-black, child of white privilege President who pretends to be all black says.

On the other hand, Carson, all-black and presumably proud of it, who was raised by a black mother in an impoverished black neighborhood and who fought tooth and nail for everything that he has accomplished, is maligned for speaking his heart.  For instance, in “Ben Carson Was a Role Model for Black Teens Until He Sold Out to the Right” Joshua Dubois (U.S. NEWS  March 16, 2014) cites the doctor’s National Prayer Breakfast speech and then concludes, “For us, Dr. Ben Carson's story has become an American tragedy. We can only pray that he reclaims his narrative in a way that still will offer others hope.”  Just one race-based slip of the tongue and an esteemed man becomes a derided one.

A somewhat related situation occurred after white Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in an interview at Inc. magazine’s convention (May 23, 2014) stated, “I know I'm prejudiced, and I know I'm bigoted in a lot of different ways… “If I see a black kid in a hoodie on my side of the street, I'll move to the other side of the street. If I see a white guy with a shaved head and tattoos (on the side he now is on), I'll move back to the other side of the street. None of us have pure thoughts; we all live in glass houses."  [see "Niggas vs. Black People, " a famous Chris Rock  stand-up comedy routine whose remarks were very similar to Cuban’s.]

When Mark Cuban suffered inevitable character assassination for an honest race-oriented, politically incorrect statement, Stephen A. Smith, a black sports commentator, sprang to his defense: “We want to pounce on him making this statement and alluding that black folks are talking about somebody in a hoodie that happens to be black… He talked about the prejudices that exist in all spectrums by all of us. Are we going to sit here and literally act like we don’t have any prejudices?” 

What next?  You guessed it.  Smith told ESPN’s “First Take” that after his Mark Cuban-supportive remarks had percolated through the communities he started hearing: “Stephen A. Smith is a sellout; Stephen A. Smith is an Uncle Tom; Stephen A. Smith ain’t black; You ain’t one of us.”  The courageous Smith then added: “But when I say I don’t give a damn, I can’t even emphasize, that does it no justice. I don’t care who in the black community disagrees with me. I’m not interested in their disagreement on this particular issue because they are not looking at the bigger picture.”

So there you have it.  The most extraordinary racial shame of America is the shunning and slandering that black people suffer whenever they say something from the heart that is at odds with race-based orthodoxy.  As the United Negro College Fund advised us beginning in 1972, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."  To that I add: There is no greater slavery than slavery of the mind.

"What numbskull in the White House arranged this?"

How many numbskulls does it take to change a light bulb in the Whitehouse?  The answer: at least two and one always is the President.

Does anyone believe that a person allegedly as “brilliant” as Barack Obama would mindlessly accept a speaking engagement handed to him by a scheduler?  Robert Reich wants us to believe just that. 

In case you forgot, Reich is listed in wickipedia.org as current Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of the University of California, Berkeley and political commentator on television’s Hardball with Chris Matthews and This Week with George Stephanopoulos to name merely two.  He also is said to have been a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Brandeis University.  In addition, Robert has been an editor for The New Republic, Harvard Business Review, New York Times, and Atlantic magazines.  Finally, Reich served in the presidential administrations of Presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton.

The highly educated and accomplished Reich raised the numbskull issue when opposing the decision to have Barack Obama speak at a Mountain View, California Walmart, asking "What numbskull in the White House arranged this?”.  In doing so, Robert Reich was supporting organized labor who despises Walmart for their worker policies, but he could not be honest enough to blame Obama for the decision.

Now I’m no Robert Reich but I Googled “labor opposes Walmart” today and found 271,000 citations, the first of which was dated 2005.  I then performed the same search of “Robert Reich defends Obama” and got 2,940,000 hits.

I conclude that even Barack Obama should know how organized labor has felt about Walmart.  I further believe that Robert Reich, like most so-called Liberal intellectuals, is not liberal-minded but narrow-minded in his thinking about the President.  The intelligentsia check their IQs at the White House door.  They do not see Obama for who he is or what he does.  They wallow in and promote their fantasies about the Great and Powerful Oz.

Educated and accomplished Liberals never will help America if they remain irrevocably blinded by their biases. They are more interested in defending Obama, right or wrong, than in acknowledging simple truths. Given his double speak proficiency then, I strongly suspect that Robert Reich, like his elitist White House comrades, must have graduated magna cum laude from Numbskull University.

  

Executing a Racial Agenda

Never one to miss an opportunity to interject divisive race talk into a discussion, on May 2, 2014 during a press conference with Angela Merkel, Barack Obama commented on the so-called “botched” execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett saying

… in the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems — racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, you know, situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to have been innocent because of exculpatory evidence. And all these, I think, do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied. And this situation in Oklahoma I think just highlights some of the significant problems there.

So I’ll be discussing with Eric Holder and others, you know — you know, to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken, not just in this particular instance, but more broadly in this area. I think we do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions around these issues.

Since Obama made “racial bias” his keystone issue, let’s think about the role of race concerning Clayton Lockett’s crime.  Race was a factor in that Lockett was black and Stephanie Neiman, his murdered victim, was white but, of course, black on white violence never qualifies as a race crime, at least not to Barack Obamas of the world.  We also can consider the “brutality” of the botched execution.  According to eye witnesses, Lockett’s foot kicked, his body bucked, his head rolled side-to-side, and his teeth clenched.  He died of an apparent heart attack [the single most common cause of death in the United States] after one of his veins “blew.”

As is always true with executions, there were witnesses present, 12 including one of Lockett’s lawyers.  Does this sound like the kind of situation wherein someone deliberately would  try to torture the convicted murderer?      

What about Clayton Lockett’s murder victim, Stephanie Neiman? According to Mike Hashimoto of dallasnews.com,

On June 3, 1999, Stephanie was driving a friend home in her Chevy pickup and had the misfortune of arriving when three men were there, supposedly attempting to beat a debt out of Bobby Bornt, 23, who lived there with his 9-month-old son.

One man hit Stephanie’s friend with a shotgun and forced her to call Stephanie inside. The men then raped the friend and beat Stephanie, when she refused to give up her truck keys. They bound her with duct tape and drove her to a country road.

Still, she refused to say she wouldn’t call the police on them, so they forced her to her knees and made her watch one gunman dig a grave. When one man shot her, his gun jammed, while Stephanie screamed. The man cleared his weapon and shot her again.

Even though she was still breathing, the man ordered his accomplices to bury her, which they did.

It’s not clear whether it took 43 minutes more for her to die, and we can’t ask her now if she suffered.

Was it torture to bury someone alive?  Is that worse that waterboarding a terrorist?

Barack Obama can excuse his administration for “botching” the security of the Libyan embassy that resulted in the deaths of four Americans.  He also can excuse the fact that his people failed to launch a rescue attempt.  No one was culpable in Benghazi since race was not an issue.  No one lost his/her job.  Victoria Nuland, State Department spokesperson during Benghazi, actually was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and is credited with having a February 2014 diplomatic phone conversation at which time she said, “Fuck the EU.”

If Clayton Lockett had been white, Obama would not have had his keystone racial issue to motivate his desire for an investigation.  He would not have said a single word about the execution.  In fact, Barack even admitted during the aforementioned press conference that in some crimes the “death penalty may be appropriate.”  So this is not really about the death penalty, it simply is about race and political partisanship. 

You see the President in particular and the Democrats in general are panicking about the upcoming general election.  They are apoplectic about possibly losing the Senate.  Take a close look at their rhetoric and you will see that they are trying to “energize their voting base” and nothing does that as well as race talk, no matter how damaging it is to the welfare of America as a whole.   

Does the United States Attorney General Like Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches?

I am curious.  Do you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?  Please forgive this racially insensitive question but I really want to know.

Yes, peanut butter and jelly questions are racially insensitive according to Verenice Gutierrez, principal of the Harvey Scott School of Portland, Oregon who asserted that asking my question is an example of racism in language.   Verenice argues: “What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?  Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

Apparently, Ms. Gutierrez is referring to Somali or Hispanic students living in and being schooled in America.  She no doubt believes that these “culturally different” children are so out of touch with the broader society that they could not possibly have had the “opportunity” to consume a sandwich, let alone a peanut butter and jelly one.  Perhaps due to “extreme poverty” they do not know that such “gourmet” foodstuff exists.

Like so many of her intellectual persuasion, the principal feels compelled to school dumb white Americans about their pervasive overt or covert racist attitudes.  She believes it is her solemn duty to teach us what to think, say, not think and not say.

When it comes to forbidding personally-defined racially insensitive language then, Ms. Verenice Gutierrez is in accord with Attorney General Eric Holder.  For example, on April 8, 2014 Holder in a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder challenged Representative Louis Gohmert’s question about the Attorney General’s recent contempt of Congress citation  by snarling, “You don’t want to go there, buddy! You don’t want to go there, OK?” You see, a few seconds earlier, Holder had declined Gohmert’s requests for documents relating to congressional investigations and  Gohmert had replied, “I realize that contempt is not a big deal to our Attorney General, but it is important that we have proper oversight.”

So where is the racially insensitive peanut butter and jelly connection?

To answer that question, we must turn our attention to Eric Holder’s next day, April 9, 2014, speech before a black lobby group called National Action Network where he told the presumably all-black audience:

The last five years have been defined by significant strides and by lasting reforms even in the face, even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity.  If you don’t believe that, you look at the way — forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee — has nothing to do with me, forget that. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?

So, speaking about himself in the third person (“the attorney general of the United States”), his Eminence was suggesting that criticism of him and Obama is really criticism of black people in general.  He could not possibly imagine that his or Barack’s policies ever seriously could be challenged on their own merits or lack thereof.   Maybe he and we should contemplate related questions: “What attorney general ever has been able to deflect all personal criticism by hiding behind a shield of racial invulnerability? What president ever has been able to do so?” 

Holder is trying the oldest trick in the racial manipulation playbook.  He does not want us to think about or talk about him because then his personal responsibility could be called into question.  No. the “black” attorney general wants us to think and talk only about race.  If he can make the discussion about race and race alone, a pro-black army of racial warriors—like those from the National Action Network—will spring to his defense and Eric can skip off to the golf course while everyone else fights his battle.

Racial double standards, double speak, and double binds will end when white, black, and intermediate-colored individuals are free enough to ask each other questions without anticipating a race-based over-reaction.  Then and only then will I be able to ask Eric Himpton Holder, “Do you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?”   

Ukraine Prays and Obama Plays

During the 2004 United States Presidential Campaign, the giddy, sycophantic press delighted in boasting how cool, calm, and intelligent Barack Obama was.   The object of their affection certainly agreed.  In The Promise, award-winning author, reporter, columnist and television analyst Jonathan Alter wrote that in the summer of 2007, when speaking to David Axelrod, the great and powerful Barack boasted about his presidential qualifications: “The weird thing is, I know I can do this job.  I like dealing with complicated issues.  I’m happy to make decisions.  I’m looking forward to it.  I think it’s going to be an easier adjustment for me than the campaign.  Much easier.”

Convinced of his superior capabilities then, Barack Obama apparently has not felt especially burdened by demands of the job. Consider how the President has handled the Ukrainian crisis:

March 6, 2014

The Supreme Council of Crimea votes unanimously to join the Russian Federation and to accelerate their referendum to March 16.

March 7, 2014

Barack Obama leaves the Whitehouse for a golf weekend in Florida.  The Daily Mail observed that "He checked his family into the Ocean Reef Club, a private, by-invitation-only membership club that is more of a gated, self-contained community sprawled across 2,500 acres on the northern edge of Key Largo. The property has two championship golf courses. There's also a swimming lagoon, tennis courts, a spa and fitness center, shopping and more than a dozen restaurants among the club's varied offerings.  Accommodation costs up to $2,500 per night.”

March 18, 2014

A Simferopol military base is stormed by Russians or their sympathizers and a Ukrainian soldier is killed. The Ukrainian premier asserts that his beleaguered nation now is under armed assault. 

March 18, 2014

Barack Obama appears with Andy Katz on ESPN where he is interviewed about his predictions for the NCAA basketball finals.  This amounts to picking the winners of 63 games and, therefore, requires a most significant investment of time and energy, especially if someone, let's say a President of the United States, doesn't want to be embarrassed by selecting some obvious losers.

Rather than stress too much over Ukraine, then, Barack Obama goes golfing in Florida and high-fiving with like-minded "hoops" lovers on ESPN; all the while, the Kiev government searches desperately for support against Russian storm troopers massing on Ukraine’s borders.

Please note that on November 30, 2013 in a post entitled Barack Vladimir Putin Obama: To Change America, I wrote the following:

Recall the infamous March 26, 2012 “open-mike” clandestine muttering in Seoul, South Korea, between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as they met to discuss critical, sensitive U.S.-Russian relations.

Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space.

Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Barack without a teleprompter.  Barack just being Barack, the real Barack, a man who, like Vladimir, regards elections as a hindrance to his unfettered power exploitation.

In addition to exposing Barack Obama’s disrespect for electoral limits on his power, consider what else that interchange communicated to Vladimir Putin.  It told Putin that Obama could not deal face-to-face, man-to-man with Vladimir, the real Russian decision maker, but had to communicate through a second-rate intermediary.  It told Putin that Obama is duplicitous, always trumpeting about democracy but secretly loving autocracy when autocracy means making unilateral decisions that ensure he will get his own way.  It told Putin that Obama loves clandestine, shadowy deals and fears openness and sunlight.  Most important for Ukraine, the open-mike documented Obama's eagerness to avoid conflict in order to appease the Russian Bear.

The Guardian in their September 17, 2009 in article entitled, "Obama abandons missile defence shield in Europe" underscored Barack's willingness to forsake allies and his reluctance to assertively handle Russia:

Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe that had long soured relations with Russia....A few weeks ago, in a cri de coeur to Washington, several senior eastern European officials and public figures wrote a public letter to Obama complaining that their security interests were being ignored by the west to improve relations with Moscow.... Russian experts said Obama's decision could only be seen as an unambiguous concession to Moscow, adding that it would severely disappoint the new Nato countries of Eastern Europe.

You can bet that Vladimir's and Barack's emissaries are squirreled away in some hidden enclave right now, looking for a face-saving way that enables Obama to give Putin what he wants while maintaining a pretense of having gotten something in return.  I pray that Europe will refuse to accept a half-measure, a sham solution, which permits Russia’s rape of Crimea to be a prelude to raping all of Ukraine later.

Five White Girls Brutally Attack a Black Couple in Philadelphia

On March 25, 2014, five white girls were arrested and charged with assaulting a 19-year-old black Temple University student and her boyfriend as they peacefully walked along the avenue.   When the young man tried to repel the attack, one of the girls struck the black woman in the face with a brick so violently that she subsequently needed surgery.  The girls then ran away.   

Oh.  Sorry.  I got that wrong.  The attackers were black and the victims were white.  Of course, none of the news accounts that I read mentioned those racial realities, despite clear evidence in the surveillance video.  Had blacks actually been the victims and whites the attackers, you can be sure that race would have been trumpeted all over the media, followed by outrage, and protest marches.   

Sam Newhouse, reporter at www.metro.us/philadelphia, suggested that the same attackers are being investigated for two other neighborhood assaults in which young female college students were punched in the face.  Once again, the race of the victims was not disclosed, but you can bet that they are white.   Newhouse mentioned that “Temple sent out an email Monday, warning students to avoid isolated areas and to keep aware of their surroundings.”   

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I have discussed black-on-white racial violence many times.  So why did I bother to mention the most recent “routine” inter-racial attack?  It is because the very same day that I saw the brick attack piece I read a psychology journal article entitled, “Reducing Implicit Racial Preferences: I. A Comparative Investigation of 17 Interventions.”   

The article described a “research contest” [I am not joking, a research contest] comparing various strategies for reducing “implicit racial prejudice,” another subject addressed by me in this blog.  As I have explained previously, implicit racial prejudice is racial bias located in a person's unconscious with researchers deciding who is biased and, often, why.

Guess what.  The “study” [and I use that term very loosely] only scrutinized the unconscious prejudice of whites toward blacks rather than looking at prejudice in both races.  Why?  Because this study and the hundreds, if not thousands of others like it, is not science; it is racial manipulation.  [See my blog post "Experts in Self-Serving Racial Manipulation"]  The investigators have an anti-white opinion that they are hell-bent on proving.  And, as you know, if you design a study to prove a point and play with the data long enough, you will “discover” exactly what you wanted to discover in the first place.

Now for the punch line, if you’ll pardon the expression.  The authors write that “21 of 27 successful attempts at reducing implicit preferences linked positivity with Black people and negativity with White people… For example, participants in the Vivid Counterstereotypic Scenario [4] imagined being assaulted by a White man and rescued by a Black man.” 

Wading through the psychobabble, this means that when an individual views a fanciful scenario with blacks as heroes and whites as villians, he is less likely to have what the researcher believes is UNCONSCIOUS prejudice against blacks.   The lesson for the race mongers is clear: relentlessly barrage white people with racial propaganda that simultaneously depicts virtuous black people and wicked whites ones; ignore any black wickedness and any white virtue; do this long enough and a brave new world of racial harmony inevitably will result.

So, while real white people are being attacked in the streets by real black people, your tax dollars are going to educate and fund the research of persons who are trying to make white people feel guilty about their supposed unconscious bias against blacks.  There is virtually no attempt to determine the extent to which blacks contribute to real, overt physical racial aggression.  And there is no effort to bring the races together to honestly look at the negative attitudes both of whites toward blacks AND of blacks toward whites in order to find effective ways to reduce them.