Comment

This was left in the comments by Scott.

But I believe racism, sexism and bigotry are inherently conservative.

Discuss.

The Buck Stops… Over There

Heh.

President Obama said Secretary Tom Vilsack rushed to judgment when he dismissed Shirley Sherrod from the Department of Agriculture amid charges of racism.

Racism in Wisconsin

As we discuss the racist rant on Folkbum’s site, I reflect on my experience with racism…

I’m a child of Texans, but I spent my adolescence in Riyadh.  As a white Christian in an Arab Muslim nation, I generally felt accepted as long as we kept to our own kind, so to speak.  There were certainly places for foreigners and places where we didn’t belong.  But generally, we spent a lot of time in the homes of Muslim Arab families playing with other kids and I never felt unwelcome.  My deep impression is of welcoming, gracious people, but then again, I was always conscious that I was the visitor in their culture. 

In Texas from age 12-26 or so, it was fairly racially integrated.  Horribly racist jokes and nicknames abounded - from all sides - but people of all races were just a part of everyday life.  Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. were my friends, bosses, employees, colleagues, customers, acquaintances, etc.  I admit that the language could be rough from time to time to those of a more sensitive ear, but most people of all races I knew in Texas identified themselves first as Texans, second as Americans, and somewhere down the line as their particular race. 

Since moving to Wisconsin, I think it’s the most racially segregated and stunted area in which I’ve lived since Riyadh.  People are geographically and culturally segregated by race to an alarming extent.  It’s disturbing.  I understand that it’s much worse in other places, but it’s certainly not great here. 

I know… I’m a white guy, so I’m not allowed to opine on these things… but it’s my observation…

Bert’s Racist Rant

I’ve met Bert (who writes on Folkbum’s site).  Nice guy.  I guess I didn’t realize he was such a fervent racist, but his post seems to indicate such. 

Harris is a black with an asterisk. Like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Harris reaps personal benefits from his black status for himself by perpetrating the structural disadvantages for fellow blacks. This gets James T. paid and publicized because it is soothing to many whites to hear blacks deny those structural problems are real, or to attack those black leaders who are trying to fix them.

Harris also sounds like a phony black, trying a little too hard to speak the way suburbanites think blacks should sound, as in the quotation above when he throws out “that’s just the way I roll” or “my brother” to a fellow black.

Harris is a conservative with an asterisk. He takes the position all the way down the boilerplate of a conservative for fiduciary reasons. Harris wants pub. That’s why he was doing the video thing at WMCS, and that’s why he grandstanded for the news cameras in a phony rant during the campaign stop for McCain.

If Harris were a dog, he would walk around on two legs. If he were a woman with unusually large breasts, he would show them off in skimpy clothes. Harris sports phony conservative implants because they are unusual on a black man and thereby attract the leering attention of conservatives and their media outlet managers.

Ummm…. yeah.  OK…  So if a black man speaks or has opinions contrary to Bert’s liberal orthodoxy then he’s “black with an asterisk?”  Wow.  I was unaware that the color of one’s skin dictated a certain political view.  Now I know.