We Shall Overcome
by digby
I suspect most of you have probably already read the amusing media matters expose of the person Andrew Breitbart personally recruited to write about Shirley Sherrod. It's amazing and you have to read the whole thing to get the full picture.
It made me go look at the articles he published at Breitbart's Big Government and they are fairly amazing too. This passage made me laugh out loud:
If Sherrod fully repudiated racism, why would she smile at the times she did? Her smug smiles indicated that she clearly enjoyed having the upper hand over a white man. That’s racism. Furthermore, the reaction of the audience manifested their pleasure at how Sherrod discriminated against the white farmer. If Sherrod were not a racist, the comments from the audience and applause would have prompted her to immediately address those reactions that clearly indicated support of racial discrimination.
Imagine if a white doctor gave a speech in which he smiled while recounting how he’d done less than he could to save the life of a black patient. Imagine if the all-white audience erupted in applause and the doctor didn’t say something such as, “Now hold on just a minute—discriminating against a black patient is something you should condemn, not applaud!” Would you think that doctor wasn’t racist?...
Without Sherrod’s help, I could not imagine even thinking about taking a black patient to see a black doctor. After years of treating black patients, I continued to be amazed by how much they appreciated the way I treated them: the same as anyone else. I never expected that equal treatment was worthy of such appreciation, which led me to believe that others hadn’t treated them properly.
How do people like this get licensed to drive a car much less to practice medicine? (Of course it's entirely possible that this fellow has no license to practice medicine, considering all the frauds he's perpetrated.)
The rest of the article isn't any more coherent. He further elaborates on his color blindness here, where he again excoriates blacks for being racists. After all, he has said more than once that he knows "several blacks who, in my opinion, are smarter than John McCain and Barack Obama combined, and hence much better suited to be President." Can all those black racists admit to such open mindedness? I think not.
His belief in his own color-blindness is so thorough that he even believes it's perfectly ok to casually use racial epithets in print. After being questioned for referring to the Chinese as "the Chinks" he explains:
You seem to be a highly intelligent person yourself, so I am a bit surprised by how offended you were. Let me try to make a distinction:
From your message: ""Chinks" is a highly offensive, racist term used predominantly by non-Asian Americans to describe the Chinese . . . in a demeaning, derogatory, condescending manner."
I think highly of many Chinese -- probably you, too! :-) -- so I never intended that as a global denunciation of all Chinese people. I DID intend it as a way to verbally lambaste the Chinese who commit the atrocities I mentioned. Anyone who intentionally poisons millions of people over a period of decades deserves to be called something far harsher than "Chink," but I usually don't use profanity.
So, there's a distinction here. I was clearly referring to the "bad Chinese," not ALL Chinese. If you've written much, you know that authors often relax their standards of proper English usage in an attempt to spice up their writings and to more effectively communicate their feelings. A few weeks ago, the publisher of Forbes magazine used the word "ain't" in an editorial . . . amazing! I've heard others use more contentious language, such as the famous "N-word." Since I am probably one of the few people who truly loathes racial discrimination AND has a viable plan to help eliminate it, I do not want to contribute to the problem by using epithets that stereotype people -- but, in fairness to myself, I don't believe I did that. As I mentioned above, I think it was obvious that I had my finger pointed directly at one subset of Chinese: the ones who evidently don't give a hoot about their fellow human beings.
He goes on to point out that there are many "good Chinese" like the hard working students who don't drink and such. Then he let's fly with this:
So, when the hicks I hang around with aren't busy making moonshine or keeping up with world events by reading The National Enquirer in our outhouses, we don't bash Chinese people by calling them "Chinks" -- except when they poison us . . . again, and again, and again. It's called righteous indignation.
You can surely see that there's no racism involved at all. When he calls Chinese people "Chinks" only referring to the bad ones. I'm sure he can even personally name "several" who are just as smart as Barack Obama and John McCain combined who would make a good president. And anyone who suggests that he is anything but purely color blind is saying that he's a moonshine swilling hick who uses an outhouse. And that my friends, is the discrimination that decent white people have to contend with every day. In fact, it's institutional:
For every vestige of anti-black racism in USA at present, I could mention two ways in which whites are racially victimized by blacks or people favoring blacks, such as when I discovered years ago that black students at Michigan State University could pass courses even if they got every question wrong on every test.
I can see why Breitbart liked this fellow's writing so much that he hired him for his site. They share the same belief that the only problem with race in this country is the unfair way that majority whites are treated. And they have both dedicated themselves to ending that horrible disparity. In their minds, they are the true heirs to Martin Luther King.
.