For some black people being black has become a built-in excuse for any and all personal failings or character deficits, and every now and then they will actually articulate this shibboleth by reflexively stating point-blank, "You just don't like me 'cause I'm black!" Many of you out there have probably heard this phrase or a reasonable facsimile thereof pass through the lips of a black person you know, or if black, you might have even uttered it yourself at some point. Cheaply indulging in this type of self-aggrandizing avoidance of personal responsibility by selfishly using accusations of racism as cover for one's own bad behavior or lackluster performance trivializes genuine cases of racism while hastening the decay of race-relations in this country, and because of liberal influence they're in pretty sad shape as it is! It would be bad enough if this reaction to opposition, failure, or inconvenience only affected the individuals directly involved. However, sometimes that attitude impacts others around the principle participants as well as society at large.

A shining instance of just such a larger effect stemming from such a petty rationalization occurred recently when Cambridge, Massachusetts police received a report of a possible break-in at a local home on July 16, 2009. A neighbor called 911 to say that she'd seen two men trying to open the front door of a house belonging to Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University professor, and it so happened that a white policeman, Sgt. James Crowley, was the first to arrive at the scene (A black officer, Sgt. Leon Lashley, was also subsequently present). Accounts vary, but most of the facts are not in dispute. Gates had returned from a trip to China and discovered he could not open his front door, so he and his driver forced it. When Sgt. Crowley appeared, he asked Gates to step outside and Gates refused. As Crowley explained who he was and that he was investigating a possible burglary, Gates came to the door and asked, "Why, because I'm a black man in America?"

Rather than cooperating with Crowley's request for photo identification in order to verify that the residence indeed belonged to Gates, Gates called someone on the phone to inform them he was "dealing with a racist police officer" and then told Crowley he had no idea who he was "messing with". Gates eventually provided Crowley with his Harvard University ID card, and while Crowley attempted to radio in with his information, Gates persisted in loudly haranguing him (911 recordings document this). He ignored Crowley's answer to his repeated demands for the officer's name and badge number, continuing to holler his accusations of racism and warnings "that he wasn't someone to mess with." Because his transmissions couldn't be completed due to the noise, Crowley informed Gates that he was leaving the residence but that if he wanted to continue the discussion he could follow him outside. Gates continued to yell as he did so, replying, "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside." He ignored repeated warnings from Crowley that he was being disorderly by making such an uproar in public and so Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct, for which the charges were soon dropped.

As if this doesn't already sound enough like a clear-cut case of hubris mixed with shouts of racial victimhood on the part of Professor Gates causing the ensuing problem for himself where there needn't have been any, a little more analysis of certain facts might help. Crowley has taught a class at the Lowell Police Academy on how to avoid racially profiling since he was appointed to that position by a black police commissioner in 1994, and has a long record of fair and unbiased service. The black officer present at Gates's arrest, Sgt. Leon Lashley, supported Sgt. Crowley's actions "100 percent." Given Gates immediate reaction in this situation, who could say with a straight face that Gates wouldn't have pleaded racism if Crowley'd failed to investigate what might have turned out to be a genuine burglary at his place? Race had nothing to do with this whole business until Gates insisted it did. Any reasonable person would have shown Crowley his identification and thanked him for looking out for his property. This molehill officially became a national mountain when President Obama stuck his nose into the conflict.

On July 22, 2009, Obama was asked about the arrest during a news conference. He said, "Now, I've – I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact." It's also a fact that blacks and Hispanics (Notice I'm purposely avoiding the "politically-correct" designations) commit a disproportionate number of crimes compared to their percentage of the general population, but that's beside the point. The point is that Obama took sides while admittedly not knowing all the particulars, automatically presuming racism on the part of the police. A couple days later he issued a non-apology, saying, "I want to make clear that in my choice of words I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically — and I could have calibrated those words differently...I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well."

Obama also indicated his hope that by meddling in the matter it "ends up being what's called a teachable moment" and invited Gates and Crowley to the White House to discuss the difficulty over a beer. The incident had nothing to do with racial profiling but during the infamous "beer summit" Gates and Crowley agreed to work together to raise awareness about it. We already endured a national dialogue on that issue about fifteen years ago yet it looks like we're in for another round. The only thing learned from this "teachable moment" is that Barack Obama is not quite as "post-racial" as we were led to believe and that some people are still intent on looking for racists behind every tree.

Whether or not Barack Obama ever utters the exact words himself or not, his presidency has already become the greatest "You just don't like me 'cause I'm black" moment in history by proxy. During the race for the presidential election of '08 the groundwork was put in place by Obama's supporters, including his sycophants in the mainstream media, for the use of this excuse whether he won the race or not, and indeed they worked overtime to shame any fence-straddlers wallowing in the throes of white-guilt pangs into voting for him with insinuations that to not do so amounted to an act of racism. Amid the plethora of media soul-searching pieces speculating as to whether racism would prevent him from winning the election, Congressman John Murtha did his part by stating flat-out that his constituents were a racist bunch and that if Obama didn't win Pennsylvania that would be why. Of course no one mentioned how voting for Obama precisely because he's black, as many admittedly did, would constitute a case of clear-cut racism.

The Clintons and their camp played the race card against Obama during the Democrat's primary, but during the general election Obama played the race card himself by preemptively setting up a straw man attack accusing the McCain camp of doing so. At a Jacksonville, Florida campaign event he said, "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid. They're going to try to make you afraid of me. (laughter) They're gonna.... They're going to say, "You know what, he's -- he's -- he's young, inexperienced, and, uh, uh, he's got a funny name. Did I mention he's black? (cheers and applause) (Obama laughs) He's got a feisty wife." It mattered not that McCain and those on his side scrupulously avoided any mention of Barack's color throughout the campaign because they were tarred with that brush anyway.

Regardless of who voted for him or why, Obama won with 53% of the popular vote but yet some still insist on considering America a racist nation. Somewhere along the line a news-crew dragged some deranged, buck-toothed moron wearing a swastika flag for a diaper out of his cabin at his militia-of-one compound who threatened to "shoot th' black sumbitch if'n he gets elected" as proof of that!

After Obama was elected president, Rush Limbaugh made headlines by stating "I want him (Obama) to fail." Although he qualified this by specifying that if Obama was intent on using various so-called crises to increase the size and scope of government in the manner of FDR's fascist/socialist New Deal (pointing to Obama's budget-busting stimulus package and desire to nationalize health care) he, as a heart-felt conservative, wants the president to fail in the implementation thereof, the knee-jerk reaction of many to his comment was to insinuate racism on his part. One need only to scan the "comments" section following nearly every online article or blog reporting on this statement to see a plethora of outright declarations to that effect, particularly on sites such as Democratic Underground and Huffington Post (Many who expressed the same sentiment wishing failure upon George W. Bush's presidency were also characterizing Rush as a treasonous traitor for it).

Since then, Matthews' entire television cable channel has devoted itself to the promotion of the notion that any and all political disagreement with Barack Obama's policy positions is tantamount to racism! On the April 16, 2009 airing of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Oberman", Janeane Garofalo commented on the Tax Day Tea Party protests from the day before:

"It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they'll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become -- it's like showing Frankenstein's monster fire. They become confused, and angry and highly volatile. That guy, causing them feelings they don't know, because their limbic brain, we've discussed this before, the limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist, the limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it's pushing against the frontal lobe. So their synapses are misfiring."

With Keith's encouragement as he grunted his agreement, she continued her neurological diagnosis:

"It's almost pathological or elevated to a philosophy or lifestyle. And again, this is about racism. It could be any issue, any port in the storm. These guys hate that a black guy is in the White House...the conservative movement has now crystallized into the white power movement...the Republican Party now depends upon immigrant bashing and hating the black guy in the White House."

It matters not that much of the opposition to the stimulus package and nationalized health care comes from folks all across the political spectrum, or that they held their opinions long before Obama was inaugurated into office. During the Bush administration even violent protests conducted by the left and acts of Bush-bashing (including those comparing Bush to Hitler because he went to war against Saddam Hussein who actually did gas and torture his own people) were expected to be praised as the highest expression of patriotism, but now any dissent from the right is supposedly proof-positive of innate racism amongst conservatives.

Maybe it's the "thrill going up [his] leg" when hearing Obama speak that's keeping Chris Matthews from thinking straight, but lately he's been promoting what one may call a counter-conspiracy conspiracy theory in that vein that just boggles the mind. See if you can follow this as I endeavor to connect Chris's convoluted trail of dots (many of which are missing): For starters, prior to Obama's eventual election a conspiracy theory surfaced speculating that he may not have been born on U.S. soil, a constitutional requirement for holding the office of president. Law suits were filed demanding that he produce his birth certificate, and of course many e-mails circulated widely on the subject. Some folks continue to cling to a slim hope that information will come to light indicating his birth-certificate is a forgery and that he was really born in Kenya. Those holding to this delusion have been dubbed "birthers" in some quarters. Now, in Chris Matthews' mind their belief is due to a discomfort with having a person of color as president, however it seems obvious that most of them are otherwise perfectly well-intentioned people merely desperate to find a loophole that would allow them to escape the sweeping liberalism of Obama's presidency and policies on a technicality.

At any rate, Matthews proceeds to tie all protesters against health care reform together with the "birthers" using some invisible thread, making the leap in logic to conclude that all the uproar exhibited at various "town hall" meetings over Obama's move toward universal health care is exclusively driven by the supposed racism of a bunch of nuts. Since liberal thinking dictates that only lunatics and/or evil people could possibly oppose the "compassionate" ends of an all-encompassing single-payer system sought through socialist means, the "racist" fringe, the mainstream conservatives, and lobbyists representing special interests (Please disregard the special interest groups supporting Obamacare) are now magically united as one, the bigoted group-mind incarnate in each and every vocal protester. When town hall attendees are angrily yelling at their representatives and senators for trying to place a sixth of the US economy under government control, they're really yelling at our president in hatred just because he's black, and voila, everybody may now a priori discount anything else the aggrieved "racists" may have to say on this or any other topic from hence forward! They have effectively been thoroughly demonized.

Here is a partial transcript of a segment on Hardball (featuring Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell and Wall Street Journal writer Stephen Moore) wherein Matthews posits his counter-conspiracy conspiracy theory in a nutshell (where it belongs)...The segment began with a video clip from a town hall meeting featuring someone asking Arlen Specter, "Would you go back to Washington and represent us first as an American and tell Mr. Obama he's an American, and if not, there's other countries?" Matthews assumed that "this guy's questioning the president's birth in America", but more likely he was simply questioning his patriotism (You know: "America-Love it or leave it!):

(END VIDEO CLIP)

And you're telling me these people just have-just have idle thoughts: Well, he may not be born here.

I suppose Stephen Moore commended himself fairly well, considering Matthews and stereotypical movieland gangster, er-I mean Governor, Ed Rendell were double-teaming him on the same warped court. To his credit, he maintained his composure and civility, whereas if it were me I would have most likely helped Matthews make his case that opponents of Obamacare are deranged by slapping his smug, snotty, arrogant-looking face until he apologized for being such an insulting jerk or passed out!

Black New York Governor David Paterson's approval ratings have dropped to as low as 18% during his time in office, and because of his abysmal popularity numbers, labor union groups and others have been pressuring him to drop out of next year's election fearing harm to his party's success statewide. He's been lampooned on Saturday Night Live, and his loose administrative style has been described as "jazz government". Many of his critics are black politicians from his own party. When Rev. Al Sharpton appeared on "Inside City Hall", a show on local cable news station NY1 hosted by black anchor, Dominic Carter, a report that Paterson had been seen partying late at Taj, a Manhattan nightclub, on the eve of announcements about difficult budget decisions was discussed.

Paterson was asked about Sharpton's appearance on Carter's show during an interview with Errol Lewis on liberal talk-show radio station WWRL. He must have been watching MSNBC taking notes, because he complained that criticisms of his administration are driven by racism and a white-dominated media. As evidence, he mentioned white New York Post editor Fredric Dicker by name, accusing him of attacking the governor "every single week". He said that, "We're not in the post-racial period," and that his "feeling is it's being orchestrated, it's a game, and people who pay attention know that." He also said that, "We don't have the kind of forces in the community that we had before, in other words, our black media outlets," and that, "Even our own reporters from our own community buy the public line, which is, 'We're going to get rid of David Paterson.'" Of Carter he claimed, "I know he likes to ingratiate himself with folks, trying to beat up on elected officials from our community." Apparently, along with whites, it's also black people who just don't like Governor Paterson because he's black!

He further likened his situation to that of Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts (currently the only other black governor in the U.S.), then continued to state, "The next victim on the list, and you see it coming, is President Barack Obama, who did nothing more than try to reform a health-care system...only because he's trying to make change." Hours after Paterson's rant aired, Patrick Gaspard, a White House director with close ties to the New York political scene, called the governor's deputy secretary to ask "why (the governor) was dragging the president into" his troubles. Since Obama's White House has no problem with playing the race card as a strategy or allowing many others to do so on their behalf, it should be obvious that what actually angered them in Paterson's case was that his own crashing political fortunes might tarnish Obama's by association.

Shortly after this, Paterson tried to clarify his remarks with a non-apology but only confused the issue more by declaring, "At no point did I claim that this media piling-on effect was due to race. What I did point out was that certain media outlets have engaged in coverage that exploits racial stereotypes." Huh? He wasn't saying the ubiquitous negative coverage was generated by racism but instead much of it was racist in content?! Stupidity transcends all racial boundaries...No wonder this guy's performance ratings are in the toilet!

Since then an incident occurred that brought the "You just don't like Obama 'cause he's black" crowd out of the woodwork in full force. Though not mentioning any names, during the president's address concerning health care reform to a joint session of Congress on September 9, 2009, he essentially called Sarah Palin, among others, a liar publicly as he intoned: "Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple." Moments later, as he lectured that illegal aliens would not benefit from health care reform, Republican South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson gave it right back to him when he barked out, "You lie!" He subsequently apologized to the president and was censured by the House for the outburst.

George W. Bush was routinely called a liar during the war in Iraq by the same Democrats who'd similarly been quoted as saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and needed to be ousted, and when calling for a reform of Social Security before a joint session of Congress he was booed and hissed at by the Democrats in attendance. All of a sudden now, Wilson's ejaculation becomes the worst sign of disrespect shown to a president since the founding of our republic. Worse yet he's become the poster-boy for purportedly racist health care reform dissenters. Psychic Maureen Dowd wrote that "what (she) heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!" She continued, "Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber...Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

Georgia Representative Hank Johnson implied that the KKK would be making a comeback if the House had failed to spank Wilson properly: "He did not help the cause of diversity and tolerance with his remarks-If I were a betting man I would say it instigated more racist sentiment, and so I guess we'll probably have folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside intimidating people...That's the logical conclusion if this kind of attitude is not rebuked, and Congressman Wilson represents it. He's the face of it." Upon hearing that, former Grand Kleagle Senator Robert Bird probably got so excited he peed himself and had to take his normally white sheets to the laundromat! Johnson also insinuated that those protesting high taxes and big government at a huge Washington D.C. rally on September 12, 2009 were a racist "fringe" element toward whom Wilson's remark constituted a "wink".

Noted anti-Semite and flaccid former president Jimmy "The Bunnyslayer" Carter had to get in on the Wilson-bashing, having seen the sin of racism in his and various Obama detractors' hearts. On NBC Nightly News he blathered, "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American...I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans." He reiterated his defamatory spewing against Wilson and his posse the next day during an address before an Emory University audience: "When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal (How many liberals delighted in calling President Bush "The Chimp"?) or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler (again, as liberals did constantly with Bush) or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds. I think people who are guilty of that kind of personal attack against Obama have been influenced to a major degree by a belief that he should not be president because he happens to be African American. It's a racist attitude, and my hope is and my expectation is that in the future both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders will take the initiative in condemning that kind of unprecedented attack on the president of the United States." Listening to him speak, I have no doubt we'd all be better off if Jimmy would have remained a farmer suffering from peanuts-envy.

One recent poll conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corp. for Fox News Channel shows that 67% of its respondents believe opponents of health care reform honestly disagree with Obama's proposed policy while only 20% believe their opposition is due to racism...My prediction is that if Matthews and his ilk continue to pound this racism drum as a way to stifle Obama's political enemies it will backfire and voters will vocalize loudly by electing another Republican majority to Congress like they did following Clinton's over-reaching foray into socialized medicine.

Back when Oberman and Garofalo were contending that the Tea Party protestors were racists plain and simple, I got into an altercation with a friend from work who agreed with them on the subject. I pointed out that many of those protestors were also upset with Bush, as I was, because he allowed the Republicans then in the majority to spend unchecked. I told him that my problem with Obama had nothing to do with race but stemmed strictly from the fact that he's a flaming liberal pushing liberal policies. To back this up I mentioned that I'd voted for a black man for president before Obama ever appeared on the scene. He asked who and I told him it was Alan Keyes during the 2000 Republican primary because he was the only ideological conservative (which George W. Bush clearly was not) left in the field at the time. My friend is one of those who continues to believe America is racist, Obama winning by a majority notwithstanding. When I asked him if supporting Obama exclusively because he's black is racist, he started intoning that blacks can't be racist because they have no power here. I rolled my eyes and interrupted him, saying, "Oh, not that old 'white hegemony' argument again! You can't seriously be trying to tell me blacks have no political or economic power within the context of a discussion about our BLACK PRESIDENT!" I laughed him to scorn but he just couldn't see the irony.

My friend began quibbling over the definition of racism but by then it was irrelevant to the subject at hand in spite of which definition would have been used. According to the dictionary, choices include: 1.) a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others, 2.) a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination, and 3.) hatred or intolerance of another race or other races. Listening to Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan, or The New Black Panther Party's Malik Shabazz speak for five minutes provides proof-positive that definitions 1 and 3 apply to blacks. Affirmative action, being a government policy favoring blacks or other minorities and awarding spoils in a discriminatory manner based on race fits the second definition, though not in favor of whites (Maybe America's a racist nation after all). Considering that blacks occupy every political and socio-economic stratum, by any definition blacks most certainly can be racist. One might think that having a black president would stop the mouths of the pseudo-intellectuals who come up with drivel like the white hegemony concept for good, but one would be sorely mistaken. I've heard it said that the definition of a racist is "anyone who's winning an argument with a liberal", but if racism were defined as anyone who sees everything through the lens of race then your typical liberal of any color is the most racist person of all.

Liberal accusations of racism have been aimed at conservatives as an ad hominem way to shut them up rather than debating them on issues using fact and logic for decades, with spineless Republicans, cowed by fears of being smeared with that label, all too often acquiescing. "Racist/sexist/homophobe" has essentially become a prefix for the word Republican in the liberal lexicon. Any black conservative faces being labeled an "Uncle Tom" by others in the black community as if the only legitimate black man is a liberal black man. Often when the subject at hand has absolutely nothing to do with race to any degree, but rather touches on federalism, economics, crisis management, etc., conservatives are chided for supposedly using "code words" that imply racism beyond their surface meaning. Such charges of "dog-whistle politics" were thrown at George Bush for his comments in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which allegedly indicated he hates black folks. John McCain and Sarah Palin were cited by some as placing racial undertones into their speeches by calling Obama a "socialist" or by championing "states' rights". Antics like these would almost seem amusingly silly if they weren't so disgustingly dishonest.

When encountering some critique or another, how many Caucasian individuals or public officials could get away with a defense that consisted entirely of proclaiming, "You just don't like me 'cause I'm white"?! I'd venture a guess that wouldn't fly. Conversely, when a black person or a white enabler uses this strategy to deflect some censure of a politician, a policy, or themselves personally they should not only be dismissed but ridiculed for it. Some people will most likely consider me a racist for daring to opine to that effect. Those people can kiss my pasty white butt! I'll go beyond that and recommend that this reaction or some variation thereof should be the answer of any conservative falsely maligned as a racist because no unjust character assassination of that nature deserves the dignity of a polite reply.

Copyright 2009 by Edward A. DeVore Jr.

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Reference links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_incident

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_062308/content/01125110.guest.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,481484,00.html

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kerry-picket/2009/03/09/matthews-flavor-week-gop-er-david-frum-agrees-matthews-rush-has-race-p

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/04/16/garofalo-tea-partiers-are-all-racists-who-hate-black-president

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32386303/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08222009/news/regionalnews/paterson_whines__racism__185821.htm

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2009/08/24/team-obama-furious-gov-paterson-saying-obamas-next-victim-list-racist-me

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-a-Joint-Session-of-Congress-on-Health-Care/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/opinion/13dowd.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/15/congressman-people-don-white-hoods-wilson-rebuked/

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/carter.obama/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32895753/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/racism

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/2493

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics