Posted by
Rogue Historian on Friday, April 13, 2007 1:13:20 AM
Why so much furor over a retarded off-the-cuff remark? Look to Duke.
The rush to judgement in the Duke LAX case was made because as a society we have been convinced that racism is systemic. Given the opportunity, why wouldn't three privileged white males rape and denigrate a black woman? As the popular aphorism goes, Is the Pope Catholic? Of course these guys abused this woman: to do so is in their nature. The mere circumstance of white males in a position to denigrate a black person- male or female- presupposes the act itself. Thus the assumption of white guilt combined with opportunity virtually seals the deal. And nothing spurs a lawyer's salivary glands more quickly than a high-profile conviction.
But what does that have to do with Imus?
Likewise, the need to police thought is based upon a premise that all white people need is an excuse. Slavery wasn't an artifact of history; it was a natural product of Caucasion predisposition. Never mind that, as Thomas Sowell remind us, slavery existed before Western culture. Never mind that slavery has been a critical feature of Islam for thousands of years. Slavery is an outgrowth of white people's desire to control and denigrate.
The unspoken assumption behind the furor over impolitic speech is that white people are only kept at bay by the arbiters of correct speech. Let a person like Imus (or that moron from Seinfeld) go unpunished and before you know it society will revert to Jim Crow.
And behind all of these assumptions is a bankrupt view of history. It is not so much politically correct history, as ahistory. The question that the left can't answer is the obvious one: If white people are genetically predisposed to be racist, how did a nation founded by such people set an unprecedented standard for integration and equality? Sure it took a few hundred years. But a long historical view reveals that this length of time is remarkable...for its precipitousness. There is no parallel at any time, anywhere.
Until we eradicate the notion that prejudice and bigotry are the province of one race, travesties like the one at Duke will continue to occur. And only when bigots are allowed free reign to reveal their reptilian notions at will may we be assured that the hate mongers have lost.
And, as for Al Sharpton:
Were I forced to choose between Mr. Sharpton or a White Supremacist (at the end of a gun barrel, for instance), I can't say for sure which way I'd go.
I can think of no greater insult to Mr. Sharpton.