By Nancy Thorner -
Some of us might remember the good old days when if someone was labeled a racist, there was a pretty good chance the person was a bigot, and perhaps even proud of it? However, among ineffective and dishonest politicians, racism has been used as a shield from criticism for half a century.
In certain locales, a man could carve out a pretty good career for himself by playing the race card. For a great many years southern Democrats had no problem winning gubernatorial and senate elections by presenting themselves as non-apologetic segregationists. Now long gone, old war horses like Richard Russell, Strom Thurmond, Albert Gore, Orval Faubus, Robert Byrd, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and Jesse Helms have been replaced by a new wave of racial bigots who happen to be black. Among their ranks are Barack Obama, Maxine Waters, Al Green, Sheila Jackson Lee, Hank Johnson, Ilhan Omar, Elijah Cummings, Bobby Rush, Kamala Harris, Eric Holder, Jim Clyburn, Barbara Lee, John Lewis, Frederica Wilson, Ayanna Pressley and Cory Booker. In their contempt for white people they are every bit as focused on pigmentation as were the earlier group of racists.
Racism today
Joseph Epstein in his article of August 2, 2019, What Would We Do Without the Word 'Racism'?, has exactly the right tone and message about the word and its abusive overuse. Although it would be desirable to ban the word, it just won’t happen. Why? Because too many “professionals” have too much at stake to abandon it, it is just too easy an expression to weaponize, and for the lazy it is the perfect crutch.
As stated in Epstein's article:
“In our day the word has been used imprecisely, promiscuously, perniciously and well beyond abundantly. If you are politically on the left, racism is what you accuse people of who don’t agree with you. If you are on the right, you can accuse them, I suppose, of socialism, but it doesn’t carry anything like the same resonance in moral opprobrium or self-awarded virtue as does racism.”
As to how likely voters view President Trump, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 59% of Likely U.S. Voters disagree with the following statement – “Vote for Donald Trump, and you are a racist.” Twenty-nine percent (29%) agree with the statement, while 12% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) A closer look finds that 49% of Democrats think Trump voters are racist due to indoctrination, compared to 13% of Republicans and 23% of voters not affiliated with either major party. Not surprising is that among Democrats, one-in-three Democrats think it’s racism any time a white politician criticizes a politician of color.)
Shortly after the El Paso shooting, Presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke called out a 'racist' President Trump as the one responsible for El Paso shooting, even though in the alleged manifesto the alleged shooter directly says that his beliefs predate Trump’s election victory, further predicting in his manifesto that Trump will be falsely blamed.
Without the word racism Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be out of business. The power of the word racism—always cocked, aimed and ready to fire—makes it impossible to say anything, outside the most obeisant praise, about black culture, black politicians, black entertainers or black anything. The entire subject is out of bounds to anyone who isn’t black, and many black intellectuals and writers are themselves in peril if they step outside the racial party line.
How the term racism became pervasive
To make sense of President Trump’s dust-up with Rep. Elijah Cummings, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic Party, you have to go back to Baltimore in April 1968, when the city was overwhelmed by a riot in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The year prior Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Newark, N.J. had experienced serious race riots.
On July 28, 1967 President Johnson appointed the Kerner Commission to explain the 1967 race riots in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Newark, N.J. In his remarks upon signing the order, Johnson asked for answers to three basic questions about the riots: "What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again.
After seven months of investigation, the Kerner Report was released on February 29, 1968. It became an instant bestseller; over two million Americans bought copies of the 426-page document. The report's most famous passage warned, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." The report was a strong indictment of white America: "What white Americans have never fully understood but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." As suggested, one main cause of urban violence was white racismand white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion.
Over time, the Kerner Commission's view of racism became gospel in the media, academia and the Democratic Party. An intellectual Iron Curtain descended to protect black politicians to allow them to denounce their critics as racists.
Were Trump’s Baltimore tweets racist?
The media worked overtime on Saturday, July 27, 2019 to paint President Donald Trump as a racist for tweeting about the conditions in the district in West Baltimore represented by Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD).
Because President Trump finally had had enough of being pounded by the corrupt Elijah Cummings over the conditions at the Mexican border, Trump pointed out, in a series of tweets, that Cummings' district is considered the worst in the USA, while the border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. In contrast, Cummings' District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess and if Cummings spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.
Because Trump spoke the truth, hypocritical Democrats and spineless Republicans accused Trump of being a racist.
In a video from a 1999 congressional hearing, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) described his community of Baltimore as a "drug infested area."
Three years ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders, after touring the district, said that it reminded him of a place he'd expect to come across in a third world country.
Last year, a camera crew accompanied then-Baltimore mayor Catherine Pugh, who is black, as she walked the same mean streets and we all got to hear her comments, which ranged from “You can smell dead animals” and “What the hell is that?” to “Oh, my, look at all those rats!” and “We should just tear this shit down.”
Where has all the money gone?
We keep hearing that more money has to be air-lifted to those places like Baltimore in order to improve the schools, the streets and the houses. You would think that after all these decades, somebody would acknowledge that money is not the answer and that outsiders can’t begin to solve the multi-generational problem. Yet, the reason given by the Left is the existence of racial and financial inequity where black and brown people live.
Time and again, it has been shown that if blacks would simply do a few basic things, they could rise out of poverty in a single generation. All that was required was that they graduate from high school, learn a trade and not have children until they got married.
Trump is right: the people of Baltimore have been neglected by their own leaders for far too long.
“[Money has] been misspent. It’s missing,” Trump told reporters, according to the Baltimore Sun. “It’s been stolen with a lot of corrupt government. And as you know, [Elijah] Cummings has been in charge. Now, I will say this: I think that Rep. Cummings should take his oversight committee and start doing oversight on Baltimore. He’d find out some real things.”
After President Trump's accusation about the amount of money and corruption in Congressman Elijah Cummings' district,
Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books decided to see if there was any merit to the Trump's accusation. Auditors at Open the Books were able to find just how much taxpayer money was flowing into the Baltimore bureaucracy at every level, federal, state, and local. What they found was a city drowning in taxpayer dollars. Read the resulting editorial published at Forbes: Baltimore's 30,000 Public Employees Cost Taxpayers $2 Billion But Can't Save Their Own City
See here a map created by Open the Books for every reported sighting of trash and rats on Baltimore's streets. According to the government website, USASPENDING.gov., Cummings' 7th congressional district received more than $9 billion last year alone and more than $15 billion total in the past two years.
Baltimore economy: A snapshot of the money-side of the city
Despite all the money flowing into Commings' district, Baltimore condemns its citizens with the country’s worst schools and mops up more murders than El Salvador. Its poverty rate is nearly twicethe national average.
Following are some economic stats and recent ranking published by Fox Business on July 29, 2019:
- Jobs: The unemployment rate in Baltimore city was at 5.10 percent in May. Compare that to Maryland state’s 3.8 percent unemployment rate in June, while the national average sits at 3.7 percent.
- Income: The typical household income in Baltimore was $46,641 in 2017, while the average family in the U.S. saw annual earnings of $57,652, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
- Poverty: According to Census Bureau data, the poverty rate came in at 22.4 percent in 2017, compared to the national average of 12.3 percent.
- City leadership ranking: Baltimore ranked as No. 129 out of 150 — (or 21 spots from the bottom of the list) — in WalletHub’s list of 2019’s best- and worst-run cities in America.
One can feel pity for people in Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. They are the victims of the police states into which they were born. The same can’t be said for those who live in places like Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Houston, Oakland, Minneapolis and Kansas City.
All these cities have one thing in common. They are run by Democrat mayors who promise much but deliver little to their constituents.
But what about the voters? They get to pick their poison, yet they keep lapping up the same poison year after year.
