Opposition to Obama not about race
April 11th, 2010, 12:00 am · 4 Comments · posted by Thomas J. Lucente Jr.
Let’s set the record straight once and for all.
There still appears to be some (many?) liberals out there making the baseless and completely irresponsible claim that opposition to President Barack Obama is, at least in part, based on race.
Hogwash!
I oppose the Obama regime and, like most libertarians and conservatives, it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with his dangerous and wholly un-American policies.
Claims that opposition to Obama is based on race say more about the claimant than those of us who are informed enough to realize that Obama is bad for America.
In fact, those making the claims, and you know who you are, are the true racists in the equation. Such claims demonstrate an inability to emancipate oneself from the chains of racial identity. Those people are mired in 19th century thought while living in a 21st century world.
It seems in America today, the only people dwelling on race are the very ones who claim to want racial equality. Meanwhile, those of us who find race irrelevant are the ones being called racists.
Liberals claim to want racial equality, yet they take every opportunity to bring race into the national dialogue regardless of its relevance.
Yes, there are individuals in the world who hate blacks because they are black. There are also those who hate Jews because they are Jews, Catholics because they are Catholic, and whites because they are white.
However, they are a miniscule minority of the more than 300 million Americans.
That we have a biracial president is proof positive that blacks today have all the same opportunities afforded whites.
If we want to talk about racism, let’s consider the plight of Italian-Americans. There are countless television advertisements parodying Italian-Americans and playing on stereotypes, usually centered on some insinuation concerning a criminal syndicate. Do I even have to mention the television show “Jersey Shore”?
Can you imagine such television shows and commercials capitalizing on black stereotypes?
Since taking office, Obama has apologized to more than 3 billion people worldwide for past American behavior. Yet, the apologizer in chief has not apologized to Italian-Americans for their treatment during World War II when more than 600,000 were declared enemy aliens and thousands arrested.
The U.S. government apologized to Japanese-Americans, and even gave surviving detainees $20,000 each, but that apology and payment did not apply to Italian-Americans or, for that matter, German-Americans.
I am, of course, being partially facetious here to point out how ridiculous these racial claims are. In the end, we are all related. Every human living today has a common female ancestor (Mitochondrial Eve) who lived 200,000 years ago in East Africa and a common male ancestor (Y-chromosomal Adam) who lived 90,000 years ago, also in Africa.
In a sense, we are all Africans.
Seriously, though, these accusations of racism from the left are unfounded and a sign of a weak mind.
There are many blacks who oppose Obama and there are many blacks in the tea party movement, a common target of racial accusations by the left.
There is absolutely no reason to resort to race as a reason to reject the Obama regime. Obama gives us many other reasons.
For example, his unconstitutional confiscation of the health care system using parliamentary tricks when he didn’t have enough votes. Then there is his constant need to apologize for America to foreign audiences.
Obama has run up record deficits instituting his irresponsible and destructive fiscal policies to expand America’s welfare entitlement state. He has mortgaged our great-grandchildren’s futures so he can hand out goodies such as substandard health care to Americans at some future time.
Despite all the evidence that lowering taxes increases economic growth, Obama continues to ignore that economic truism and push for higher taxes, especially against those he considers “rich.”
I could go on and on as to why I oppose Obama. Missing from that long list is his skin color.
So all you liberals, especially the ones who are well-educated (such as college professors and NAACP attorneys), stop calling us racists for holding true to our philosophical compasses in opposing Obama’s wrongheaded and foolish policies. There are better things about which to argue.
