Kathleen Parker has written the most vile heap of bullshit you will whiff this week, the subject of her woes is how dare Obama be so openly black. The heart of her complaint is that President Obama hurts America whenever he recognizes his own blackness and in doing so he risks dividing us all along race lines.
You know, with his blackness.
Here we have America's first black President and he is not allowed to communicate to America what it is like to be black, he is not allowed to empathize with other black Americans or even mention that racism exists without a Republican party that is defined by their southern whiteness screeching that he is dividing us.
As if race relations were going great until THAT ONE came along. White people were on top, everyone else knew their place, and now black people are demanding the same ease of access to the ballot box traditionally reserved for white folks. Perish the thought.
The insipid mind that compares being followed by a store clerk WHILE BLACK to being an under-dressed white woman who could just go home and change their clothes doesn't seem to understand that black people can't go home and switch into a skin that is less suspicious.
And why should she? White people have no idea what it is like to be subject to a life of prejudice and institutional racism. White conservatives who claim that racism is over while they make it harder for black people to vote are like the bully who grabs your wrists and beats you up with your own hands while he keeps telling you to stop hitting yourself. Here Kathleen Parker says that if the victim was black there might be riots. You know, cause black people sure love some riots. Kathleen Parker, while bemoaning prejudice, uses that exact tactic by painting black people as violent rioters waiting for a chance to run amok, and if you call her a racist than YOU are the one dividing us, meanwhile she slanders the President as being the victim in chief, as if to say that we wouldn't have these problems if the President were White.
If Obama and other black people could just be less black all of the white people shitting themselves over the thought of scary black people will feel so much better. And Fox and the RW noise machine can go on and on reminding America of how scary lazy black people on welfare are up to no good while claiming that racism is over.
More below the fold . . .
If Obama identifies with a black person or identifies himself as a black person he risks dividing us, because all white people are Christopher Lane now, an Australian killed in Oklahoma. Obama can't say he identifies with Trayvon Martin without white conservatives having to invent their own white victim version of Trayvon Martin in Chris Lane, because white conservatives simply can not allow a dead black kid whose killer is free and gun shopping as we speak to be the biggest victim.
If you talk about racism, you are dividing us. That is the nutshell of the GOP stance on race. And they wonder why the GOP has a problem communicating to minorities. Racism doesn't exist, neither does climate change or growing income inequality. Your problems are bullshit. And conservatives think that they can stop any acknowledgement that racism exists by declaring it non-existent. Black people are no longer allowed to identify themselves as being black anymore without upsetting an almost all white conservative party who will feel "divided". Pity the feelings of those poor white conservative victims of racism.
So if anyone tries to bridge the gap and address race relations in America they are actually making it worse according to Republicans and their shills like Kathleen Parker, and this is the same logic that says having a safety net for the poor makes people dependent and makes poverty worse, or how cancer wards give people an incentive to getting cancer, the problem doesn't exist in the FoxNewsiverse and addressing the problem that conservatives don't want to talk about makes it worse whether that problem is poverty, racism, or anything else Republicans don;t want to address because they are fine with the status quo as it is.
Republicans don't want to talk about racism for the same reason egg snakes don't want to talk about all of the eggs that have recently gone missing around here, and if any body tries to explain that the American experience can be vastly different if you are white or black than that Republican will totally lose his shit.
But as far as Kathleen Parker is concerned racism is over and as a white woman she feels totally qualified to lecture us all about it because if anyone knows how hard racism in America can be it is a white lady.
Can anyone deny that if Martin Luther King Jr were alive today that Kathleen Parker would be accusing him of dividing us, would anyone deny that Bill O'Reilly would be trashing MLK nightly as a race-baiter who is only keeping racism alive for his own profit? Bill O'Reilly, who has been hosting his own version of Comedy Central's Drunk Black History during segments about how racism is over and as a white guy he can totally see that would tell you that there is no problem, that MLK was just trying to divide us into thinking that prejudice against black people exists today, because if we can just pretend that racism is over it will be, just like all that silly climate change hooey. If Obama is dividing us by acknowledging that he is in fact a black man what does that say about us? I'm not part of that us, I have no problem with the black president talking about what it is like to be black in America, but the people who do have a BIG problem with it are also the first to tell us they aren't racist. Okay, maybe your not racist, but your pretty fucking prejudiced, and THAT is why you can't win minority voters. It's not your message, it's you.
There's an old saying that if you are at a poker table and you can't tell who the biggest sucker at the poker table is than you are that sucker. The same thing works for racism. If you are a white person in a room full of white folks, black folks, latinos and other people and you are the only one getting uncomfortable about race than all of those other people in the room aren't diving you with their race, no, you are just prejudiced racist asshole.
And that is how I view this laughably juvenile attempt by Kathleen Parker to blame her discomfort with a black president on his blackness. As if being black is a nervous tic that Obama should try to work on. How dare he be so flagrantly and blatantly black, it's making the white folks dreadfully nervous. Oh, and racism is over.
What conservatives don't get about Trayvon Martin is not just that he is black, it's that it was predictable. Black kid dead, killer gets away with it. Christopher Lane is the opposite in that he is white but his killers didn't get away with it, Trayvon's did. A dead child and the killer is free. That is an injustice. There is no white equivalent to Trayvon Martin, but conservatives need there to be so they can look at Obama and whine that he is dividing us and unresponsive to a white victim when it is similar to that of a black victim. And that is how you race-bait troll the first black President, by accusing him of being silent over a dead white kid but playing up to the victimization of a dead black kid. Christopher Lane's death is tragic, and no less tragic than Martin's or any other life taken in violence, but conservatives who bring it up as an example that white people are victims too and why won't Obama comment on it are just fucking trolling the first black President. You know, because racism is over, or at least it would be if black people would stop insisting otherwise.
Because if conservatives admitted that racism does exist they would have to admit that some people, white people, are the overwhelming beneficiaries of racism. White people don't get stopped or frisked, white people don't get asked for their birth certificate in Arizona and white people are never accused of making racism worse with their whiteness. As a white man I start off with a better chance of getting a job than a black man with the same qualifications as me, I will get shorter prison sentences for the same crime committed by a black man and my children have a far better chance of being a CEO or a member of congress or a writer for the Washington Post. As a white man I can't tell you why black people don't vote Republican, but I can guess, and my guess is that telling black people that their entire American experience is invalid because they have been gullible and tricked by liberals into thinking that racism still exists has been as successful as the GOP idea that telling women that their bodies have a secret way of shutting down rape sperm and therefore abortions are unnecessary in cases of rape. Conservative in 2013 are defined by their whiteness. To say that Obama is dividing us by recognizing that he is a black man only makes sense if you have a problem with black people. Obama is not at fault for being black or noticing it, but Kathleen Parker and her sort are. Obama's blackness isn't to blame for the fact that his blackness bothers you. Obama's blackness bothers you because you are a prejudiced asshole, and this whole thing conservatives are doing where they say racism is over and then accuse Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and other black people of keeping it alive only works on white people. If you are white and you get asked to name a racist and all you can think of is black people than the racist is you. Obama's blackness isn't the problem, but if it is, then you can't whine about how no one can be against Obama without being called a racist. It's one thing to have a problem with his budget, but if your problem is that he shows too much empathy to black people than you are probably a Republican.
Listen, if conservatives want to be a party for white people go right ahead. Please proceed, but spare me the drunk black history lectures from Bill O'Reilly and your weeping about how Obama divides us with his blackness. Obama's blackness is not a problem for anyone EXCEPT Republicans who insist racism is over. The fact that some people in America are so cushioned in their white privilege that they could shamelessly put such an idiotic notion into print while bemoaning Obama's blackness as a divisive tactic onto itself is all the proof we need to know it is not.
If conservatives want to prove to us that racism truly is dead they would do well to root it out root and branch from their party instead of pretending this problem doesn't exist, but that would offend the racist people in the GOP that conservatives need to keep their shrinking coalition of banksters, bigots and Fox News viewers from falling apart, so instead we get this drivel about how racism is over and black people should try to be less black so as not to frighten the white folks. If only conservatives were as offended by the blatant racist dickbags in their party like Limbaugh and Nugent and Steve King as they are when brown people mention that racism isn't over despite what white people think, maybe then we could say that racism is going away, but as long as conservatives keep at their voter suppression and dog-whistle Southern Strategy 2.0 I'd rather stay on the lucid side of things than the fantasy version the FoxNewsiverse has concocted that tells us that racism is over. Kathleen Parker's pathetic attempt to chastise this President for dividing us with his blackness is proof enough that racism isn't over. I will believe that racism is over in American when I see southern white people burning the Confederate Flag in public. You might remember the confederates, they tried to divide our nation quite literally. All Obama did was get elected while black.
I know, perish the thought.