Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
For Roseanne Barr, star of ABC’s hit show “Roseanne,” there would be no appeal. When her tweet hit, she was gone.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement, is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” declaimed Channing Dungey, the black president of ABC Entertainment.
Targeting Valerie Jarrett, a confidante and aide of President Barack Obama, Roseanne had tweeted: If the “muslim brotherhood & the planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
Offensive, juvenile, crude, but was that not pretty much the job description ABC had in mind for the role of Roseanne in the show?
Roseanne also tweeted that George Soros, 87-year-old radical-liberal billionaire, had been a Nazi “who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps and stole their wealth.”
The Soros slur seems far more savage than the dumb racial joke about Jarrett, but it was the latter that got Roseanne canned.
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Her firing came the same day that 175,000 employees of 8,000 Starbucks’s stores were undergoing four hours of instruction to heighten their racial sensitivities.
These training sessions, said The Washington Post, “marked the start of Starbucks’ years-long commitment to new diversity and sensitivity programs after two African-Americans were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks on April 12.”
The Philly Starbucks manager, a woman, had called the cops when the two black men she took to be loiterers refused to leave.
Rachel Siegel of the Post describes the four-hour session:
“At first the employees are prompted to find differences. They watched a video in which (Starbucks head) Howard Schultz talks about his vision for a more inclusive company and country. They reflected what a place of belonging means to them. And they examine their own biases.
“Each group viewed a documentary underwritten by Starbucks and directed by Stanley Nelson. In the film people of color talk about experiences of being followed in stores. Footage from the civil rights movement quickly progresses to 21st-century cellphone videos capturing people being dragged off a plane, threatened in a New York deli and choked at a North Carolina Waffle House.”
On reading this, the terms “Orwellian” and “re-education camp” come to mind.
Earlier in May, the NFL issued a rule saying players who refuse to stand for the national anthem must remain in the locker room. If they take a knee on the field this coming season, they can be punished and the team fined.
Great was the outrage when this ruling came. The First Amendment rights of black players were being brutally trampled upon.
Yet the NFL has always had restrictions on behavior, from evicting players from the game for unsportsmanlike conduct to curtailing end-zone dances.
What is the common thread that runs through these social clashes from just this last month?
It is race. Each episode fits neatly into the great media narrative of an irredeemably racist America of white oppressors and black victims.
Had it been two white guys hanging out in that Philly Starbucks, who were told by the manager to buy a cup of coffee or get out, the spat would never have become a national story.
These incidents, coming as they do 50 years after the historic advances in civil rights, induce a deep pessimism that this country will ever escape from the endlessly boiling cauldron of racial conflict.
Today, because of cellphone videos, social media, 24-hour cable and the subsequent nationalization of even the most trivial incidents, our national conversation is more suffused than ever with matters of race.
For many, race has become a constant preoccupation.
And in each of these incidents and disputes, the country divides along the familiar fault lines, and the accusations and arguments go on and on until a new incident engenders a new argument.
The America of the 1960s, with its civil rights clashes and “long hot summers,” was a far more segregated society than today. Yet the toxic charge of “racist” is far more common now.
And how much do these conversations correspond to the real crisis of black America? Here is a sentence culled from another Post story this week: “Three fatal shootings …over the Memorial Day weekend brought the (Ward 8 total) to 30 homicides so far this year.”
Are white cops really the problem in Ward 8, Anacostia, when 30 people in that black community have been shot or stabbed to death in the first five months of 2018?
Washington, D.C., spends more per student than almost any other school district. Yet the test scores of vast numbers of black kids have already fallen below “proficiency” levels by the time they reach fourth and eighth grade, and the high school truancies have reached scandalous levels.
How does ABC’s cashiering of “Roseanne,” or apologies to the two guys at Starbucks, or restrictions on the rights of millionaire NFL players to kneel during our national anthem address the real crisis?
Is white America really black America’s biggest problem?
What countries throughout history are good examples of successful racial mixing?
And which the most successful of them?
For that matter, why are there different races, based along geographical lines, in the first place?
They really mixed up the races in Newark in July 1968.
Hard to believe it’s been 50 years since Chicago, Detroit, and Newark.
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When asked for comment, Soro simply stated, “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen”.
Come on Pat. You are a smart guy,but you like many in the conservative media skirt around the real reasons for this s**t. There will always be racial tension.It is just how people can be. The problem is the Liberal/Progressives and their cronies in the MSM. Once again America is being fooled by these people. Create the problem.Watch the reaction. Then offer the solution. Works for Liberals every time.
They hated the success of Rosanne despite the cash it brought in. Loud message to the industry, follow our rules or you will be destroyed. Even #1 status and being a cash cow could not protect Rosanne from Hollywood. Aren’t these the same people who feared censorship during the McCarthy era.
I actually took a PoliSci class called, I think, Politics of Inequality in the late 1990s. In that class, I learned that race is the underlying issue in almost all of modern society’s problems.
Income differences? Race
Illness and disease? Race
Unemployment? Race
Public education funding? Race
I could go on and on… what the class taught the twenty or so students enrolled to fulfill a “requirement” for political science education was this:
“If you look hard enough you can blame racism for every single bad thing in the world.”
As a matter of fact, that probably would have served as the syllabus.
Let’s stop all the boo hoo poor black me nonsense regarding race . The United States government and all 50 state governments plus all local governments have literally bent over backwards to the edge of bankruptcy for forced racial quotas for 13.3% of the countries population . 30% of government employees are black and we have failing and faltering government bureaucracies to show for it !
Valery Jarret is an anti American SJW and she was a close personal advisor to President Obama for 8 years in the whitehouse . As for George Soros , I will cut him a little slack on the NAZI stuff . Everybody thinks they would be different in the face of the Brown Shirts in Europe 1930 , a few perhaps but most would go along and live ! Soros has become a juggernaut of finance to buy and sell government representitives and others to inflict his will or desires . Those that allow and cooperate with him are the problem .
Back to the race issue 13.3% have an average IQ of 85 , 10 points above mental retardation . No matter how much smoke you blow up some ones ass or how much wealth you confiscate and redistribute equality will only be reached by dumbing down the rest of the American population . It appears the “THEY” are right on schedule !
I have found that stereotypes tend to be based on the observation of behavior.
Quick… 1968 America after end of Jim Crow or 2018 South Africa after the end of Apartheid?
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I agree.
I could not care less what Roseanne thinks about anything – not anything. She used to be a funny stand-up comedian, then she had a funny TV show. Who cares?
I don’t care about what Pat Buchanan writes about what Roseanne tweets. I don’t care about twitter. This is all a circlejerk about nothing.
The entire media is using this nothingburger of circlejerking for views, which = advertising revenue. The whole thing is an uninteresting non event.
Tomorrow there will be another ‘celebrity’ who will be pilloried for something or other; it will make the front page of everything, garner millions of clicks, mean nothing, and then disappear a few days later.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Pffft.
“These training sessions, said The Washington Post, “marked the start of Starbucks’ years-long commitment to new diversity and sensitivity programs after two African-Americans were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks on April 12.””
No, it marks the continued Marxist-progressive infiltration of our societal structure… Chip
This is the kind of *racial divide* I’m talking ’bout.
You see, if you limit blacks to rural areas, it’s not too bad. When you invite them into your Northern cities and population centers (see graph) then things start to get ugly quick.
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If Roseanne had only called Jarrett a commie, globalist anti-American, she’d have been fine and left to her own opinions – most of which I probably agree with, other than the untempered pro-Israel stance. Going after someone’s race, which – unlike weight or hairstyle – is beyond your control, goes against Americans’ general sense of fair play. The terms “racist” and “racism” are thrown around senselessly these days, have become meaningless and should – in most cases – be ignored. When I was a kid, the term used was “prejudice”. Being prejudiced was to be unfair. Certainly it’s logical to be prejudiced if you’re contemplating where to live or whether to cross the street from four pants-sagging 19 year old black males on a dark street, but there are black Americans who deserve to generally get the benefit of the doubt – at least initially. Whether they’re a bare majority of the black population or a bigger share could be debated, but for the good ones, having to tolerate this “Planet of the Apes” crap shouldn’t be expected. Roseanne forgot that the head of ABC Entertainment is a black woman, I guess. She has the right to say whatever the hell she wants, but she has to suffer the consequences. At least it’s a good example of the dangers of social media. A tweet that probably took ten seconds to compose cost her (and many others) tens of millions of dollars, if not more. Pay attention, kids. The internet is forever.
Preaching to the choir here – whites are blacks biggest excuse. It conveniently is the answer to all their troubles, in which they are inherently suboptimal. Go anywhere in the world and blacks occupy the lower or lowest rung on the societal ladder. IQ matters, period. They collectively don’t have it in sufficient quantity to create a functionally improving society. By transference it’s both our problem and their salvation to that IQ problem. With every possible advantage they have been given in this country, the outcome is the same; a dysfunctional hellhole. We can pour another $4 trillion into their communities and the outcome will be no different than it is today. Insanity is tryin the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We are all losing our sanity over this issue.
With a lifetime cost to society here in the US approaching $750,000 how about we offer all blacks a one way ticket to Wakanda plus $500,000 in cash. Both parties should be delighted with such an arrangement. They can be the “kanz” they know they are and we will have lifted an albatross from our collective necks. Win-win!
Yes, the divide is permanent and unrepairable.
What Starbuks is doing is “braiwashing” the Chinese have been doing it for at least 70 years.
ACTUAL PICTURE of Valerie Jackson putting on makeup.
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You must admit, the resemblance is uncanny.
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The above book claims that;
—1) The vast majority of blacks in America are NOT making advances … in almost every area of life … that Obama, Oprah, and blacks in movies and sports are the 1%er exception, not the rule.
—2) In terms of employment, blacks remain crowded into the lowest rungs of the ladder…that is, if they can find work at all.
—3) In terms of housing, blacks face the highest levels of racial residential segregation in the world—shunted into neglected neighborhoods lacking decent parks and grocery stores and often with no hospitals at all.
—4) In terms of healthcare, black infants face mortality rates comparable to those in the Third World country of Malaysia.
—5) In terms of education, schools today are more segregated than they have been since the 1960s …. and these schools spend around half as much per pupil as those in the well-to-do suburbs.
—6) In terms of imprisonment, blacks are incarcerated at a rate ten times that in 1954.
— 7) In terms of the “American dream” each successive white generation “does better” than the previous one, while black families are consistently on a downward mobile path.
—8) Things are worse for blacks today than they ever have been. Whose fault is all this?? Does one even need to ask??? —— “White supremacy and capitalism have proven to be so closely intertwined that, even when millions have risen up, time and again, to fight the oppression of African-American people, the system has in the end responded by re-entrenching and reinforcing, even if modifying the forms of, that oppression.
===============
Meanwhile, blacks can say ANYTHING about whites, and literally get away with in. There will be virtually no criticism or backlash. Rev Jackson can refer to Jews in “Hymietown” and jews march with him. Sharpton can flat out lie about 6 white men raping Tawana and not only will he be met with zero consequences, he’ll become a well paid guest on a major cable network. The Congressional Black Caucus, black professors and other black public figures routinely denigrate and stereotype white people … something that can NEVER be done in reverse. Black colleges can discriminate against whites, bur God forbid (!!!) if there were such a thing as Stucky White University.
Blacks (a large majority, I believe) use History not as a learning tool, but as a Permanent Crutch to air their grievances, make endless demands, and utterly shirk the idea of responsibility.
Do YOU see this changing? I don’t. There is no mechanism in place to change it. Sooooo, as to the question if this racial divide is permanent? Goddamned right it is!!
To answer P B’s question, yes, and the more we “have dialogue” about it as the media so nicely puts it, the worse it gets.
SJ reforms claim to correct unfairness, but the unintended consequences will be “it’s illegal to stereotype, so to conform to racial sensitivity, y’all can come in and do what you want, steal what you want and claim racism if anyone objects.”
Green light for abusing a source.
Wondering if any successful black ‘bucks franchise owners exist, and if any are in the inner cities.
i.e., where the problems are. Hmmm
Should soon see, as that was one of the SJW crowd demands on the corporation as compensation for the Philly incident.
Distance between races is made worse, by every claim of racist white evil, as black evil grows stronger.
“Jed, move away from there!”
I suggest that the average American Black’s IQ may be less than 85 and at the retarded level; the avg IQ of Guinea is 59. Consider that the awful percentage of Black students meeting standards does not even consider the scores of those with mental, behavior, emotional etc disabilities who are not even counted in a schools calculation! The Military considers anyone with an IQ below 83 as untrainable for any MOS; untrainable ought to be considered the standard for retardation. Blacks will always have a Black Problem.
#roseannewasright
Is White America, Black America’s biggest problem? I guess according to the media and political leaders, the answer is Yes. Of course when you blame someone or something else for the problem, you don’t ‘own it’. That’s the easy action to take. However, if Black America were to take ownership, they would not like the current results and doing something about it.
Buchanan is obviously out of touch. When was the racial divide in this country ever not permanent? Whites worked realllll hard to clean their act up since the 1950s. Instead of moving forward, the blacks and the poverty pimps and the communists all took advantage of the majority’s well-meaning retreat from dominance and spent the next 6 or 7 decades beating the whites over the head with it. I think there was a chance to put the past behind us and move forward, but they were hell-bent on using this moment of possible change to score points for themselves and cynically push the ball down the field in their favor. The pendulum went over to hyper-tolerance and now I feel it is swinging back past moderation towards hardcore hatred.
You can only exploit and assault whites and beat them over the head for so long with tolerance and accusations before they won’t give a fuck. If you weren’t a white racist before, all the PC anti-white crap being forced down your throat should be enough to drive you towards it. At this point, just being white is sufficient to earn you hate from whites on the left. Which is insane. The real surprise is how few true racists there are out there after decades of anti-white propaganda. It really ought to be surprising there are so few true racists now.
When the media is out hunting people for obnoxious posts in social media and wearing offensive halloween costumes, I think it’s a hellofa long way from the lynchings and night riders of a few decades back. I see tons of people mocking the left’s claims of widespread racism and the left is willing to do anything to prove racism exists, going so far as to concoct their own fake attacks to get attention. Ever read about Oprah and other blacks’ collections of “Li’l Black Sambo” and KKK racist memorabilia? They NEED it to exist, even if they have to invent it. After all these years of extremes and anti-white nonsense, where are all the racists? At this point, if you’re not a white racist, it’s almost like you’re not paying attention, because everyone else seems to hate you, including the govt, which is supposed to be above such things.
I grew up in the South. I love it and I love being from it. But the stories and experiences I tell non-Southerners are shocking to them.
When I was a kid, my town was famed for ultra-violence. You can ask Hardscrabble Farmer what he thought of Fayetteville, NC. There’s a reason that town is called FayetteNam. There was a ton of racial tension there and, I assume, there still is. People don’t believe me, for instance, when I tell them about the black-on-white crime, the gangs, the violence, the murders, etc.
My dad used to drive through the back roads out of town to go to the coast every weekend to work on his boat. He took shortcuts through the worst neighborhoods in an effort to squeeze a few minutes out of the long trip. He told me stories about blacks who stood around downtown on street corners, ready to build instant barricades of washing machines and other junk to attack whites who turned into the wrong neighborhoods on the outskirts.
I didn’t experience that, but we all knew about the government housing ghettos full of feral blacks so dangerous, even the cops wouldn’t go in. Everyone knew to avoid them. The cops in the late 1980s finally moved into them in what can only be termed a military operation, with massed forces and mobile command posts in trailers to flood the ghettos with cops. I remember how dangerous the downtown was and how everyone knew it was a place to avoid, despite being some of the most expensive and coveted real estate.
The old families who owned the dead downtown refused to let go, despite all the life being sucked out to the fringe where the new mall was constructed in 1970. They constantly channeled the city money to the downtown, which nobody liked and everyone knew was all bars, whores, bums, and blacks. The downtown didn’t change for the better, more or less, until they essentially ran off all the bars and tore down 2 city blocks to build a massive police station in their place. For a long time, it was just a police station, rundown “historic” shit hole hotel, a train station, and a bus station. Oh, and the old slave market house.
Now, they’ve sort of gentrified it, but the black scumbags from the ghetto are still there, and it’s primarily government offices and some businesses, like small boutiques and restaurants. It’s also still a dangerous area, just in slightly different spots. Their solution in the last 10-20 years has been to cram in as many memorials and monuments as possible to make it look better kept. Still, you don’t really want to hang out there. It’s just not possible. And their ideas over the years have been insane, like the one about building a massive ziggurat stepped pyramid of gardens, fountains, and restaurants.
My dad lamented the changes of the 60s-70s because he remembered in the old days when a black man would step out off the sidewalk and tip his hat to a white woman. He was a yankee, too but he remembered a more peaceable South than the one I grew up in, with all the racial chaos and violence. When I was a kid, playing at the park, the black kids would spit on the white kids. Later, I remember there was a white kid who was murdered for having a confederate flag sticker on his truck. There as a white LT from Fort Bragg who accidentally let a door hit a black guy on his way into a waffle house and he and his friends beat the man into brain death. There were some drug addict white soldiers who tried to start a race war by killing blacks. One of my brother’s friends asked to use our address as his own to avoid attending a really bad public school full of feral blacks. Kids in my neighborhood had horror stories from school of being chased by gangs of chain-wielding blacks through the school.
When I was a kid, the white kids in my school talked openly about the coming race war they figured would start around 2000 and what they would do in it. They assumed, and these were 1980s middle school kids at the time, they would lay in supplies and fight the war when they were adults. I remember one kid proudly showing off his grandfather’s Grand Wizard ring. Later, there was a black NCO at Fort Bragg who made national news when he claimed racists carved swastikas into his barracks door, but it turned out he did it to himself.
Something similar happened at a nearby college up the road when the student body president, Molly Martin, claimed she was attacked, sexually assaulted, and the words, “Nigger Lover,” were written on her chest. She was white, by the way, but she rode the hysteria and national news attention to re-election. Only later did the story fall apart and she quietly pulled out of school with an unspecified apology. The news didn’t issue much in the way of retractions or apologies for the hysteria and racial tensions they stoked in the process.
This is routine, too-the leftists always beat us all collectively over the head for imaginary racism, then look like assholes when they’re proven to be faking it. And nothing happens, because they still advanced the ball down the field. It’s why when nearby Duke’s lacrosse team was accused by another black faker, nobody cared to see evidence or hear their defense. The rush to judgement was too important to be halted by facts. Or Tawanna Brawley.
The funny part is, I think the biggest progenitors of the racist anti-white nonsense are some of the biggest real racists, themselves. Their positions that blacks are historically disadvantaged, so they shouldn’t be held to equal standards, or expected to read and write, work at a real job, pass a test, earn a promotion, or even learn English seems to me a quiet way to ensure they never reach parity with whites. How can you lower expectations for blacks so low, unless you really do believe they’re as stupid as you claim they aren’t?
Educated blacks should have realized who their real enemies were when whites started promoting ebonics as a real thing. What else would you call a move to literally remove Blacks from society by not teaching them real English? BTW-I think it’s funny they’re strong abortion supporters and they put a majority of planned parenthood clinics in black neighborhoods (40million+ dead blacks since RvWade, if I remember correctly). Blacks, these people are not your friends!
Also, what self-interested white or other normie wants to go to a black professional-anything in a world where blacks are routinely admitted, educated, graduated, degreed and certified, hired, and practicing with little, if any, actual ability or aptitude? With so many blacks getting into higher education and professional positions with absolutely no ability or aptitude or legit scores, why would you put your vision, or dental health, or physical health, or personal safety, or legal well-being, etc in one’s hands? You’re literally gambling that you got the good one out of a whole lot of mediocre ones with no business being in business. Diversity and Affirmative Action could kill you.
It’s even sillier with the way the govt awards contracts with preferences for blacks and females and other minorities, regardless of skills, abilities, or resources to fulfill the contract. Like Tiffany Brown, the Atlanta moron who was hired to feed Puerto Rico and completely failed. https://www.dailywire.com/news/26832/fema-contractor-was-supposed-deliver-30-million-emily-zanotti Or the 2nd rate private security guard and private eye training company I saw that got a multi-million dollar govt contract to provide highly-sensitive classified support to the military without even knowing what they had actually bid on.
Oh, and thanks to the charges of racism, it’s practically impossible to remove these people from their positions, even when they’re utterly incompetent and committing outright fraud. My spouse came from Europe with no experience of American culture, or racism, or anything, believing America really was color-blind. When they got here, they were amazed and shocked by all the racial tension and the constant requests for their race at every turn.
For a nation pretending to be color-blind, we never stop asking what your color is. It’s on bank account docs, loan requests, school applications, job applications, govt applications, and you’re constantly told it’s not used for anything, but everyone wants it. Frequently, they ask more than once. And it’s always irrelevant, but they still want to know.
My spouse was also disgusted and horrified to see how race is used in the workplace to get ahead. Their company, for instance, hired a black female accountant contractor. Now, in my experience, contractors are hired and fired as often as you change your socks. No reason necessary, no appeal allowed. You can dump contractors at any time for any reason and nobody gets to complain. So when this black accountant was caught faking her hours, not showing up, not doing reliable work, what did she do? She made an end run on her supervisor to the HR office and reported racism and an unsafe work environment, legally making it impossible to fire her. My spouse was roped into this, too, despite not being directly responsible for this clown. After this nightmare, in which the black contractor persisted in her position for a long time, they confided to me they would never willingly hire a black person, just to avoid repeating this experience. How many other people in this country feel the same way?
I’ve seen a lot of black malarkey on the job. I’ve had a lot of black co-workers and supervisors and it was obvious they saw their positions as a way to “advance their team,” while they also refused to discipline poor performers. I worked with one truly incompetent black guy who was actually damaging our office and even screwed up what could have become a major criminal investigation when he destroyed what would have been vital forensic evidence. No punishment. He was known to be utterly incompetent and unqualified, but he never got punished or reprimanded. I had another black supervisor who hired an incompetent black female secretary after less than 5 minutes interviewing her in front of me. When she stopped showing up to work and was actually Ubering while she was on the clock, nothing happened. Even when the manager was replaced by a white one, he, too, refused to discipline her, I assume out of fear for losing HIS job. Even when she showed up at 10am and left at 1pm to drive, and faked her time sheets, and he was calling us to ask if she had reported in yet, nothing happened. It was demoralizing. We briefly had a white woman doing the same thing, but she was fired fast…
I didn’t know my experiences as a kid weren’t normal until I left the South and saw the rest of the country. I had no idea people hated/feared the Confederate Flag. I didn’t know blacks weren’t considered a dangerous threat everywhere else. Well… they seem to be in a lot more places now. In fact, I think a lot of the country has probably caught up to where we were in the 1980s if the stuff Colin Flaherty covers is true, i.e. the black mayhem at the Wisconsin state fair, the Polarbear Game in Philly, or the weekly mass casualty events in Chicago. I had no idea it was considered racist to be cautious around them.
To be fair, I also didn’t know any good, hard-working, reliable, honest, decent, straight-shooting, family guy, intelligent ones, either. And I’ve met a few I liked a lot over the years and respected a great deal. I’ve even been friendly with at least one radical pro-black anti-white racist lefty. He was a nice guy until you got him onto politics or religion. But everyone hasn’t had the good experiences I have. I wonder what it will be like if/when things get really nasty in this country and Political Correctness loses its power over us. Will millions of previously-PC, smiling people suddenly take off their masks and wreak bloody havoc on their opposites? Will we just persist in quietly hating each other and smiling in public and up-voting cheezy feel-good equality stories on social media?
I already said I think the pendulum is swinging back from the extremes of tolerance back to intolerance. I think when we get there, it’s going to be unbelievably nasty out there, and I don’t know if it will ever change. That’s why I think Buchanan is out of touch. The divide has always been there and I think it’s fixing to get wider. He’s an old successful conservative in the top 1% who enjoyed a very comfortable life and has practically been in DC and politics his entire life.
BTW-As much as I like much of Buchanan’s writings and comments, and he really has been right over the long haul, I feel it’s worth pointing out he’s another Repube who dodged the draft. It bugs me how many right wing leaders are also draft dodgers who did anything to avoid going to Vietnam. At least he’s not a war monger, like the Walrus, John Bolton, who enlisted in the National Guard to avoid the draft and Vietnam and has since demonstrated great courage in sending others overseas, no matter the odds.
That was an interesting ramble, gilberts.
I do not think I’ve been to Fayetteville, but I did live in Pensacola, Florida for a time and know the difference between the tourist part of town and “old” Pensacola regarding racial tensions in the 1980s.
I am a bit older than you, actually having started kindergarten in a school building that was the “black” school for all grades until it was integrated into the “white” school across town. Town was less than 400 people and the schools served the surrounding farm communities.
So, my experience with racial tensions was very different from yours, though my cousins from Illinois told stories about driving through the ghetto and keeping an eye on the blacks. (East St. Louis in the 70s was probably similar to your stories about Fayetteville.) I believe my kindergarten class was the first or second “mixed” class and I remember a little black boy called “Boo” who really scared me one day when he declared he wanted to marry me and no one could stop him. I went home crying to my mother because I didn’t want to marry a boy named Boo. I don’t think I “realized” he was black, really, at five years old, but I did not like the way he had said “and nobody can stop me from marrying you.”
It is a silly thing to remember from 1967.
By the way, Boo had a spectacular singing voice and did a rendition of Proud Mary that brought the audience to their feet in the high school cafe-gymatorium when we were in sixth grade. I remember because I was in a trio (clarinet (me), trumpet and saxophone) at the same concert and we had to follow Boo’s standing ovation with our rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” and how the hell do you follow a little black boy belting out Proud Mary?
What does this have to do with the racial divide?
You mentioned the opportunity we had a few decades ago to move past the race issue and I agree. There was a “moment” when I think me, you and a boy named Boo could have turned the whole thing toward a better place. But, then…
What was it? Drugs? Vietnam? Hippies?
We all kind of know what it was and talk around it. Mary Christine gets close to it but balks at walking through the doorway. Dare I?
Not today. It is time to feed the white bunnies.
I think it was precisely when the left realized they could make money and power out of racism, so they’ve worked hard to make as much of it as they could. Racism is a profitable industry for them.