Elizabeth Wright

Why would a Black man be complaining about the insertion of fictional Black characters into movies and television programs that are intended to enhance the image of Blacks to the general public? Isn't this the kind of social engineering that should be applauded?

Well, No, says Erik Rush in his syndicated column, “Are TV dramas pimping Obama propaganda?” Rush claims that he has been, since the 1970s, a careful observer of the "machinations of film and television producers" with respect to the race issue. In fact, he is author of the book, Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal—America's Racial Obsession, in which he takes to task almost all the contentious topics surrounding race.

Although he realizes that attempts to intrude more positive depictions of Blacks have prevailed for some time among a coterie of White entertainment executives, Rush claims that something unique is now underway.  He believes that much of the goal of today's Hollywood producers is to "directly influence public opinion as regards President Obama."  Though he accepts the facts of earlier moves towards more sympathetic characterizations, he associates the current trend to the mainstream media's desire to aggrandize a political ally, namely, the first colored President.

As a self-identified conservative, Rush finds no reason to support a Black man who, according to him, prior to election, clearly suffered from "glaring deficiencies" in terms of experience. Needless to say, he disdains Obama's politics, and like many Americans, he believes that Obama's presidency is due only to the fact of his race. He thinks it won't be long before this inept President is viewed as a "blemish on the legacy of black Americans."

Now that the dust has settled on that overhyped, fevered Glenn Beck rally, what have we learned?  Is it clearer than ever that no sober knight will come riding in to bring the enlightenment that some of us thought the Tea Partiers might have offered? It appears that the expectations surrounding those initial enigmatic stirrings, which made one almost believe that the furor was about more than just anger over political issues, have been extinguished. Was it all just a momentary aberration?

As it turns out, White conservatives don't want to take the lead in preserving what remains of this country's now tenuous White, Anglo-Euro culture.  To take on such a responsibility would make them even more vulnerable to the racial bullets and daggers they have been ducking for years.

If Beck's rally taught us anything, it's that nothing has changed in the White middle-class mindset and that fear of the "racist" label continues to rule as strongly as ever. We've now learned for certain that such Whites are determined never to put the name to their fear and anxiety. If anything, they are fighting all the harder to bury even deeper the visceral knowledge of what is going on in this country and the inevitable future that is on its way. Christopher Hitchens's assessment of the August 28 mass meeting is correct, when he claims that Beck's tepid event was "a call to sink to the knees rather than rise from them."  (If Hitchens, of all people, gets it, who could miss it?)

By now all who are interested have read that so-called satirical work of Mark Williams, which got him in hot water, not only with the usual suspects on the left but with his own Tea Party crowd. His "Letter to Lincoln," as has been pointed out by his own compatriots, was downright shallow. A commenter on the Radio Patriot blog correctly assessed it as being severely overwritten, while it soon took on the tone of kicking a dead horse. No wonder the black-led Tea Party "Federation" was able to score points.

What is so disheartening about people like Mark Williams is that they have imbibed every cliché taught them by the Left, and yet they call themselves "conservative."  For instance, his notions about the early NAACP and its origins, and of W.E.B. Du Bois, is boilerplate propaganda. He has obviously consecrated this history, as it was taught to him.  He writes on his blog:

W.E.B. DuBois never intended the organization to work against civil rights and use the government as an extortionist for favored social classes.  The difference between then and now is that DuBois knew real racism first hand. He also knew the power of government to perpetuate and enforce that racism.

Williams knows nothing about the initial creators and founders of the NAACP, most of whom were socialist Jews.  Du Bois was a later entry into the group.  The Dapper Dan Du Bois, more culturally white than anything else, already held a Harvard PhD in 1890, and traveled in social circles unknown to most blacks. This is what made especially contemptible his opposition to Booker T. Washington's determination to help the poorest and lowest blacks elevate themselves.  Here was Du Bois, a professed Communist, and yet Williams babbles on about how Du Bois would look at government. How idiotic is that?

And many blacks are laughing their heads off at this comment:  "Jealous and his cronies would be set upon by the original NAACP founders and run out [of] the organization ..."  Benjamin Jealous is exactly the type for whom the NAACP was founded and is following in the footsteps of all the chiefs who preceded him. It is his mentality that was sought by Julian Bond, when the time came to pick a new organization director.

But, of course, like most whites, Mark Williams would not want his little world disturbed by such "revisionist" history.

Thomas Sowell once explained why whites accepted the rule of the NAACP in the first place, instead of taking into account the differences between the many contending groups and philosophies then prevailing regarding the future of blacks.  Sowell claimed that people normally just want to get on with their lives and not be bothered with sorting out truths and other finer points involved in complicated issues.

Mark Williams also goes on to explain his farcical take on the word "colored," by castigating the NAACP for using such a term.  Yet, the only reason that the word "colored" has been tinged with the charge of "racism" is because the left/multiculturalists discovered that they could make Whitey jump through hoops by denigrating any term they choose, and claiming that a new one is in order.  There was no ignominy attached to the word when ordinary blacks used it to refer to themselves. It is only when the clever elites learned that they could use it as yet another bludgeon against whites, along with a host of other words and terminologies, that it was given a "racist" meaning.

I was hoping that Mark Williams might be The One who would stand up and make some kind of sense. But, as might have been expected, he turns out to be just another disappointment.

How is it possible that Rand Paul could have been so unprepared for Rachel Maddow's persistent questioning on the race issue? He claimed on her TV program that civil rights "hadn't been a real pressing issue on the campaign." Yet his National Public Radio interview on May 19 shows that he has been down this road before, similarly dodging questions and talking around the issue, while indicating confusion when the subject of race was brought up. According to Frank Rich, Paul had been known to express his views on race as far back as 2002.

Wasn't there time between that little NPR fiasco and the Maddow debacle for his advisers to sit him down and sort out the preferred approaches on all kinds of subjects? You know, "This is the way we're gonna handle this issue." He does have advisers, doesn't he?

How could it come as a surprise that race, of all subjects, would be front and center for any candidate, especially a declared Republican? Such lack of insight betrays a peculiar denseness. The subject of race is a "pressing issue" in every campaign and will remain so, as long as white men like Rand Paul can so easily be backed into a corner and put on the defensive. Maddow simply picked up on Paul's obvious discomfort during the previous NPR interview and ran with it.

It's been repeated so many times and it appears to be true. That is, conservatives take longer to internalize and promote the politically correct dictates that liberals concoct. In other words, liberals invent some platitude or piece of dogma that becomes standardized in the public mind. Conservatives initially fight the new mandate, but then, before you know it, they have joined the liberal bandwagon. They then set about denouncing others for a lack of enlightenment, as they help to disseminate the very terminology or social trend they once sensibly scorned and ridiculed.

Think of just about any exaggerated and over-abused expression. We all know how the "racist" tag has been done to death. Conservatives used to denounce libs for making a fetish of this term. Not any longer. Conservatives now can hardly wait to punish an opponent with the "racist" smear, just as heartily as a die-hard Democrat. The word is now as much a part of the conservative lexicon as are the smears "un-American" and "unpatriotic." In fact, many of these so-called independent thinkers on the right appear to equate a person who harbors sentiments that "exclude" others as un-American. "Inclusion" is the order of the day – because liberals taught them so. Now that Sarah Palin is on the scene, conservatives are warming to the task of smearing opponents as "sexist." Yet another victory for their liberal mentors.

If a "racist" is someone who prefers the company of members of his own ethnic group as opposed to others, why isn't this an individual choice that a true conservative would endorse? Apparently it is not, for such a person, no matter how benignly he expresses his preference, is generally attacked by conservatives just as belligerently as liberals. After all, doesn't he understand that rejection of others might result in "hurt" feelings? And isn't it "feelings" that count over individual rights?