by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
There is a different sort of racialist derangement spreading in the country \u2014 and it is getting ugly.<\/p>\n
Here is actor Jamie Foxx joking recently about his new movie role: “I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?” Reverse white and black in the relevant ways and even a comedian would hear national outrage. Instead, his hip “Saturday Night Live” audience even gave Foxx applause.<\/p>\n
Race-obsessed comedian Chris Rock tweeted on the Fourth of July, “Happy white peoples (sic) independence day. . .”<\/p>\n
Actor Samuel L. Jackson, in a recent interview, sounded about as unapologetically reactionary as you can get: “I voted for Barack because he was black. . . . I hope Obama gets scary in the next four years.”<\/p>\n
No one in Hollywood used to be more admired than Morgan Freeman, who once lectured interviewers on the need to transcend race. Not now, in the new age of racial regression. Freeman has accused Obama critics and the Tea Party of being racists. He went on to editorialize on Obama’s racial bloodlines: “Barack had a mama, and she was white \u2014 very white, American, Kansas, middle of America . . . America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet.”<\/p>\n
Freeman’s racial-purity obsessions were echoed on the CNN website, where an ad for the network’s recent special report on race included a crude quote from three teen poets: “Black enough to be a n—–. White enough to be a good one.”<\/p>\n
In the 21st century, are we returning to the racial labyrinth of the19th-century Old Confederacy, where we measure our supposed racial DNA to the nth degree? Apparently yes. ESPN sports commentator Rob Parker blasted Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III last week for admirably stating that he did not wish to be defined by his race rather than by his character: “He’s black, he does his thing, but he’s not really down with the cause.” Parker added: “He’s not one of us. He’s kind of black, but he’s not really like the kind of guy you really want to hang out with.” (ESPN suspended Parker for his remarks.)<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the new racialist derangement is not confined to sports and entertainment. The Rev. Joseph Lowery \u2014 who gave the benediction at President Obama’s first inauguration \u2014 sounded as venomous as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a speech that Lowery delivered to a black congregation shortly before this year’s election: “I don’t know what kind of a n—– wouldn’t vote with a black man running.” Lowery reportedly preceded that rant by stating that when he was younger, he believed that all whites were going to hell, but now he merely believes that most of them are. And in his 2009 inauguration prayer, Lowery ended with his hopes for a future day when “white will embrace what is right.”<\/p>\n
Wasn’t Obama’s election supposed to mark a new post-racial era? What happened?<\/p>\n
For nearly a half-century, cultural relativism in the universities taught that racist speech was only bigotry if it came from those \u2014 mostly white \u2014 with power. Supposedly oppressed minorities could not themselves be real racists. But even if that bankrupt theory was once considered gospel, it is no longer convincing \u2014 given that offenders such as Foxx, Rock and Lowery (who was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama) are among the more affluent and acclaimed Americans.<\/p>\n
The Obama administration must shoulder some of the blame. Attorney General Eric Holder, our nation’s top prosecutor, has referred to African-Americans as “my people” and called Americans “a nation of cowards” for not focusing on race relations on his terms.<\/p>\n
The president himself urged Latinos to “punish our enemies.” He weighed in unnecessarily during the Henry Louis Gates and Trayvon Martin affairs in ways that only added to the racial tensions. Vice President Joe Biden warned black voters at a campaign stop that Republicans were “going to put y’all back in chains.”<\/p>\n
Obama, during the campaign, brilliantly \u2014 and cynically \u2014 targeted particular hyphenated voting groups on the basis of their race and ethnicity \u2014 on the assumption that such voters could be loosely united by opposition to a purported uncaring and shrinking conservative establishment. After the election, the Obama campaign asked its supporters to complete a survey that included a checklist with racial identifications \u2014 with white omitted.<\/p>\n
There is a growing danger in this latest round of racial tribalism. Stirring up the pot for short-term political gain in a multiracial society is abjectly insane. If the new racialism grows unchecked, it will eventually lead to cycles of backlash and counter-backlash \u2014 and some day to something like the Balkans or Rwanda.<\/p>\n
People are just people. But they can turn into veritable monsters when \u2014 as a great American once warned \u2014 they look to the color of our skin rather than the content of our character.<\/p>\n
\u00a92012 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is a different sort of racialist derangement spreading in the country \u2014 and it is getting ugly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,86,46],"tags":[12,94,93,95],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2r","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":151,"position":0},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u2019d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you\u2019ve lost your mind. \u2014 John Edwards When does the legitimate \u201cI oppose Obama\u201d descend into the illegitimate \u201cI hate Obama\u201d? It is popular now to suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11994,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-trump-wages-war-on-progressive-culture-dems-respond-with-trump-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":151,"position":1},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: Trump wages war on progressive culture \u2013 Dems respond with Trump Derangement Syndrome","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News President\u00a0Trump is\u00a0waging\u00a0a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture, in magnitude analogous to what 19th-century Germans once called a \"Kulturkampf.\" As a result, not even former President George W. Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8241,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":151,"position":2},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO- The Corner Some, like Ezra Klein, have posited that Rudy Giuliani\u2019s suggestion that Obama may not be patriotic and Scott Walker\u2019s hesitation to assert that Obama is a Christian illustrate a sort of unhinged Obama Derangement Syndrome. Aside from the fact that Obama himself\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "NRO The Corner"","block_context":{"text":"NRO The Corner","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/nro-the-corner\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6190,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/supposed-crimes-of-the-mind\/","url_meta":{"origin":151,"position":3},"title":"Supposed Crimes of the Mind","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"With hate speech, it's the perceived ideology of the perpetrator that matters most. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online When do insensitive words destroy reputations? It all depends. Celebrity chef Paula Deen was dropped by her TV network, her publisher, and many of her corporate partners after she\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Race in America"","block_context":{"text":"Race in America","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/race-in-america\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Paula_Deen_Civitan.jpg?fit=600%2C408&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Paula_Deen_Civitan.jpg?fit=600%2C408&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Paula_Deen_Civitan.jpg?fit=600%2C408&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":516,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/white-on-the-brain\/","url_meta":{"origin":151,"position":4},"title":"‘White’ on the Brain","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The election of the biracial Barack Obama was supposed to usher in a new era of racial harmony. Instead, that dream is becoming a tribally polarized nightmare \u2014 by design, and intended to assist in the reelection of Barack Obama. Consider the increasing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10330,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-is-the-alternative-to-trump-derangement\/","url_meta":{"origin":151,"position":5},"title":"What Is the Alternative to Trump Derangement?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 27, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review If they weren\u2019t trying to destroy the president, Democrats would have to focus on an agenda most Americans don\u2019t support. By 1968, voters had tired of the failed Great Society of Lyndon Johnson. Four year later, the 1972 Nixon reelection re-emphasized that a doubled-down\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bill Clinton"","block_context":{"text":"Bill Clinton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/bill-clinton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5716,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/5716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}