The Occasional Caucasian

Oprah Winfrey recently weighed in on the President Obama’s fall from grace and his loss of credibility with the American people due, of course, with his lack of honesty detailing the tenets of the Affordable Care Act. According to Ms. Winfrey, a lot of the president’s troubles are the result of racism, not his ineptitude. Question – was she talking about black racists who consider him white; or white racists who consider him black? After all he is bi-racial. No answer needed. I’ve never met a bi-racial person who ever considered themselves white rather than black.

It appears when things start going south for the president some ally of his can promptly whip out the race card to explain away the terrible job he has done with the economy, the Affordable Health Care Act, formerly known as Obamacare, and his foreign policy. Unless you capitulate to his every whim; even if you feel it will result in certain failure, you are racist.

I suppose Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and President Hollande of France are equally suspect of being racists because of their opposition to the administration’s willingness to forge ahead with easing sanctions against Iran despite their feelings that the proposed agreement, supported by the administration, did little to assuage the fears of our allies about the prospect of an Iran with a nuclear weapon capability.

But closer to home, there are still real pockets of racism. There is no disputing that. And we can only hope that in the near future it can be lobotomized from the American psyche. Or we can wait until they (the Southern and old time racists) all die off, as Ms. Winfrey would have it.

But let’s not be naïve. Racism is a double-edged sword. We only hear a one-sided version because whites against blacks racism fit a familiar and accepted narrative that allows the race hucksters to thrive and divide the will of the righteous. In the past six months there have been three reported episodes of black racism against whites. Delbert “Shorty” Belton, an 88-year-old WWII veteran from Spokane, Washington, was beaten to death by two black juveniles in August. That same month, Christopher Lane, a 22-year-old Australian baseball player, was shot to death by three bored juveniles in Oklahoma, two of which were black; then in September in Union Square, New York, a reprobate by the name of Lashawn Marten, 31, spewing the venomous phrase “I’m going to punch the first white man I see,” punched Jeffrey Babbitt, 62. Mr. Babbitt eventually succumbed to his injuries. Marten assures us he is not racist. That’s comforting.

After the headlines faded so did the stories. Who will stand with the families of those victims. If the Revs. Jackson and Sharpton were more men of the cloth than men of green silk fiber paper they would truly stand for injustice wherever they find it.

As for Ms. Winfrey, as of late, she has all the sincerity of a game show host. I’m not so sure President Obama is the only one who has lost credibility with the American people.