So yet another race-baiting Democrat forgoes the civil discussion route. This time it’s Rep. James Moran, D-Va., who gave these comments to an Arab-language television station about why his party got trounced in the recent midterm elections.
“A lot of people in this country don’t want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is inclusive, who is liberal, wants to spend money on everyone, and wants to reach out and include everyone in our society.”
Moran doesn’t see the obvious contradiction in his statement. Once he added those other qualifiers: that some voters don’t want to be governed by someone “who is liberal, wants to spend money on everyone, wants to reach out and include everyone in society,” then the main criterion isn’t race, but that person’s policies.
I’ll say this once again for the Jim Morans of the country, because they need to hear it often until they get it. President Obama’s race
helped him get elected president; it didn’t hinder him. A white candidate with Obama’s weak qualifications at the time he announced his presidential candidacy in 2007 — only one year of experience as a U.S. senator with absolutely
no experience in the executive branch of government whatsoever — wouldn’t have lasted past the first round of primaries. Voters of all races would have rejected such a white candidate out of hand. The real racists casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election were those voters who lowered their standards considerably in voting for Obama.
Those voters who went to the polls and voted Republican don’t have a problem with Obama’s race, but his policies. Those same voters may have voted for former Secretary of State Colin Powell had he decided to run for president.
Condoleezza Rice — the first black national security adviser and the second black secretary of state — might have become the first black and woman president if she had decided to run in 2008.
And both Powell and Rice were appointed courtesy of a
Republican president, thank you very much Mr. Moran. Rice’s popularity with voters, especially white ones, was driven home to me in 2003, after I’d written a column taking poet, playwright and left-wing activist Amiri Baraka to task for calling Rice a “skeeza,” street language for a woman of low moral character.
I got e-mails criticizing Baraka and praising Rice, mainly from white readers who said they’d be proud to vote for her if she ran for president.
Speaking of Rice, Baraka and that “skeeza” incident: I’ve received information that as late as May of last year Baraka was still doing his part to ratchet up uncivil dialogue from the left. At a Black Writers Conference, Baraka called then-Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele “a real public c–n.”
The better to distinguish Steele from the “real private c–ns,” I suppose. But think of it: a black writer using a word about another black man that would have been called racist had a white writer done it. And none of the self-appointed civility police who’ve cropped up since Jan. 8 — Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz., Keith Olbermann (formerly of MSNBC) or former Rep. Patrick Kennedy — uttered so much as a syllable of protest about Baraka’s remark.
A word or two about this Baraka character: In another life he was simply known as LeRoi Jones, author of the superb, critically acclaimed plays “The Dutchman” and “The Slave.” In the late 1960s he was a member of a black nationalist group called “US” before becoming a Marxist.
From black nationalist to commie to full-time race baiter: How’s that for a transformation?
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer-nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
