The Dark Side of Racism

For the past three weeks, the citizens of St. Louis have been able to see themselves and others in a completely different light. It is not a good one. Oh sure, the recent shooting of 18 year old Michael Brown, a black teenager by a white police officer, has had many people, black and white, calling for peace and waiting for all of the facts to come in for a full and complete investigation. They have helped each other clean up after days of looting and rioting. They have sat in church together and tried to heal their community.
  But it has brought out the very worst as well. Not just the obvious in looters and rioters, but the subtle, the unseen, the things people don't like to own up to.
  We know that bigots come in all shapes, sizes and yes, colors. They will usually train their vitriol on others who don't look like them, or have differing opinions and views. But whenever a high profile case, especially of a racial nature is front and center, a special brand of hate is unleashed at black conservatives.
  This time however, was different. It hit much closer to home. Why? Because the object of so much venom was my dear friend Martin Baker. Martin is certainly no stranger to the political landscape that is reserved for black conservatives. Having run for office a few times, and being on the front lines with various conservative groups, Martin is well prepared for the name calling, the smears, and all of the usual tactics used by liberals, especially black liberals, against other blacks. When he attended a rally recently in support not so much for Officer Darrin Wilson, but for law and order, for transparency, and for the fair and impartial carrying out of justice, a picture of Martin showed up on Twitter, and it was open season on anything and anyone Martin Baker holds dear.
  He was viciously attacked in any way a person can be, but it was all really aimed in only one direction, his political beliefs. For some reason, most black liberals don't know that groups like the KKK were started by Democrats. They don't know that every single piece of civil rights legislation passed in the 1960's passed because of Republicans. Democrats blocked it every way they could. But conservatives, Frederick Douglass conservatives like Martin Baker know the true history of the Democrat Party.
  But never mind the facts. Facts are pesky things sometimes. So not wanting those pesky facts to get in the way, those brave

champions of civil rights lurking behind anonymous Twitter handles went to work. Decorum prevents this Blogger from repeating most of them here, but you get the idea:
  "@Afrocentricity", (is that even a word?) said, "How U gon support Darren Wilson? U a clown, all u missing is the red nose. U no longer black". Mr. Centricity, apparent self-arbiter of all things "black", was the most polite of the bunch. "@A.Pink", could that be short for pinko or communist? Perhaps. He at least made it to the spelling portion of grade school, but unfortunately, he does not get an "A" for originality. "People can you believe this Uncle Tom? He's a lead supporter of the criminal cop that murdered Mike Brown." With random folks with law degrees running around like Mr. Pink(o), who needs a jury? Of course the usual Shakespearean wannabes who like to scribble "sell out" and the n-word all over anything that doesn't move made their presence known as well.
  Why is it that all black people are required to think alike? Why is it that when black conservatives dare stray from the "Audacity of Hope" bandwagon, and form their own thoughts and opinions, they are deemed, "not officially black"? Doesn't freedom not only mean physical freedom, but intellectual freedom as well? Is this not what black people and many white people have fought and died for?
  Men like Martin Baker are a rare breed. They march to the beat of their own drum. Their beliefs are unbending, never wavering, because they know those beliefs to be the truth. They stand up for those beliefs when it is not cool, and even dangerous to do so.
  If that is the definition of "sell out", America is in desperate need of them.     

Fashionable Hatred

  The conflict between the terror group Hammas and Israel rages on with no clear end in sight. Cease fires last no more than a few days, and once again the silence is shattered by exploding rockets. The usual sequence of events seems to be Hammas doing the rocket firing. It is a complicated case to most Westerners, its origins dating back thousands of years.
  As the fighting continues, many people around the world are quick to take sides. Israel is firing on innocent women and children say one side. Hammas is storing their weaponry in schools and residential areas and using their citizens as human shields says the other. There may be more evidence of Hammas using human shields than anything else. But what is also becoming very apparent is the rise of anti-Semitism in a big fat global kind of way.
  The incidents started out sort of few and far between in Europe. In a heavily Jewish section of Paris, crowds could be heard yelling, "Gas the Jews". In Frankfurt Germany, there were signs that read such things as, "The Jews are beasts". In Great Britain, mainly in London, over 100 anti-Semitic incidents have been reported. The violence has now spread to the United States. In Miami, a synagogue was vandalized, and in Boston, angry mobs of people chanted anti-Jewish slogans.
  In a somewhat bizarre twist, some rather loud bursts of anti-Semitism have come from Hollywood. It seems the place to go for anything overly weird seen on Twitter is Twitchy.com. There, you will find any foolish nonsense tweeted out by any foolish celebrity on any given day, and the Gaza-Israel conflict seems to bring out the best, or worst in a whole bunch of them.
  Not that all Hollywood celebs are dumb, some are actually pretty smart despite their chosen profession, but the ones who may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer keep displaying their "talents" to the tweeting public. Actress Selena Gomez recently tweeted, "#PrayForGaza". She is of course entitled to her opinion, but could she find a place called Palestine on a map? Even if it actually existed, most likely not.
  Singer Rhianna also felt compelled to tweet out, "#FreePalestine". But perhaps the most egregious was actress Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem, who signed a letter accusing Israel of genocide. The best part? All of these global events experts had to walk back their silly uninformed comments.
  Ironically, Jewish celebrities like Steven Spielberg and Liberal poster child herself, Barbara Streisand have been silent on the whole situation. It certainly is not like either one of them would not find work if they did choose to speak out. Why the silence?
  But possibly the biggest question, why is it all of a sudden, almost cool, to be an anti-Semite? In the case of Spielberg and Streisand, their ideology is no doubt second to their ethnicity. It has often been said Liberalism is a religion, so perhaps their conversion is complete. But one has to wonder at younger performers like Gomez and Rhianna. Is it that they have never been taught anything about the Middle East in school? Maybe. At least in the case of Selena Gomez, she spent much of her formative years on a Disney set. But why be so quick to comment on something that they clearly have no knowledge of, and know that their many fans may decide that this also is their view? Do kids of their generation know the evil history of anti-Semitism? Given the watered down state of American education, it is a safe bet they do not.
  Fortunately, the older generations of Hollywood, like actor Jon

Voight are trying to make sure that anti-Semitism in Tinsel town does not become the norm. But will it filter down to the younger set? That remains to be seen.
  During World War II, Hollywood was the biggest supporter of American soldiers. In 2014, will it be the biggest supporter of bigotry and hatred?
  The tolerant Left, at work again.