Several months ago, Eric Holder acted the role of a coward, hiding behind his race and saying of other people (presumably those of a fairer skin complexion) that we are cowards when it comes to matters of race. Let Mr. Holder step onto the battlefield and swear publicly that he will never call anyone a racist for minor offenses, and just maybe we might be willing to engage him in a discussion. But we don’t aim to have civil discourse with people who play political correctness games from behind the shield of their race. That’s a fool’s game.
Just to nail this on the head, we have now come to believe that the so-called “post-racial President” actually plays some of the most hardball racial politics we have seen.
The President picked Sonya Sotomayor as his nominee for the Supreme Court, to replace retiring David Sueter. Naturally, she’s of an arch-liberal bent. Fine. While we’d prefer a conservative, we don’t have any kind of raised eyebrows about her liberal stance on things. A President – even a socialist like the current President – is Constitutionally entitled to pick anyone he wants as the nominee.
What we do have difficulty with is this statement that Ms. Mayor made in 2001: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
Now – again, we have to look at the context of statements like this to see if there is any way to see that she was making something other than what it seems – an out and out racist statement.
The fact is that she did couch this in a paragraph where she said in one breath that she didn’t cotton to such things as ethnicity, background, etc. as crucial factors for deciding a case. Well and good. But that still leaves a question, and we’d like her to answer this during the confirmation hearings:
Why did she say “a white male,” in the same sentence that she was commenting about a Latina woman (not a Latina female)? Why not a Caucasian man? More to the point, why was race even in this sentence? If this was about the relative experiences of people, why not just say, “I would hope that a person of rich experiential depth, with a broad understanding of human nature, and a deep grounding in and allegiance to rules of evidence, the role of precedent, and the body of ethics, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than someone who has not lived such a life?”
What is lost by keeping race completely out of it? We’d like her to answer this question. Why did she feel that race was a relevant factor to pack into that sentence. Because it sure seems like a racist comment to us.
Now – back to the cowards, who are the Obama Administration. Obama’s pet yorkie, Robert Gibbs (seen below)…
… is on record as saying we need to “be careful” when discsussing the President’s pick for Supreme Court justice.
Now – like we said above, we here at Off-the-cliff.com do not believe that Sotomayor should be evalutated solely on the basis of one racist statement, although we definitely want it examined.
What we do object to is that on the one hand, the coward Eric Holder is calling people cowards for not discussing race with candor, but that the moment someone is candid about race, the yorkie coward, Robert Gibbs says we need to be careful.
This kind of dynamic is what the anthropologist-linguist Gregory Bateson called a “double-bind,” where one is damned if he does something and damned if he doesn’t do it. He considered this to be a form of deep abuse. As we are not children, this isn’t child abuse. Rather it is citizen-abuse – and it happens mainly when cowards can’t win on the merits of their positions.
We know that the word “coward” is strong and harsh. But to not use it would be cowardly – and not candid – on our part.
We despise cowards with power. We think that they are a real danger to those that they are supposed to serve. We wish that they would knock it off.
As usual – we’re not holding our breath.
- Off-the-cliff.com