Published: March 17, 2008
Letter to the Editor
A Rainbow is Shining Over 250 Years of Racial Divide
Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor,
re: A Look at White Racism
This issue of race has been one of the defining controversies that America has faced since its birth, and for the first 200 years of our existence, the debate was exclusively shaped by whites.
It is only in the last 40 years that blacks have even had a voice is the conversation, and as we have seen, there are those who would quiet even that young voice. It is an all too common ploy to excerpt the speech of one lone black person, and extrapolate that sentiment to thirty million black Americans, something never done in the reverse.
While the media is only too happy to exploit the incendiary rhetoric of some blacks, we should all realize that without spokesmen willing to live on the angry edge of rhetoric, there can be no definition of reasonable middle ground.
Blacks themselves bear some of the responsibility for their current predicament. Their blind allegiance to self-serving demigods and further to the Democratic Party, has, time and again allowed them to be ill served on one hand, and patronized on the other.
The assumption that Republicans generally harbor ill will toward blacks and that Democrats demonstrate nothing but altruistic intent RE their cause is as naive as it is dangerous, and is well demonstrated by the Clintons' willingness to throw blacks under the bus when convenient, and make no mistake, that is exactly what has happened. Their subtle and not so subtle efforts to inject race into the campaign is an obvious effort to consolidate the one base Hillary has left; older white woman, and struggling young white men, both easy prey for racist demagoguery, and the fact that Democrats are not protesting en masse against this, should tell blacks once and for all that they need to evaluate each candidate on his or her merits, and not party affiliation.
Last, and perhaps the rainbow shining over 250 years of racial divide, is the candidacy of Senator Obama. Regardless of one's feelings about his 3 AM qualifications, or his economic cred, or his grasp of any particular issue, the one overriding fact of his candidacy is this; he has united blacks and whites by the millions who see beyond race to a day when men truly are judged by the content of their heart, and maybe with just a little help, we can be the colorblind society we've tried to be for nearly three centuries.
Robert Carr,
New York
judythpiazza@newsblaze.com
* The views of Letter writers do not necessarily reflect the views of NewsBlaze