Wednesday, October 14, 2009

So Much for the Post-Racial America   [Andy McCarthy]

I'm hunkered down on some projects and just heard about the phony attacks on Rush by the race-hustlers extraordinaire, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. I know Rush has big shoulders and he'll handle it just fine. But everytime one of these stories comes up, which is all too often, I can't help but think it says a lot more about us than whoever happens to be in the cross-hairs. Why do Sharpton and Jackson have careers? Why aren't they shown the door for serial racism and dishonesty? Why does anyone give a damn what they say? Why does the press treat them like they matter when they're a walking, talking parodies?

In the 1970s, I went to a highly integrated, all-boys high school (Cardinal Hayes) in the Bronx. It was one of the best experiences in my life, and I had great friendships with all manner of guys, because from the first day they treated us like we were all "Hayesmen" — not white guys, black guys, Spanish guys, Chinese guys, etc. We were encouraged to see each other as peers, not tribesmen. Of course there was intra-group affinity along ethnic and racial lines — there always is. But there wasn't a lot of tension. There was some — again, there always is — but there was no special treatment and no pressure for enforced separateness. We laughed at each other's expense (ethnic and racial jokes were not cause for banishment from society back then) and competed on a level playing field of merit. Everyone was treated like he belonged, if you did something good it was yours, and if you screwed up it was on you, not your heritage.

That's how Rush treats people — in the Martin Luther King aspiration that the content of one's character is what matters, not the color of one's skin. Yet, in the media narrative, he's somehow the one who's got a race issue — and the guys who trade on race, live and breathe it 24/7, are held up as our public conscience. The Left calls this "progress." I call it perversion. 

There's only one way this nonsense ever goes away: When we say "enough!" and tell the race-baiters their time is up. It's too much of an industry, so it probably won't happen tomorrow. But the Sixties ideal is crashing and burning before our very eyes, and I think it'll take a lot of its warped obsessions down with it.

10/14 04:09 PMShare