Barack Obama says: "The press has been focused, almost, you know, maniacally, on the issue of race." Meanwhile, a chorus of self-serving, neurotic black intellectuals who supposedly love Brother Barack, bleat: "Let's talk about race!"

No. Let's not.

The New York Times endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. This pompous, condescending, intellectually-dishonest, hypocritical editorial reminded me of all the things I disliked about New York "liberals" when I lived in New York through the "Reagan Revolution." It reminded me of Murray Kempton's observation about New York Times editors waiting "till after the battle to come down from the hills to shoot the wounded." While gently urging Clinton "to take the lead in changing the tone of the campaign," the supposedly "ultra-liberal" NYT sneered at the "raw populism" of John Edwards and contrasted the "incandescent" Obama with the "brilliant" Clinton. Never mind that Hillary may be the most polarizing, hate-inspiring politician today, the NYT says "We know" Clinton is "capable of both uniting and leading."

One of the juiciest parts was the way the New York Times trashed Rudy Giuliani:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Almost eight years after Giuliani left office as Mayor and more than ten years after they enthusiastically endorsed Rudy for reelection in 1997, the so-called Newspaper of Record finally discovered that a crypto-fascist was running their own city for eight years.

We know we cannot trust the media to deal fairly with the race question within this context because of the way they continue to indulge their irrational hatred of Jesse Jackson. Almost the same day the NYT endorsed Clinton, they published an awful comparison of Barack Obama with Jesse Jackson by Robin Toner:

The differences can be summed up, in many ways, by two slogans. “Our Time has Come!” was the rallying cry of Mr. Jackson, a call to political empowerment for Southern blacks who still vividly remembered the struggle for the right to vote. . .

In contrast, one of Mr. Obama’s most memorable rallying cries, delivered in his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, was: “We are one people. And our time for change has come!” It was the appeal of a mainstream politician, aimed at voters across the board, delivered to an overwhelmingly white constituency that he had just won.

It is a pity George Orwell never lived to have a good laugh over this twisted totalitarian logic. We are supposed to believe there is a big difference between "Our time has come" and "Our time for change has come" because... well.. because the New York Times hates Jesse Jackson and they say there's a big difference.

In 1988 Jesse Jackson won 11 primaries and 4 caucuses, including a 55% landslide in Michigan. On "Super Tuesday" Jackson won Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama. His second place showing in Wisconsin, a state with a small black population, garnered more votes than Gary Hart's win in 1984. At one point Jackson led in delegates and in the polls. Jesse stirred white farmers in Minnesota, white miners in West Virginia, and Latino trade unionists in Colorado, another state with few blacks. Gentle reader, here's a good rule: Whenever a media blowhard says Jesse was "just a black leader" and Barack is "the first serious black candidate" you know this is a person too blinded by prejudice and ideology to deal honestly with the race question in America.

I have pondered this while considered Uzodinma Iweala's Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times criticizing the "media-concocted fiction" that "not speaking about race is the equivalent of making progress" in race relations

I am shocked by the commentary on the prominence of race as a theme in the Democratic Party primaries. Shocked not because race is a theme but because so many in the media seem to think that race would not be or should not be mentioned. It is as if we think that not speaking about race is the equivalent of making progress on race issues.

The only thing more amusing than the use of a new term, "post-racial," to describe the positive response to Barack Obama's campaign is the lamentation at the loss of "post-raciality."

This entire narrative is a media-concocted fiction. America is decidedly not "post-racial." One need only observe the prosecution of the Duke University lacrosse team or the Jena Six, the debate about race-based affirmative action and the atrocity that was and is Hurricane Katrina to know that racial issues are still with us.

Race matters? True. So what?

US Income inequality has reached the highest levels since the 1920s. The US today is the most unequal society in the industrialized West. Funny, that even though class matters the media never trots out bloviators crying "Let's talk about class."

The awful truth is nearly 100% of prominent black intellectuals advocate "race talk" because they all rose to prominence doing "race talk" (including "color-blind" conservative hypocrites like Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele). Los Angeles journalist Larry Aubry and his daughter Erin Aubry-Kaplan are two generations of race-talkers. The "media-concocted fiction" is that superficial "race talk" is good for you.

One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result and in recent years we've been led down this same path a dozen times:

• 1992 Rodney King violence.
• 1994 Anti-immigrant Proposition 187.
• 1995 O. J. Simpson case.
• 1996 Anti-affirmative action Proposition 209.
• 1998 President Clinton's "Conversation About Race."
• 1999 Amadou Diallo, unarmed innocent man, killed by 41-shots from N.Y.P.D.
• 1999 Ramparts scandal at L.A.P.D.
• 2000 Election in Florida - massive black disenfranchisement.
• 2001 September 11th attack --- Our national slogan: "United We Stand."
• 2005 Hurricane Katrina destroys New Orleans.
• 2006 Immigration issue draws thousands into the streets.
• 2008 L.A.F.D. discrimination case; L.A.P.D. MacArthur Park police riot.




Each time "race talk" quickly degenerated into a bunch of clichés and stereotypes. First, professors of Black Studies were temporarily let out of their cages to rant about the "historic" guilt of all "White Folks" (taking great care not to offend any contemporary racist big shots).

After these clowns succeeded in alienating nearly everybody, the media brought on the slick reasonable-sounding professional "conservatives" from corporate-funded "institutes" proclaiming white innocence and the collective guilt of all Blacks and Latinos as lazy, savage, promiscuous, welfare bums.

Each time "race talk" reminded "Reagan Democrats" why they abandoned the party of F.D.R. for the party of the Bushes in the first place. Thus, Rodney King "race talk" helped Bill Clinton establish his "moderate" reputation by gicing him the opportunity to humiliate Jesse Jackson and "talk tough" to "those people." Affirmative action "race talk" established the conventional wisdom that affirmative action is always about "racial preferences" for inferiors. Hurrican Katrina "race talk" has already allowed incompetent Republicans in Washington and incompetent Democrats in New Orleans to escape responsibility. Hurricane Katrina "race talk" also helped everyone miss the story about the Southern California wildfires. The black vs. white obsessed media was so busy reporting how FEMA treated "white folks" in San Diego so well in contrast to "black folks" in New Orleans that they completely missed the story that the California wild fires was, in fact, another Bushie "conservative" catastrophe.

* * *

As a black active Green Party man, I have no dog in this Barack - Hillary fight. It's true Hillary shilled for Wal-Mart like Inglewood, California's black Democratic Mayor Roosevelt Dorn. It's true Barack carried water for a slumlord like Los Angeles Democratic State Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas carried water for Anschutz Entertainment Group. You can't be a successful Democratic politician in Little Rock or Chicago or New Orleans (or San Francisco or Los Angeles) without playing ball with sleazy interests.

Hillary and Barack agree with McCain and Romney about maintaining a permanent US military presence in Iraq, which is all about our planet-killing oil addiction.

Hillary, Barack, and California Democrat Fabian Núñez agree with McCain, Romney, and California Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger that the first principle of health care is profit.

Talk about “change” and the Democratic Party in one-party Democratic Los Angeles is a contradiction in terms. The Establishment is, sure enough, kicking Barack Obama to the curb, but not because of his race or his radicalism. The main "threat" from Obama is the independent young voters he inspires which strikes terror into the bipartisan Establishment.

Let's talk about race?

No.

Let's not.

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton Obama Clinton