Are Liberals The Worst Bigots of All?

Here it is 2006 and conservative blacks are enduring slurs worthy of a grand wizard of the KKK. Is it possible that liberals are the worst bigots of all?

You may ask: How can that be? Surely, you say, liberals were the ones marching for civil rights in the 1960s, so how can they now be accused of bigotry? Because most of the incidents involve discrimination against blacks, I was tempted to use the word racists, but most of the bigots are also black, so bigotry is the more accurate term.

In my opinion, Condoleezza Rice is the most important woman in the world. Our secretary of state grew up in the segregated South and was a friend of Denise McNair, one of the four girls killed in the Birmingham, Ala., Baptist church bombing in 1963.

Then you have Aaron McGruder, the young creator of the controversial and infrequently amusing cartoon "The Boondocks," who has portrayed Ms. Rice in vicious ways in his comic strip and has called her and a former secretary of state, Colin Powell, murderers. Of course, Mr. McGruder, a Californian who was raised in a black middle-class family and attended private schools, has only a vicarious idea of what discrimination is, especially when filtered through tired liberal channels.

Not surprisingly, the most egregious insults are being hurled around in the environs of academia, which is ironic considering that Ms. Rice was once the provost of Stanford University. Much of the invective would have gone unnoticed in earlier years, but thanks to some alert conservative students and the Internet, the malicious incidents are coming to light.

At Seattle's Bellevue Community College, for example, an unnamed teacher changed the wording of a practice math quiz question to read: "Condoleezza holds a watermelon just over the edge of the roof of the 300-foot Federal Building, and tosses it up with a velocity of 20 feet per second."

Chelsey Richardson, one of the students who complained to college officials, felt that her concerns were not taken seriously enough, so she went to other sources. Eventually, as the news spread around the country, the college president, Jean Floten, issued an apology.
I'm quite sure this incident is being regarded by many "progressives" as much ado about nothing. Similarly, it's seen as just a joke that Oreo cookies allegedly were tossed at Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland who's now vying for the state's open Senate seat. It also must have seemed amusing for two of Senator Schumer's campaign workers to fraudulently obtain a copy of Mr. Steele's credit record in an effort to discredit him. Liberals are probably rolling in the aisles over the exposure of a Democratic plan to attack Mr. Steele on the basis of his race. Ha, ha.

When it comes to playing the race card, the master of them all is Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who transformed her alleged assault of a Capitol Hill policeman into a racial discrimination firestorm. Standing beside her on the podium as she mounted her "poor me" case were Harry "Day-O" Belafonte and the most fortunate-to-have-a-job actor in the world, Danny Glover.

I read a Ben McGrath article in the New Yorker about Mr. McGruder that quoted him as saying, "Those were the most oppressive years of my life." He was referring to his years at a "very strict, very, very white" Jesuit school. Of course those years were terrible, Aaron.

I know. I have visited the "Tunnel of Oppression."
When my editor told me to check out the "tunnel" at the College of Staten Island, I told him he'd have to pay me big time to sit through the exhibition on discrimination sponsored by the college's pluralism and diversity department. Nevertheless, I did manage to squeeze in a peek at the paper-enshrouded tunnel, which included all the epithets of oppression from A to Z. Looking around at those words, I realized that I'd been called at least half of them at one time or another in my life. I was unable to stay long enough for the interactive skits, role-plays, or video presentation, but I emailed the department to inquire what positive changes in society the program suggested. I have not yet received an answer.

Applying the word "oppressed" to one on the receiving end of epithets is ridiculous. It is rather the name-caller who is lacking in intellectual prowess and maturity. It is my fondest hope that the "Tunnel of Oppression" organizers promoted that view to the students attending the exhibit - but I doubt it. Instead, more McKinneys, Belafontes, Sharptons, Jacksons, McGruders, et al. will probably be bred to exploit the "oppression" gambit.
More than ever, blacks need the Michael Steeles, Lynn Swanns, Ken Blackwells, Herman Cains, and so many others who reject the concept of faux oppression and instead offer optimism and hope to their community.