A Response To A Gray Headed Brother

Every time I read some Lib say something like "We haven't learned" or "America is still racist", it makes my blood boil. A few years ago, an article appeared in our local paper, entitled "America Should Honor King's Teachings".

The article was written by a Mr. David Love, who I later found out was a Philadelphia lawyer who had written the article to commemorate Martin Luther King day, and it had somehow been syndicated in many papers across the country.

I say "somehow" because his astounding lack of knowledge about our history didn't deserve publication, in my opinion. Following are some highlights from my response:

To the Editor:

According to your guest columnist, David A. Love, in the article entitled, "America Should Honor King's Teachings", (Herald Mail, Monday Jan. 16) "Americans have learned few lessons" since the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Is that so, Mr. Love?

Today, a black man can enter any restaurant or lunch counter anywhere in America, including the deep south, and sit down next to a white man without fear of being lynched. Or even frowned upon.

And we haven't learned?

No more are there two sets of bathrooms or drinking fountains, one labeled white and one labeled colored. Today a black man can drink from any water source he wants to without fear of angering any white people. In fact, it is doubtful that any white people would give him a second glance.

And we haven't learned?

There are no more lynchings, no more black church bombings, no more middle of the night abductions of black people followed by brutal beatings.

And we haven't learned?

No one forces black girls to sit in the back of the bus, or stands in the doorway of schools to block their entrance.

And we haven't learned?

Today Black writers can write editorials that make outrageously racially biased statements without fear of retribution. You couldn't have written your piece in a mainstream newspaper in 1960, Mr. Love.

What haven't we learned?

Yes, Mr. Love, there are isolated incidents where some backward, ignorant racist, white people burn crosses in front yards and scrawl racist graffiti on black people's houses, etc. But those instances are few and far between. And there are more, much more incidents of black racists committing racially motivated crimes nowadays.

Mr. Love also writes, "The devastation in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast brought to light the lingering problems of race and class."

Recently some interesting information was reported in newspapers and on television and radio news outlets across the country: More white people were effected adversely by the hurricanes than blacks.

What lingering problems, Mr. Love?

Next, Mr. Love makes this claim:

"And the nation squanders away it's resources on the failed war in Iraq."

Oh really? What exactly, is Mr. Love's criteria for what constitutes a "failed war"?

For the first time since Saddam Hussein gained power in Iraq, free and independent elections have been held. Not just one. Three of them in the last year.

A murderous, vicious, sadistic dictator, who had hundreds of thousands of his own people slaughtered has been deposed.

Torture and rape rooms all over Iraq have been shut down. Women, who up until now, have been treated as second class citizens at best and pack animals at worst, have attained personhood in Iraq.

And all this at the cost of many less American lives than have died in any of America's previous wars.

And we haven't learned?

His last point:

"On March 31, 1968 King preached his final sermon...four days before his assassination. In the sermon, he noted that, 'one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, and the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.'"

Mr. Love (and let me now add, Mr. Gray Headed Brother), it's time to wake up from your 35 year nap, and see what Americans have learned.

Now, allow me to expound further.

Thanks to affirmative action, (a particular piece of legislation that was specifically intended to force whites to elevate blacks to superiority over whites regardless of qualifications) blacks have even more opportunity in every facet of American life than ever before, from jobs where they get first choice regardless of level of competence, to first choice in University admissions, regardless of aptitude.

It is blacks themselves who keep the black people down. Our American government has bent over backwards to appease our black brothers, but still they scream racism every time they see an opportunity to play the victim and extract some further special favors. We have created an entitlement mentality in the black community.

And, for the love of God, can someone explain for me, please, why it is only called "racism" if it is whites discriminating against blacks?

Because, the way I see it, blacks discriminate against whites much more often than the other way around, and few people are labeling that attitude racism.

Indeed, out of respect for the black race in this country, white America no longer uses a dictionary of racial words to describe blacks. On the other hand, have blacks stopped calling whites honky, cracker, whitey, or peckerwoods? Even the word, "white" is often spat as if it were a racial epithet itself. Have any whites screamed "racism" at that?

Brother, stop playing the victim and join the majority of Americans in the fight against injustice of every color.