Proving once again that there's no minimum IQ required to be a (supposedly nationally syndicated!) pundit, Walter Williams continues cranking out horribly-written attempts to justify right-wing policies. Today, he's angry at black people for thinking that racism still exists! Seriously, take a look:
"Years ago it was easy to be a racist. All you had to be was a white person using some of the racial epithets that are routinely used in song and everyday speech by many of today's blacks. Or you had to chant "two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate" when a black student showed up for admission to your high school or college. Of course, there was that dressing up in a hooded white gown. In any case, you didn't have to be sophisticated to be a racist."
Okay, there doesn't seem to be anything too crazy there, he's just setting up his point by discussing how outre racism used to be. I don't know how comfortable I am with his glib dismissal of 'dressing up in a hooded white gown', though, since what they often did after dressing up in those robes was, you know, lynch someone. The bigger problem with this paragraph is his suggestion that only positive action can be called 'racism' - actually calling people nigger or protesting integration was actually racist. Simply living as a white person in the Jim Crow south without doing anything to oppose it? No, that's just folks, according to Walter Williams.
"Today all that has changed. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., pointed that out back in 1994 when the Republican-led Congress pushed for tax relief. Rangel denounced Republicans' plan as a form of modern-day racism, saying, "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. (Instead,) they say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" That means the simple use of the N-word is not enough to make one a racist. If it were, blacks would be the nation's premier racists. Today it's the call for tax cuts that makes you a racist. That's why the "tea" party, short for "taxed enough already," is nothing more than organized racists. What makes tea partyers even more racist is their constant call for the White House and Congress to return to the confines of the Constitution."
So things just went nuts in that second paragraph, didn't they? I'm not going to weigh in on the validity of Rangel's claim - I think there's an argument to be made that since a disproportionate number of minorities reside at the bottom end of the economic spectrum and since the very top end is nearly all-white, that an action designed to screw over the bottom and give money to the top can be called racist, but I'm not here to make it - I want to talk about the more insidious aspect of this paragraph. The 'Tea Party' movement has been widely criticized for a lack of racial diversity, and more narrowly criticized for being racist as a result. Also the 'witch doctor' placard didn't help. Rather than address these complaints against the Tea Party movement, Williams wants to dismiss them by associating extremists "today" with something Charlie Rangel said 17 years ago. As if that one comment has become the left-wing's defining thesis. This is a wilfully specious argument, since no one could reasonably be expected to naturally follow the line of reasoning he sets out here: People call tea partiers racist. Charlie Rangel said tax cuts for the rich are racist in 1994. Tea partiers like giving the rich tax cuts. Ergo: People must be complaining about the Tea Party's love of tax cuts because they stupidly believe that one thing Charlie Rangel said! 17 years ago!
Sometimes the jigsaw pieces will never fit together no matter how hard you hammer them, Walter.
Also, that's the second time in two paragraphs that Williams seems aggrieved by black culture's attempt to reclaim the word 'nigger'. I guess as a man old enough to have been regularly called that in an oppressively insulting way seeing the youth attempting to remove the word's power must sting him a disproportionately large amount, but rather than make any kind of a point, all he does is show how out-of-touch he is with modern strategies to defeat racism without abandoning culture.
Walter Williams, sadly, has never been anyone's nigga.
"Racism has other guises. Say that you're a believer in Martin Luther King's wish, expressed in his "I Have a Dream" speech, that our "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." The call to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin is really code for racism. There's no question about one's racial antipathy if he voted for measures such as California's Proposition 209, Michigan's Proposal 2, Washington state's Initiative 200 or Nebraska's Civil Rights Initiative 424. These measures outlaw judging people by the color of their skin for admission to college, awarding of government contracts and employment. The call for equal treatment is simply racism by stealth and is far more insidious than name-calling and hood-donning."
And now Walter has gotten to the part of his article where he just insults his audience's intelligence. Let's just dismiss it outright, shall we? MLK was setting that day of content-character-judging as a goal. Not saying it was already here. Opposing affirmative action does not make you a follower of MLK. You can tell, because there's a surprising amount over overlap between the politicians who oppose affirmative action and those who opposed MLK day.
Yes, that was glib, but it's not like we have to seriously debunk Walter Williams' point here - no one is stupid enough to believe what he's saying - nice to see that he's continuing to dismiss the KKK, though. You know, someone who's apparently 'so over' lynching really doesn't have a right to get upset about the mainstreaming of 'nigga'.
"One might think that seeing as America elected its first black president, it would usher in the end of racism; but it's all a racist plot that's easily uncovered simply by asking: "Who really elected Obama to the presidency?" It surely wasn't black people. Of the 69 million votes that Obama received in the 2008 election, I doubt whether even 7 or 8 million came from blacks. That means white people put Obama in office, and that means he is beholden to white people, not black people."
It's a racist plot? By who? To what end? Are you saying that Obama was put into office in order to get black people to think they have political power? Again, I'm going to ask by whom, and to what end? This paragraph is just nonsense. Of course black people didn't 'put him in office' - McCain's handlers did that by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. Nice that Walter didn't bother researching the number of black voters, black voter turnout, and percentage of black people that voted for Obama (spoiler alert: it was almost all of them). I mean, I didn't do the research, but I'm not being paid to sound authoritative. I'm not even really trying to. It just happens accidentally when I oppose the nonsense Walter Williams spouts.
"You say, "Williams, that's preposterous! What's your evidence?" Just look at the unemployment statistics. White unemployment is 8 percent, and black unemployment is double that, at 17 percent, and in some cities, black unemployment is near 30 percent. It's gotten so bad under Obama's presidency that New York's Urban Justice Center has appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council for help. But Obama's tired of black complaints. Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus to "Stop whining!" "Take off your bedroom slippers; put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining; stop grumbling; stop crying." This kind of talk is unprecedented. Just ask yourself: "When have I ever heard a Democratic or a Republican leader talk this way to his party's strongest supporters? Would Obama tell Jews to stop whining about Israel? Would he tell unions to stop grumbling about card check? Would he tell feminists, if they were complaining about sex discrimination, to shake it off?""
Okay, first off, he didn't say that. He might have said those words, but Walter is stripping them out of context to make a point, which is just another fun kind of lying. It's like the 'global test' line that Kerry was hammered on in the 2004 debate. That's not what he meant, no one believes that's what he meant, but his opponents are happy to lie about it if they think it can drive a wedge between him and the black community. Also, what exactly does Walter think that Obama could have done to quickly deal with black urban unemployment? That's a problem largely caused by the complete deindustrialization of American urban centres, something that globalists like Walter Williams are completely in favour of.
"This kind of political treatment of blacks should not be surprising, because black people are a one-party people in a two-party system. That means Democratic politicians have learned to take the black vote for granted, and Republicans make little effort to get it. That's not smart for blacks to set themselves up that way."
Saying blacks have no electoral power is a joke. They're key to numerous senate races and a large number of congressional seats, not to mention extremely close governorships all across the nation. And those seven million votes you so glibly dismiss above come in very handy any year the Republicans don't nominate a corrupt zombie and a moron for the highest office in the land. You say blacks have no bargaining position since they won't vote Republican, but that's not true - on election day, if they're not excited about what the President will do for them, they can stay home - to devastating results. Of course, Walter, you know that already, which is why you offer up the absurd premise that Obama is the real racist because he joked with an audience that cheered in response - you want the black voters to stay home in 2012. Despite your best efforts, I doubt you'll be able to convince them to.
If I were a revolutionary socialist I would call Walter Williams a collaborator, if I enjoyed misusing literary references I'd call him an Uncle Tom. However you want to phrase it, the fact is that he's a black guy who just got paid by a bunch of rich white people to attempt to discourage other black people from resenting rich white people. Is it actually ironic that he hates affirmative action, or just funny? Maybe he just doesn't want any other token black conservatives elbowing in on his racket.
Frankly, I don't even know how he goes in to work every morning. Oh, wait, that's wrong - I do: He drives in the sweet Lexus that his toadying bought him.
"Years ago it was easy to be a racist. All you had to be was a white person using some of the racial epithets that are routinely used in song and everyday speech by many of today's blacks. Or you had to chant "two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate" when a black student showed up for admission to your high school or college. Of course, there was that dressing up in a hooded white gown. In any case, you didn't have to be sophisticated to be a racist."
Okay, there doesn't seem to be anything too crazy there, he's just setting up his point by discussing how outre racism used to be. I don't know how comfortable I am with his glib dismissal of 'dressing up in a hooded white gown', though, since what they often did after dressing up in those robes was, you know, lynch someone. The bigger problem with this paragraph is his suggestion that only positive action can be called 'racism' - actually calling people nigger or protesting integration was actually racist. Simply living as a white person in the Jim Crow south without doing anything to oppose it? No, that's just folks, according to Walter Williams.
"Today all that has changed. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., pointed that out back in 1994 when the Republican-led Congress pushed for tax relief. Rangel denounced Republicans' plan as a form of modern-day racism, saying, "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. (Instead,) they say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" That means the simple use of the N-word is not enough to make one a racist. If it were, blacks would be the nation's premier racists. Today it's the call for tax cuts that makes you a racist. That's why the "tea" party, short for "taxed enough already," is nothing more than organized racists. What makes tea partyers even more racist is their constant call for the White House and Congress to return to the confines of the Constitution."
So things just went nuts in that second paragraph, didn't they? I'm not going to weigh in on the validity of Rangel's claim - I think there's an argument to be made that since a disproportionate number of minorities reside at the bottom end of the economic spectrum and since the very top end is nearly all-white, that an action designed to screw over the bottom and give money to the top can be called racist, but I'm not here to make it - I want to talk about the more insidious aspect of this paragraph. The 'Tea Party' movement has been widely criticized for a lack of racial diversity, and more narrowly criticized for being racist as a result. Also the 'witch doctor' placard didn't help. Rather than address these complaints against the Tea Party movement, Williams wants to dismiss them by associating extremists "today" with something Charlie Rangel said 17 years ago. As if that one comment has become the left-wing's defining thesis. This is a wilfully specious argument, since no one could reasonably be expected to naturally follow the line of reasoning he sets out here: People call tea partiers racist. Charlie Rangel said tax cuts for the rich are racist in 1994. Tea partiers like giving the rich tax cuts. Ergo: People must be complaining about the Tea Party's love of tax cuts because they stupidly believe that one thing Charlie Rangel said! 17 years ago!
Sometimes the jigsaw pieces will never fit together no matter how hard you hammer them, Walter.
Also, that's the second time in two paragraphs that Williams seems aggrieved by black culture's attempt to reclaim the word 'nigger'. I guess as a man old enough to have been regularly called that in an oppressively insulting way seeing the youth attempting to remove the word's power must sting him a disproportionately large amount, but rather than make any kind of a point, all he does is show how out-of-touch he is with modern strategies to defeat racism without abandoning culture.
Walter Williams, sadly, has never been anyone's nigga.
"Racism has other guises. Say that you're a believer in Martin Luther King's wish, expressed in his "I Have a Dream" speech, that our "children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." The call to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin is really code for racism. There's no question about one's racial antipathy if he voted for measures such as California's Proposition 209, Michigan's Proposal 2, Washington state's Initiative 200 or Nebraska's Civil Rights Initiative 424. These measures outlaw judging people by the color of their skin for admission to college, awarding of government contracts and employment. The call for equal treatment is simply racism by stealth and is far more insidious than name-calling and hood-donning."
And now Walter has gotten to the part of his article where he just insults his audience's intelligence. Let's just dismiss it outright, shall we? MLK was setting that day of content-character-judging as a goal. Not saying it was already here. Opposing affirmative action does not make you a follower of MLK. You can tell, because there's a surprising amount over overlap between the politicians who oppose affirmative action and those who opposed MLK day.
Yes, that was glib, but it's not like we have to seriously debunk Walter Williams' point here - no one is stupid enough to believe what he's saying - nice to see that he's continuing to dismiss the KKK, though. You know, someone who's apparently 'so over' lynching really doesn't have a right to get upset about the mainstreaming of 'nigga'.
"One might think that seeing as America elected its first black president, it would usher in the end of racism; but it's all a racist plot that's easily uncovered simply by asking: "Who really elected Obama to the presidency?" It surely wasn't black people. Of the 69 million votes that Obama received in the 2008 election, I doubt whether even 7 or 8 million came from blacks. That means white people put Obama in office, and that means he is beholden to white people, not black people."
It's a racist plot? By who? To what end? Are you saying that Obama was put into office in order to get black people to think they have political power? Again, I'm going to ask by whom, and to what end? This paragraph is just nonsense. Of course black people didn't 'put him in office' - McCain's handlers did that by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. Nice that Walter didn't bother researching the number of black voters, black voter turnout, and percentage of black people that voted for Obama (spoiler alert: it was almost all of them). I mean, I didn't do the research, but I'm not being paid to sound authoritative. I'm not even really trying to. It just happens accidentally when I oppose the nonsense Walter Williams spouts.
"You say, "Williams, that's preposterous! What's your evidence?" Just look at the unemployment statistics. White unemployment is 8 percent, and black unemployment is double that, at 17 percent, and in some cities, black unemployment is near 30 percent. It's gotten so bad under Obama's presidency that New York's Urban Justice Center has appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council for help. But Obama's tired of black complaints. Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus to "Stop whining!" "Take off your bedroom slippers; put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining; stop grumbling; stop crying." This kind of talk is unprecedented. Just ask yourself: "When have I ever heard a Democratic or a Republican leader talk this way to his party's strongest supporters? Would Obama tell Jews to stop whining about Israel? Would he tell unions to stop grumbling about card check? Would he tell feminists, if they were complaining about sex discrimination, to shake it off?""
Okay, first off, he didn't say that. He might have said those words, but Walter is stripping them out of context to make a point, which is just another fun kind of lying. It's like the 'global test' line that Kerry was hammered on in the 2004 debate. That's not what he meant, no one believes that's what he meant, but his opponents are happy to lie about it if they think it can drive a wedge between him and the black community. Also, what exactly does Walter think that Obama could have done to quickly deal with black urban unemployment? That's a problem largely caused by the complete deindustrialization of American urban centres, something that globalists like Walter Williams are completely in favour of.
"This kind of political treatment of blacks should not be surprising, because black people are a one-party people in a two-party system. That means Democratic politicians have learned to take the black vote for granted, and Republicans make little effort to get it. That's not smart for blacks to set themselves up that way."
Saying blacks have no electoral power is a joke. They're key to numerous senate races and a large number of congressional seats, not to mention extremely close governorships all across the nation. And those seven million votes you so glibly dismiss above come in very handy any year the Republicans don't nominate a corrupt zombie and a moron for the highest office in the land. You say blacks have no bargaining position since they won't vote Republican, but that's not true - on election day, if they're not excited about what the President will do for them, they can stay home - to devastating results. Of course, Walter, you know that already, which is why you offer up the absurd premise that Obama is the real racist because he joked with an audience that cheered in response - you want the black voters to stay home in 2012. Despite your best efforts, I doubt you'll be able to convince them to.
If I were a revolutionary socialist I would call Walter Williams a collaborator, if I enjoyed misusing literary references I'd call him an Uncle Tom. However you want to phrase it, the fact is that he's a black guy who just got paid by a bunch of rich white people to attempt to discourage other black people from resenting rich white people. Is it actually ironic that he hates affirmative action, or just funny? Maybe he just doesn't want any other token black conservatives elbowing in on his racket.
Frankly, I don't even know how he goes in to work every morning. Oh, wait, that's wrong - I do: He drives in the sweet Lexus that his toadying bought him.
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