Chapter One: The Race Card

“I have a dream that my four little 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.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

When Ben Shapiro went to speak at the University of California, Berkeley in September of 2017, protestors gathered outside the building where he was due to talk. Outside, police in riot gear separated the attendees of the event and violent left-wing protesters. Members of the radical anarcho-communist group, Antifa, were chanting that Shapiro was an alt-right Nazi.  They chose to ignore the fact that Shapiro is a devout Jew who wears a yarmulke.

Not only is Ben Shapiro a devout Jew, but, according to a report by the Anti-Defamation League, he was also the number one target of the alt-right in 2016. This fact didn't stop the website haaretz.com from calling Shapiro "As Alt-right as a Jew could get." This tactic is the leftist first go-to method for shutting down free speech.

By playing the race card, the leftist hope that the fear of being branded a racist will keep people in their place. Whenever someone does speak out, they will move in quick to proclaim that no one should listen to that dirty racist Nazi scum! Of course, someone could be talking about giving inner-city kids vouchers to get a better education, but since that is a Republican idea, it must be racist!

School vouchers would allow disadvantaged inner-city children attend private schools where the graduation rates are immensely higher than that of inner-city public schools. The far-left think tank, Center for American Progress, went as far as to compare school vouchers for inner-city school kids to Jim Crow laws of the past.

Rebecca Klein of the left-leaning Huffington Post claims that school vouchers will lead to students becoming racist because the student could attend a Christian school. Of course, according to the leftist, the belief in God is akin to being a hood wearing KKK member. Not only that, she opines that these schools could teach sexism. She would have you believe that disgraced producer, Harvey Weinstein, is the headmaster at all these private schools.

There are countless sites and people that will cite Brown vs. The Board of Education (hint: that was about segregation in public schools whereas vouchers will help end segregation in private schools). Randi Weingarten, President of "The American Federation of Teachers, stated in a speech to 1,400 teachers that giving inner-city parents equal access to private school is segregation. I am sure she got segregation mixed up with integration, but I could be wrong.

Since the only reason the Democrats are against school vouchers is that it would hurt the teacher’s union, they throw down the race card to stop all debate on the subject since their position on school choice is indefensible by any other means. Don't ask them why a court case dealing with public schools has anything to do with school vouchers. If you do, you are a racist.  Why not have their kids bussed into inner-city schools if they are so worried about segregation?

In truth, the banning of school vouchers only hurts the disadvantaged kids of the inner-city. The majority of people helped by school vouchers would be minority students from failing school districts, but by supporting school vouchers, the Democrats would lose a huge source of cash from the teachers unions. School vouchers are not a race issue; they are a dollar and cents issue.

During an awe-inspiring speech in Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr said, "I have a dream that my four little 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."

What King lays down seems like an honorable goal. To live in a color-blind society is what most people want us to achieve. So, what is the left's answer to King's challenge? They try to change the meaning of what he said to match their agenda. If you don't agree with this agenda, then, once again, you are racist. Unfortunately, even former reputable news agencies are now pushing this perverted interpretation of what King said in his famous speech.

CBS News interviewed Taylor Branch who wrote many books on MLK. He acknowledges that people widely condemn racism today, but according to Branch, the same people that condemn racism are subconsciously racist. This idea means no matter how color-blind you are, if you are white and disagree with the liberal agenda, then you are racist.

"Unfortunately, race in American history has been one area in which Americans kid themselves and pretend to be fair-minded when they really are not," Branch said in support of Affirmative Action which judges someone on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.

Dexter Bridgeman writes on The Race Card Project, a website founded by Peabody Award-winning journalist Michele Norris, in a comic-sans font that "'Content of character is NOT color-blindness. Color-consciousness is an aspiration that allows all of us to identify the beauty, intelligence, and differential greatness of varying races/ethnicities – all without ascribing character judgments without evidence to support such judgments."

We cannot ignore the apparent linguistic jiu-jitsu that Bridgeman used to reach his conclusion. He states, "Content of character is NOT color-blindness," but he doesn't address the "will not be judged by the color of their skin," part of the speech.  This cherry-picking of words is done by the leftist everywhere.

If something doesn't line up with your beliefs, then all you have to do is remove anything that challenges your understanding. This omitting of context is precisely the goal of what Bridgeman has done in explanation of King's speech. Affirmative Action is one of the most prominent places that we can see this perversion of facts technique.

In itself, affirmative action is a racist program. Affirmative action considers the race of the person first and foremost and actual ability and dare I say "content of character" comes in a distant second. A black student from a wealthy family who had private tutors all throughout school with lower SAT scores will get priority over the poor white kid from Appalachia, or the Asian student who works to help out his parents make rent.

This idea is the fallacy of affirmative action programs. I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Ben Carson speak in Sterling, VA during the 2016 election season. Dr. Carson spoke about this same situation in his speech. He talked about the need to replace affirmative action with what he calls "compassionate action."

"However, I think extra consideration should go to the second child, who has clearly demonstrated the tenacity and determination to succeed in the face of daunting odds. If that second child happens to be a member of a racial minority, obviously he would receive the extra consideration, as well," Dr. Carson wrote on Town Hall.

Dr. Carson removes the racial component of helping children who faced down the challenge life had given them. According to him, his children have an advantage over the poor white kid from the mountains. This approach seems like a perfectly reasonable and fair idea, but that isn't how the liberal media saw it.

Michelle Bernard of MSNBC accused Dr. Carson of "drinking to the Republican Kool-Aid."  You know because a black guy can't have his own opinions and see beyond race.

Ben Carson never claimed that there was no racism. He just thinks that children from economically challenging environments should receive little extra help no matter what race they are. In fact, most children helped out under Dr. Carson’s plan would be inner-city black kids, but giving up the race card is too much for the leftist to handle.

So, how do you knock down a brilliant brain surgeon who happens to be black?  You call him an "Uncle Tom" of course.  "Uncle Tom" is a racial epithet against a black person who is deemed subservient to the white race. The leftist brands any black person who rejects the left's agenda as an Uncle Tom, and the left automatically discounts their opinions.

The term "Uncle Tom" comes from the anti-slavery book by Harriet Beecher Stowe called Uncle's Tom Cabin. The people who use this term always seem to have a hard time naming the book; it is from much less knowing anything about the actual character, Uncle Tom.  Not knowing about the book is a shame because Abraham Lincoln himself said that the book is what started the war to free the slaves.

In the book, Uncle Tom can be viewed as not the subservient character the leftist would have you believe he was. Stowe herself called Tom the "noble hero" of the book. He is a character that doesn't bow to the slave owners. He just deals with what is in front of him.  Personally, I view going along with evil just to get by as evil itself, but Stowe had another opinion on the issue.

His character is not as clear-cut as some would have you believe. He stands up for his beliefs throughout the book and never really sells out to the white slave owners who just happen to be Democrats. Wait!  Now I see why Dr. Carson is called an Uncle Tom.

The famed pediatric neurosurgeon was called Uncle Tom so much that he was forced to respond. During an interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, he said, "They feel if you look a certain way then you have to stay on the plantation. You know I've heard that some people refer to me as an Uncle Tom. Obviously, they don't know what an Uncle Tom is because they need to read the Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin to see that he was very, very subservient, kind of go along to get along type person."

Ben Carson isn't the only person to get this derogatory label for not following the liberal agenda. Colion Noir is an outspoken second amendment advocate and has worked with the NRA on gun rights issues. Other than the single issue of gun rights, he has not advocated for any other "right wing" issues.

This single issue of gun rights is enough for the leftist to deem him an Uncle Tom. Any leftist point, no matter how small, that a black person disagrees with is enough to send the leftist army after them. It is sickening that the "big tent" people are so closed minded. The liberal power base does not want black people thinking for themselves.

Noir told the Los Angeles Times, "Calling me an Uncle Tom simply because I'm into firearms, it doesn't even make sense. My entire identity as a black guy is based on my ownership of guns? Really?" He then points out, "Some of the most influential black individuals have advocated for the use of firearms, so how come when I do it, I'm vilified? Take a look at the Black Panthers, MLK, Malcolm X."

These facts that Noir lays out are too much for the left to take. Noir is correct when he states that MLK wasn't anti-gun. In fact, the opposite is true, after King's house was firebombed, he applied for a handgun permit. This evidence doesn't fit the most left narrative, so they just omit the fact.

So, why is Colion Noir a sellout? It is because his ideas don't line up precisely with the radical left. The leftist function as one giant hive mind. According to the modern day progressive, black people can't have different opinions from the rest of the left unless they are secretly working for the "white man."  Ridiculous as it sounds, this is something they believe.

We see this over and over again and not just with Ben Carson and Colion Noir.  Condoleezza Rice, who was once the most powerful woman in the world, has been called an Uncle Tom as well. Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, yup another Uncle Tom. How about famous ex-football player and Republican, Lynn Swann?  It seems he is an Uncle Tom as well.

You get the picture? The leftist will play the race card against minorities who break from their group. I don't think this is what MLK was talking about when he spoke of what he wanted for the future of America. In fact, I believe King would want people to form their own ideas and not have opinions spoon-fed to them. Unfortunately, that isn't what the left wants. It is all about holding onto power, and they cannot keep their grasp on that power without the minority vote.

--------------------------------------------------

It is all about using the race card as a system of control. Let's look at the Black Lives Matter movement which was founded by the non-black Shaun King, and see how they push the myth of the police hit squads roaming the cities looking for innocent black people to gun down in cold blood.

Before we open up that can of worms, let’s talk about the founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Shaun King. He claims to be half black. His mother is white, and so is his father. So how is he half black? When confronted by the facts, King gave a rambling answer that the left just accepted at face value.

King claims his mom had an affair with a light-skinned black man although he admits he doesn't know who this guy is. He argues that this mystery man is his father. The only issue with that is that according to King's birth certificate, his father is listed as white. In 1995, when he was the arrested, the police report listed him as white as well. Everything points to him being white accept an unproven conversation between him and his mother that only he can seem to remember.

Vicki Pate was the investigative journalist who uncovered the evidence of Shaun King's racial heritage. Instead of being thanked for revealing the truth of someone trying to play the left as fools, the left attacked her and accused her of being racist. Yes! Racist for uncovering the fact that one of the heroes of the left is a white guy pretending to be a black guy like the Robert Downey Jr character from Tropic Thunder.

So, one might ask why the leftist protect Shaun King when the trans-racial Rachel Dolezal gets thrown under the proverbial bus? I think it has to do with the fact that if you admit that Shaun King is a fraud you might have to consider that the Black Lives Matter movement he started might also be a farce. To the leftist, that is more than they are willing to do, so anyone that points out that Shaun King is white is attacked as being a racist.

Now back to the original point of Black Lives Matter. The BLM movement likes to push that police are systematically gunning down black people all over the United States. Now it would be naive for me to say police brutality doesn't exist, and there are plenty of examples to show that it does. What the question has to be is: is it a case of systematic racism?

“People of color are scared to walk and drive on their own streets," the Rev. Kenneth Sullivan said of the shooting of Aaron Baily, who was an eleven-time felon with an outstanding warrant who led police on a chase. “We need the community to be able to participate in something that brings resolve to this open season on black men.”

Is this the case?  Is it "open season on black men" by the police? Are there police death squads roaming our city streets? To me, this sounds like a bad science fiction movie from the 80s about a dystopian future. The Running Man, I am looking at you!

Let's start by removing all factors in police shootings and just look at race when it comes to police shootings in 2017. For the time being, we will just look at the raw numbers and not whether the shootings were justified or not. We will use this as our baseline and then we will dig deeper into some instances of police shootings.

In 2017, there were 987 police shootings. Out of these 987 incidents, police shot white people 457 times which is almost half of all the shootings in the United States. Police shot blacks a total of 223 times which is 23% of the total police shootings. Blacks currently make up 12.3% of the population. Hispanics were involved in 179 shootings which are 18% of all shootings, but they make up 12.5%.

The leftist will point to this as "the smoking gun" of police on minority violence, but with statistics, you can make any case for anything. That is the power of statistics. It is just how you spin the numbers. If you try to argue that point, you will be deemed a racist for trying to defend a racist police force.

Out of the 223 cases of police shootings involving a black suspect, all but 20 involved armed suspects. Now I am not saying all armed citizens are a danger, but it does raise a tingle in my “spider senses.” There just might be something more to it than police just gunning down a black man with a legally carried firearm. Notice I said, "man"? We will get more into that a little later.

Before we go any further, we should point out that the national average of unarmed people being shot by cops in 2017 was 7%.  Unarmed whites are 30% more likely to be shot by police than blacks. This fact doesn't fit the leftist narrative, so anyone who brings up these statistics is racist, and we all know a racist shouldn't have a voice in the conversation.

Now let's look at the 2% of all police shootings that involve an unarmed black person.  Right away you noticed the percentage dropped from 23% to 2% by just removing the cases where the suspects were armed. This ability to change perception is the power of statistics.   When you modify the narrative on a race issue by doing something like removing armed suspects, the left will deem you a racist.

JR Williams was one of the unarmed suspects that was killed by police. Williams wasn't just walking down the street when police cut him down in a hail of bullets. As usual, there is more to the case, although when arguing that point you will be accused of racism for digging deeper for the truth.

Williams, who was a registered sex offender, was driving a car when police pulled it over to execute a felony arrest warrant on a passenger in the vehicle Williams was driving. Police took one other person into custody for their safety. Williams broke away from police and started running down the street.

Police pursued Williams on foot. While running away from police, Williams threatened to shoot the cops and said he had a weapon. This point in time was not when police opened fire.  Williams stopped, turned, and reached into his jacket. He brought up his hand like he had a gun.  This point was when police opened fire.

So let’s recap. Williams, who was a registered sex offender, was driving around a wanted felon. When police were taking the men into custody, Williams decided to run from the scene causing the police to chase him. While running, he threatened to kill them and stated he had a weapon. He reached into his jacket, mimicking drawing a gun. Yup, the police were wrong, and only a racist would defend them.

After reviewing all shootings involving police and unarmed black people, only two appears to be a "bad shoot." In both of those cases, The DA charged the cops with murder. One other example was questionable and is still under investigation. That leaves us with one incident where police shot an unarmed black person. Tragically that person was caught in the crossfire between police and her boyfriend.

The excessive use of force by police accounts for less than 1% of all police shootings by any measurement. Since this is the critical reason that Black Lives Matter exist, the left must protect the general population from hearing the actual stats, or it threatens the voting block that the BLM movement brings in to the Democratic Party. This revelation could severely limit the power of the radical left.

Ben Shapiro is fond of saying, "facts don't care about your feelings," and the left knows this. So being in an indefensible place, the leftist has no other choice than to de-platform the people on the right. They pull out the race card and slam it on the table and yell, "you're racist!"

Out of the 987 police shootings in 2017 an incredible 95% or 940 of them were against males. If we want to look at police shootings that way that Black Lives Matter plans to look at them, then we really need to start a group called "Male Lives Matter." The left has built the Black Lives Matter movement on a myth. We need to highlight the myth even if we are deemed racist.

You might ask what Shaun King gets out of this charade? Well, the man who is a professional activist amassed a fortune of $500,000 in 2017. King, who doesn't have a day job, earned his money from running Courageous Church in Atlanta, GA as well as several charities.  For King, it isn't about bringing change to anyone. It is about bringing money to his pocket.

Not only is the race card used to protect leftist groups like Black Lives Matter, but it is also used to attack right-leaning groups like the Tea Party. Even though identity politics doesn't play a role in the Tea Party, the left still calls them racist, and therefore, their voices do not count in the national debate.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) has called the Tea Party racist on many occasions. When pushed to explain why the Tea Party is racist instead of giving examples and reasons, he answers with rhetoric to deflect any actual reasoning.

“If the hood fits, wear it,” Grayson said when asked why he thought the Tea Party was racist. “The Tea Party has engaged in relentless racist attacks against our African-American President."

What Rep. Grayson is saying is that if you dared to go against former-President Obama, then you must be a racist. He dismisses the idea that people could have different views than Obama. By being racist, then automatically any disagreements with Obama are discounted as the racist attacks of rednecks. Even if these differences in policies come from prominent African Americans such as JC Watts or Alan West, they were just Uncle Toms.

The left-leaning website, Vox, even ran a story about how the Tea Party is based on "southern racism."  Vox went as far as calling the Tea Party the new home for the southern racist. Their reasoning was simple. More people in the south considered themselves members of the Tea Party than people in the north. Since they think people in the south are racist because they tend to vote Republican; therefore, the Tea Party must be racist.

Why not just ask the members of the Tea Party if they hold racist views, or ask questions about what they thought of blacks?  Vox's answer was simple.  They believed that the Tea Party members would lie, so they used the stereotype that people in the south are racist and these racist use stereotypes to prove their point. Yes, you read that right. They used a stereotype to show that others are racist by using stereotypes. That is a lot of BS to ingest.

Cokie Roberts, of NPR, was on the MSNBC show "The Morning Joe" to talk about the Tea Party. "Some of this Tea Party anger is racist. And that having a non-black person on the ticket will diffuse it to some degree," she stated without giving any further evidence.

This woman is a seasoned journalist throwing around names like she was in junior high.   Cokie Roberts isn't alone in her name calling. News Week ran a story asking if the Tea Party was racist. They stated that the phrase "taking our country back" was racist.  They surmised that the Tea Party was talking about taking our country back from a black President.

To the Tea Party, that phrase meant something different than what News Week surmised.  The phrase "taking our country back" means to take the country back from the liberal agenda that is pushing our country towards socialism. It means “taking our country back" from the corruption in the Clinton State Department and the Department of Justice under Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder. Once again these are things that the left cannot defend so they play their race card and call the Tea Party racist southern rednecks.

The leftist pushes the notion that if the Tea Party is racist, so are all their beliefs. If their ideas are racist, then there is no need to defend your views against those of the Tea Party.   Once again, we see the political jiu-jitsu on full display. The leftist would much rather attack the person or the group through character assassination  than have to engage in a war of ideas.

Look at what happened to Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC). During an Obama speech to Congress, Obama said Obamacare would not apply to illegal aliens. Rep. Wilson broke protocol and yelled, "you lie!"  The leftist media descended on him like a pack of wild dogs with calls of "racism." It didn't matter if Joe Wilson was later proven right when Obamacare was used to cover illegal aliens.

The leftist-ran propaganda website AlterNet ran a story on Rep. Wilson to try to tie him to racism. They highlighted he was an aid to the "notorious" Senator Strom Thurmond (wasn't Hillary Clinton mentored by Robert Byrd who was the head of the KKK?). The article used anything to tie him to racism.

The site even mentions that he worked in the Reagan administration. They treat this like it was some smoking gun. The crazy part is that Reagan is one of the most successful and well-respected presidents in the history of the Country. I guess the website thinks since he is the father of modern-day conservatism that President Reagan must have been a racist.

Joe Wilson decided to hold a town hall meeting at Aiken Technical College to explain why he was against Obamacare and take questions from the general public. Instead of listening to Wilson's well thought out points, or challenging Wilson's ideas with their own, the leftist took to chanting "you lie" to prevent those in attendance from hearing what he had to say or asking questions.

You would think after eight years that the leftist would move on from shouting down Rep. Wilson in town halls, but that isn't how the leftist work. As of 2017, Rep. Wilson is still being shouted down, and his town halls are being interrupted by the rabid left who considers any criticism of Obama a form of racism.  Rep. Joe Wilson is a marked man for the left.

The far leftist doesn’t just save this card for use in the political sphere. The zany leftist has been known to use this card to deflect personal criticism or get out of trouble.

When Harvard Professor, Henry Louis Gates, returned home from a trip to China, he found he lost his key. He started to try to force entry into his home. A neighbor who was concerned that a break-in was happening called 911. Police showed up as Gates was forcing the front door open.

Instead of explaining to the police why he was breaking down the front door, Gates became belligerent with the officers. The officers tried to calm Gates down, but he became more combative with the officers. This belligerence led to Gates being arrested for disorderly conduct.

Gates claimed police arrested him for "being black." Most people who have investigated the case have widely dismissed the charge of racism. Gates even admitted that he did not follow the orders of a police officer that was responding to the scene of a possible break-in. He told The Root, “The way he said it, I knew he wasn't canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, 'No, I will not.'" Gates went on, "He demanded that I step out on the porch, and I don't think he would have done that if I was a white person."

It is more likely Gates following the officer out the door yelling at him and threatening to have him fired had more to do with Gates getting arrested, but playing the race card did get the charges dismissed, but Gates was not satisfied because there was blood in the water. He saw an opportunity to portray the police as racist thugs.

The Divider and Chief, Obama, weighed in on the topic when he said, "Now, I've – I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say; number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

Obama was right.  He didn't have all the facts.  One fact was that one of the two officers on the scene was black himself.  He backed up the actions of the arresting officer "100%." Colin Powel even said, "I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal," when referring to Gates.

Gates did choose to make it a big deal, and when it blew up in his face, he got invited to the White House for the "Beer Summit." Obama considered it a teachable moment for police relations with the black community. I think it a teachable moment of how not to act like an idiot.  In the end, Gates never apologized to the arresting officers for asserting that they were racist.

Then we have the story of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) who used her political privilege to bump a passenger out of a first-class seat on a United flight. The passenger was upset and rightfully so. She took to twitter to criticize United Airlines and Sheila Jackson Lee for taking her place.

Sheila Jackson Lee could have done a lot of things. She could tell her side of the story.  Maybe Jackson Lee didn't know United bumped another passenger, so she could have a first-class seat. She could have offered the displaced passenger her seat back, or she could have apologized to the passenger.

She didn't do any of the above. What she did do was label the passenger a racist for getting upset that United gave her seat away to Jackson Lee.

Sheila Jackson Lee was in the wrong. Instead of owning up she decided to shut down the conversation because "who listens to what a racist has to say?"

------------------------------

Now there is a catch-all if none of above works. It is a term that plays to the lowest common denominator in identity politics. The left likes to use this term to shut down any debate they can't win. When the right hopelessly defeats the left in the arena of ideas, they use the term "white privilege."

White privilege means merely that you have some mythical rainbow around you if you are white. No matter what you overcome in your life, it will never be more significant than a struggle of someone of color.

You have your unearned privilege to thank for your success! It wasn't your hard work. It wasn't your drive. You as a white person don't deserve the credit. The mythical white fairy godmother helped you out.

As you can probably tell, I don't buy into this notion of identity politics. More than that, the whole idea that someone's success has nothing to do with the person putting in hard work into achieving their goal is just insulting. Assuming someone was just handed something because of their race is possibly racist.

The term has been around for a long time. It was first introduced to the American lexicon in 1988 by Peggy McIntosh who co-opted the term “white skin privilege."  The civil rights movement used  the name during the 1950s and 1960s.

"White skin privilege" was the referring to poor whites feeling superior to their black counterparts. During the civil rights era, there were separate water fountains, blacks had to ride at the back of the bus, and the schools were still segregated. So, I can see how this might be based more in line with reality than "white privilege."

The term "white privilege" went away but has been reborn as a tool of the left. Today white privilege is used for one thing. That is to shut down debate. If you are losing a discussion just say, "check your privilege, man." Then just walk away victorious over that racist remark.

What this does is devalue the opinion of a white person because of the color of their skin.  Unless, of course, the white person's opinion agrees with that of the leftist, then it is highly valued as the ideas of an enlightened person. You see, white privilege is a one-way street with a predetermined conclusion.

No matter how good anyone's ideas are and how sound their reasoning is, if the end doesn't end up where the leftist says it should be, then you are not "checking your privilege," and automatically you are a subconscious racist.  This method is just the left's attempt at fixing the race.