The Race Business is alive and well. I was at work, watching the markets dive during the installation ceremonies for Obama, so I did not hear Lowery’s speech (I will not honor it with the appellation “benediction”).
I was beginning to be persuaded by people whose thoughts I admire like David Horowitz who said:
...as conservatives who have been through the culture wars -- we need to get past the mixed feelings we will inevitably have as the nation marks its progress in moving away from the racial divisions and divisiveness of the past. These feelings come not from resistance to the change, but from the knowledge that this celebration should have taken place decades ago and that its delay was not least because our opponents saw political advantage in playing the race card against us and making us its slandered targets.
Despite repeated messages from the black spokesmen that told us they would continue to play the race card … after all, if they can’t do their jobs, they will be unemployed; I saw a glimmer of hope that the corner may have been turned.
How disappointing to have that dream shattered during the inauguration by this brutal reminder:
Lowery on ME and every other white man or woman:
Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around...when yellow will be mellow... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right.
This is the Black Leadership way. Their reason for being. Their rice bowl. The “when did you stop beating your wife” moment.
And shook me back to reality.
2 comments:
"Hee Haw" is a gross oversimplification, amplification and/or misrepresentation of Southern/Appalachian culture (I won't use the word 'stereotype' as it's been completely worn out).
99.9% of white people from any geographic region would probably say they get its humor but certainly don't think it's representative of themselves as individuals or groups.
Here we have a person - a clergyman - granted the opportuntity of a lifetime (literally). He is an official part of an historic event made possible in part by the actions of MLK which most (all?) black leaders and/or clergyman claim to want to emulate.
Instead of words that heal, sooth or stir the imagination, this individual chooses instead to slip into amateurish monosyllabic street doggerel. It was embarrassing for him, for the assembled crowd and for the man he purports to be supporting, reminiscent of nothing but shyster Johnny Cochran's courtroom antics.
What a waste.
Lowry is today's Rip Van Winkle.
What Black today is ordered to the back of the bus, in fact has the good Reverend ever heard of Affirmative Action?
For Brown to stick around does he mean that illegal aliens shouldn't have to enter the country legally, like my family did?
For yellow to be mellow, what is he talking about?
And the Red Man is exacting his revenge on the White man with the casinos that are on every corner.
For the White man to do right; most white people I know are scared to death to say or do anything that might even be interpreted as racially insensitive to the point of the ridiculous.
And then there were the Obama supporters in another Class Act booing the out going President Bush, and chanting "Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah, Good bye.
Shouldn't Obama have done a McCain and publicly denounced these things as a first step in being a leader and healing a nation? That would have been easier than his plan to cool the earth and order the oceans back in their basins.
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