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August 27, 2006

Bush responsible for racist LA busdriver

From time to time I dip a toe into the Left blogsphere, as reality perceived by the Reality-based Community™ can be ... well ... educational in the same way watching Jackass is educational.

Promoted from mere diaries to frontpage recognition as best of the last 24 hours of kossack blogdom is this piece of educational codswallop.

Today's news item on the school bus driver in Louisiana who moved the black students to the back of the bus to accomodate white students brought back of living in the segregated south under the rule of Jim Crow. Apparently Bush's racially color blind message hasn't reached the ears of the citizens of the great sovereign state of Louisiana,yet. Or has it?

I think the message of racial color blindess has reached Louisiana bus drivers. Maybe the internal assumptions and contradictions of racial color blindness have made it socially acceptable for the bus drivers in Lousiana to set up their own informal Jim Crow standards.

Bush's racial policy of "color blindness" is a public policy of benign neglect of racial problems.

See, it is Bush's policy that has encouraged racist drivers (note the plural extrapolated by this rocket scientist by this one case) to blithely re-establish "Jim Crow". Not that it matters that the driver is suspended and under investigation. That this driver acted at all is from tacit Bushie racist approval. And does koskiddie explain or link to any published policy of "colorblindness?"
Color blindness is a whitewash of racial issues because it disenfranchises black Americans by ignoring them as politically insignificant.
If someone can make actual sense of that sentence, let me know. Allegedly, the civil rights movement was essentially about black Americans reaching a goal where they were considered no different than any other American; where they were judged by their character, not by their melanin level. Yet this Koskiddie turns that goal on its head, asserting that melanin level, ie color awareness, is of paramount importance.

White Americans, abetted by neo-conservative writers of all hues, generally believe that racial discrimination is a thing of the past
WHICH paler Americans have expressed that? What sources or quotes are offered to substantiate that charge? I have never heard any reasonable, rational right-of-center person ever say racial discrimination is "a thing of the past." Never. Bigotry and prejudice are sad facts of life. However, de jure, or institutionalized, racism against minorities is a thing of the past.
and that any racial inequalities that undeniably persist--in wages, family income, and access to housing or health care.
Again, no sourcing to the bald assertion of "undeniably". But we are getting close to the payoff line.
can be attributed to African Americans' cultural and individual failures. Racial color-blindness assumes that black poverty is caused by the personal character flaws in black Americans.
Let's consider a couple of things the Koskiddie leaves out of his Reality-based™ charge.

1 - Most black Americans are not "poor"
2 - Most "poor" are not black Americans*

Keep those two facts in mind while koskiddie goes on to attempt to support his thesis that LA bus drivers are given permission to discriminate because of Bush "color blind" policy

Blaming black Americans for racial discrimination is a very racially divisive policy because color blindness makes the a priori assumption that many blacks live in poverty because they are lazy and stupid.
Guess the koskiddie thought a bit of Latin might punch up his creds. Let's hear those "ooooos" and "aaaahhhhhs". At the risk of being a broken record, just where is the sourcing of the promotion of "color blind" or "race neutral" policies presumptive that blacks are "shiftless"?
In fact weren't Africans brought to American as slaves to work for lazy and stupid white folks? Even back 1700s, I guess that cottonpicking was one of those jobs that (white) Americans would never work at! So a "guest slave" program helped out all those plantation owners in the South. The more things change, the more things remain the same.
By golly, ain't this koskiddie cute? Historically ignorant, yes, but notice how he so cutely tries to draw parallels with illegal immigration. I forget now, what IS the Left cult position on illegal aliens these days?
American politics cannot be fair to all citizens by being color blind because American society is not color blind. Fairness, not color blindness, is a fundamental principle of justice.

::::ahem::::

People of goodwill can actually disagree on what the best policies are for ameloriating persistent poverty of individuals. I use "persistent poverty" point out the distinct differences those people whose circumstance or behavior contributes to continuing to remain in poverty for extended periods of time from those that transition into and out-of poverty, also due to circumstance and behavior.

Transitional poverty would include college students, newly weds, someone who experiences a sudden family tragedy like death ... any one who will find themselves out of poverty within 5 to 10 years.

This is something that is not race-based. Predictors of those that may find themselves in persistant poverty circumstances like high-school dropouts, engaging in crime, and young, single mothers.

The message to avoid poverty is stay in school, stay out of trouble and that message holds the same no matter one's melanin level.

Bill Cosby was attacked two years ago for commenting on the elephant in the room.

"It is almost analgesic to talk about what the white man is doing against us, and it keeps a person frozen in their seat. It keeps you frozen in your hole that you are sitting in to point up and say, 'That's the reason why I am here.' We need to stop this ... I couldn't care less about what white people think about me at this time ... Let them talk! What are they saying that is different from what their grandfather said? What are they doing or trying to do to us that their grandfathers didn't try to do to us? But what is different is what we are doing to ourselves." *

Race quotas, set asides, race-norming ... all color-conscious policies infantalize the people they allegedly help. Justice is depicted as "blind" to any other factors than what is at hand for the individuals involved.

Why should the melanin-enriched son of a black NBA player from Bel Air get "extra points" towards college admissions than the daughter of a melanin-challenged coal-miner from Appalachia? Why should a Japanese-American student be docked points because Asians are "over-represented" on college campuses?

Individual bigotry still exists, but one doesn't fight it by engaging in other forms of racism.

Just as functional anti-semitism centers itself today in the contemporary Left, so does functional racism center itself in a Left that holds black Americans as individually incapable of self-responsibility. They are the white [Left] person's burden.

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Posted by Darleen at August 27, 2006 01:00 PM

Comments

Color blindness is a whitewash of racial issues because it disenfranchises black Americans by ignoring them as politically insignificant.

What makes Black Americans politically insignificant today is their persistant loyalty to the Democratic Party as it exploits them and ignores them at the same time.

Posted by: gahrie at August 27, 2006 03:38 PM

I'd wager Black Americans have a better understanding of what party serves their interests than Gahrie does.

Posted by: Josh at August 28, 2006 09:26 AM

Yeah...probably.

Because it couldn't possibly be the party that was founded to free them, led the US into a war to free them, passed the civil rights amendments to protect their rights, opposed the imposition of Jim Crow laws on them (now who could have done that?), led the fight for the Civil rights Act, named the first two black Sec.s of State and insists that they be treated as fully capable individuals rather than members of a victim group.

Posted by: gahrie at August 28, 2006 09:20 PM

The bus driver didn't move the black students to the back of the bus to accomodate white students. The bus driver separated students who were fighting. Her mistake was that she really didn't see the kids as black or white, she saw them as just kids, so she didn't realize that she was sending the black kids to the back. The kids didn't realize it, either, because they did it without objection. It's only after the parents heard about it that they realized that they could misinterpret what happened and scream "racism".

Posted by: R. Gregg Reed at August 29, 2006 12:20 AM

Indeed gahrie. Because nothing has changed since 1964. Dem blacks iz just too dumb to understand how much the party rooted in the Old Confederacy loves them.

Posted by: Josh at August 29, 2006 10:19 AM