The Racism Platform

Allow me to clear up one thing for the readers before proceeding. I am caucasian. There, now I have given the all-clear for anyone who wants to pre-judge my comments to bail out right now. It seems that those who perpetuate the myth of racism engage in the practice of bailing out routinely, not to mention the practice of racism itself.

Bill Cosby has been speaking to these practices of late, and he has been vilified for it. People who have the most to gain from the racist platform and the most to lose from its collapse have been the most boisterous critics. So-called black leaders who have amassed much wealth and celebrity from their exploitation of those they presume to protect have risen up of late not against the institution of racism, as one might expect, but rather in opposition to Bill Cosby, e.g., the people who have begun to expose, and in some small measure erode, their ignoble empires.

The Bill Cosby affair is long out of the news cycle, I admit, but the Congressional Black Caucus is in the thick of it. Tennessee Democrat Stephen I. Cohen, a freshman congressman, wanted to join the caucus. He was turned down flat. The reason? Because he’s white even though his constituency is majority black. (Sorry, I refuse to use hyphens, for any ethnic group. We’re all Americans). There was a call to arms, so to speak, by former Rep. William Lacy Clay Sr., D-Mo., a co-founder of the caucus, who had circulated a memo telling members it was “critical” that the group remain “exclusively African-American.” ( I would have said "Black").

Add to this travesty the fact that we also have institutionalized racism in the myriad blacks only organizations such as Black Entertainment Television, Black Miss America, to name a few, and what you see is a social no-no allowed to flourish unabated.

All of that aside however, modern society has been astonishingly successful in breaking the chains of racism. Interracial marriages are commonplace today, for example. Blacks and whites congregate in harmony at social events on a routine basis, and even casual social encounters are warm and cordial, whether it be holding the door for someone or offering other rudimentary assistance such as bending to pick up a dropped parcel with a smile and a “your welcome” in response to a thank you.

Employment is no longer based on race nor is the choice of friends and companions. There are exceptions as there always will be, but by and large we are getting along famously. Thank God for that. So what is wrong?

Society has come around, and people like Bill Cosby have been instrumental to that end, knocking all of the pillars from under the platform of “race leaders” and their perpetual “victims”, yet the platform continues to defy gravity, hovering with all the weight of the attendees still aboard, laughing and clinking cocktail glasses as they enjoy the party. It has yet to collapse. How could this be? How could the laws of physics be circumvented right before our eyes.

Just as simply as the wool is pulled over the eyes of the “constituency” of so-called black leaders, whose usefulness has long passed.

-Woody

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