This month, the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) has published an excellent analysis of the SPLC’s attack on FAIR and other immigration reform groups, entitled, Guide to Understanding the Tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Immigration Debate. It offers much-needed insights. Besides giving the ordinary citizen an opportunity to view the insides of this “watchdog” group, the report should become a reference guide for members of the media, who generally take the easy way out when covering stories about race and/or immigration.
Reporters, editorialists, and feature writers are notorious for accepting, without further investigation, reams of data and materials disseminated to them by a cluster of self-appointed overseers of American society, among the most prominent, the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. [See also here and here.]
Thanks to the fawning acceptance granted them by the establishment media, these groups, and several more like them, have acquired an almost quasi-governmental status in the public mind. When they spread lies, there are few people who will risk inevitable public denigration and stand up to challenge them. In regard to the SPLC, FAIR’s new report does just that.
FAIR was founded in 1979, and is the country’s largest immigration reform group. It has more than 250,000 members whose aims are to improve border security, stop illegal immigration, and promote immigration levels consistent with the national interest. Sensible immigration reform would enhance national security, improve the economy, preserve our environment, and protect jobs for American citizens.
Such goals have earned FAIR the designation of a “hate” group by the SPLC. Other immigration reform organizations have also incurred the wrath of the SPLC. They include, but are not limited to, the two next largest groups, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and Numbers USA. These groups are reputable organizations that handle in a respectful manner what has become a volatile subject. Yet, the SPLC makes it clear that any individual or group that emphasizes the need for immigration reform of any kind is a “hater” and, hence, an enemy of American society.
Although the SPLC claims to take no position on immigration policy, for more than a decade it has acted as a bully by attacking citizens who even suggest that our borders should be monitored, or that the immigration population should be limited. According to the FAIR guide, “In countless articles and ‘investigative reports,’ the SPLC concluded that just about everyone actively opposed to amnesty and mass immigration was a ‘nativist’ a ‘white supremacist,’ or had ties to such groups and individuals.”
The SPLC is well known for its ever-growing list of “hate groups” and individual “haters,” often referred to as the SPLC’s “hit list.” Lacking an objective criteria for what constitutes “hate,” the SPLC uses its own inscrutable standards. There are some hints, however, that point to a consistency in its multicultural emphasis. Not satisfied with customary, voluntary activity between races, its directors give the impression that they would like to engineer more aggressive policies, in order to bring about greater racial interaction.
In the SPLC’s universe, race and how one deals with it, is an important component in determining who is good and who is bad. In order to put the full kibosh on perceived enemies, the SPLC will slap the “racist” tag on them, just for good measure. This was never clearer than in the case of the Mormon polygamous sect in Eldorado, Texas, where, last year, over 400 children were temporarily kidnapped by the government and removed from their parents. With all the troubles faced by these people in just trying to navigate around the intrusions by outsiders, in coping with a system they did not understand, the SPLC had to come along and declare the group “racist.”
In trying to figure out the SPLC’s bizarre intervention in this case, one might wonder if the charge of racism was based on the early history of the Mormon church (the sect still adheres to the church’s early beliefs on race) or, given the SPLC’s propensity for racial meddling, was the charge based on the fact that the men in this sect apparently had no colored wives? Might the lack of any bi-racial children disturb these diversity-minded social engineers?
SPLC leaders are relentless in their venomous attacks on those who they claim try to “retreat from the government and press.” On the SPLC “hate” list, there are dozens of little religious groups that do not subscribe to establishment religion. Some believe in their group’s special “chosenness” by the Deity. They each wish to have the freedom to worship in accord with their beliefs. You know, exercising the kind of freedom that Americans possessed in an earlier time—even to living separately, if they so determined—before it became mandatory to stay in view of the government and the press.
Groups like the ADL and SPLC, however, refuse to leave such gatherings alone. Instead, these religious sects (some with only a handful of members) are added to “hate” lists and brought to the attention of the public. Members of such faiths are suspect, not for their peculiar doctrines, but because, according to the “watchdogs,” no citizens should be allowed to operate on the outside or fringe of what is considered “mainstream” society. Outsiders who prefer to behave in such a manner are clearly not engaging in “inclusive” practices and, hence, could very well be haters of members of other groups and, therefore, “dangerous.”
This is the heart of the SPLC philosophy that it conveys in its massive, annual fundraising mailings to thousands of subscribers, in which fearful scenarios are painted of a society ridden with racists, xenophobes, and potential domestic terrorists.
This month, black Professor Carol Swain of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, made the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hit list. Deemed an “apologist for white supremacists” by SPLC’s Mark Potok, Swain earned this ad hominem attack because she had dared to offer a favorable review of the documentary film, A Conversation About Race. [See my review here.]
The film, produced by Craig Bodeker, is focused on interviews with a diverse group of people of various ages and ethnic backgrounds. They each get to offer their opinions on the “racism” that they supposedly observe in the world around them. It is Bodeker’s suspicion that genuine racism in today’s America is a “myth.” Many of the responses offered by the interviewees in this film confirm his hunch, though inadvertently. In spite of the SPLC’s attempt to shame her, Professor Swain stands by her assertion that Bodeker’s film would be useful in classrooms to stimulate honest discussions on the subject of race.
It is understandable why the SPLC does not want the Bodeker film, or anything like it, disseminated too widely. The results of the interviews, right from the mouths of ethnics themselves, suggest that blacks are not held back by a pernicious white racism.
For its purposes, the SPLC does not want America’s race story shifted away from that of black victimology—that is, the tale of blacks caught in a system that prevents them from improving their circumstances in a racist society. After all, where would that leave the SPLC and its ability to raise those millions of dollars annually in the name of “social injustice?”
Pictured: The SPLC’s Poverty Palace
If racism is not preventing a black person from going about his business, or living his daily life as he chooses, and places no life-threatening obstacles in his path, as in the days of a 1930s sharecropper, then what are we talking about?
Those who are familiar with the history of the SPLC know that this organization does not seek honesty. Like its other counterparts, it is determined to remain entrenched in its self-appointed role as caretaker and guardian of Americans’ thoughts and social habits. Professor Swain is yet another target to have encountered the SPLC’s tactic of character assassination. In the coming days we will learn to what extent it will follow through with its usual “link and smear” maneuvers and poisonous press releases. (Of course, as a vocal critic of open borders immigration policies, Swain could never win the approval of the SPLC.)
The FAIR guide cites several investigative articles that have been done on the SPLC. They include critical pieces in The Nation, Harper’s, and the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser newspaper. Each describes how the SPLC skews, exaggerates and manipulates data to fit its biased perspectives on race, along with information about its questionable fundraising tactics.
As the FAIR guide suggests, an honest analysis of the immigration issue is possible if, after receiving press releases and other data from SPLC directors, journalists would feel obligated to test the accuracy of their information, question their motives, seek out responses to their allegations about other citizens and, most primary, distinguish between advocacy and news reporting.
]]>Might there be less racial hostility or more of it?
Do these signs of the times tell us that we are definitely now living in that “post-racial” era prophesized by Barack Obama’s acolytes during the 2008 election? Are we witnessing the “end of identity politics”?
Or is it more likely that we can expect more of the same ethnic victimology?
In 2007, bills were introduced into both the House of Representatives and the Senate “to provide for the investigation of certain unsolved crimes, and for other purposes.” This potential law is called the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act (H.R. 923 and S.535).* The bill’s sponsors, led by Rep. John Lewis, aim to set up an “Investigative Office” in the civil rights units of both the Department of Justice and the FBI, granting authority to agents to plow through old alleged crimes that were committed against blacks prior to December 31, 1969, supposedly during what is known as the “civil rights” period.
On the one hand, a general statement within the bill claims that said-past crimes had to result in a “death.” On the other hand, the stated purpose in the introduction of the bill says nothing about death, and adds the vague wording, “and for other purposes,” implying that the law could be used as a catch-all for various kinds of infractions of the law that we cannot conceive of at the moment.
The question is, if these seekers of belated “justice” do not find enough murders to prosecute, will they seek to ferret out half-century old alleged assaults, robberies, larcenies? Might they go back, find an atrocity that had occurred on which a town’s white police force failed to act, and today make that town’s government complicit and hold it accountable? Does the “civil rights” period mentioned mean only the recent past, i.e., 1950s through 1960s? The use of the term “civil rights” goes back a long way.
If this law is passed, we can expect the country to be subjected to yet more black victimology, as the media grooves on the resurrection of old crimes that can unnecessarily stir up animosities. Of course, it’s only whites who are bound to come out on the short end of the stick. If a hunted suspect of an old crime is found, then what? As with the septuagenarians and octogenarians accused of Nazi war crimes, can we expect the media to delight in sending us images of sick, elderly men, handcuffed and forced to do the perp walk?
So much of the details of such prior events are lost in the mists of time and in dimmed, undependable memories”but no matter. There’s bound to be some violent tales of the civil rights out there that can be milked and exploited. During this period when so many crimes committed by blacks against whites are virtually ignored or under-reported by the media, or rationalized away as justifiable, blacks are being primed to dig up crimes from the past and make somebody pay.
There are other questions about this law. Just as Congress gradually extended the power of the EEOC to implement the 1964 Civil Rights Act, inadvertently giving us affirmative action and quotas, so too might the Emmett Till law be modified or reinterpreted, in order to carry out agendas not explicitly cited in the original bill. Just as the Brown vs. Board of Education court decision was “misinterpreted” to eventually justify forced busing and the crippling of school systems around the country, so, too, this law, if passed, could bring unexpected consequences.
Might we be looking at a law that opens the door to crafty mischief-makers to plod through a couple of centuries worth of real and imagined “crimes?” While whites are urged not to make a fuss about black-on-white crimes, black leaders are gearing up, or as they put it, “beefing up investigations” of old crimes against blacks, for what might conceivably be ad infinitum.
* Much of this section is taken from my 2007 essay “Black Crime.”
]]>Similarly, Ed Koch had claimed that in this terrible society of America, “all blacks” face racism “every day.” According to Koch, from the minute a black leaves his home in the morning to go to work, he encounters ugly, persistent racism, which goes on throughout the day. My ears perked up, because I wanted to know in just which city or state or region were blacks being tormented openly and on a daily basis. Mind you, he was talking about the year 2008. Of course, he, like the young man in the Bodeker film, did not offer any examples of this horrendous treatment.
My instinct was to get in touch with Koch and challenge him to pick any black man, and go off to work with him, spending the entire day on his job, as well as remaining with him in the evening. I would have liked for Koch to come back on radio and report on the terrible, racist encounters suffered that day by that black man.
Of course, we know that no such encounters are occurring on a daily basis. The use of the term “racism” does not mean today what it meant to a 1930s black sharecropper, whose choices were circumscribed by realities that were out of his hands. These blacks cannot pin down specific instances of meaningful, substantive bias, that is, bias that negatively affects their daily livelihood.
The black who whines about facing a “struggle” is not prevented from going about his business, or living his daily life as he chooses. The society he now lives in places no life-threatening obstacles in his path. The degree to which he can prosper is determined by the limitations of his own natural abilities, and vicissitudes of his family, social circle, and upbringing”as is true for everyone else. The very real racism that prevented that 1930s sharecropper from expanding his choices in life is the only type of racism that matters.
However, there are clever blacks who insist on invoking the spirit of that earlier scenario and hyping the “pain of racism,” a disposition that a great many whites eagerly buy into. The goal of such blacks is to keep whites preoccupied forever with the Black Cause, while expanding the scope of just what constitutes “racism.” That scope, of course, must encompass the very thoughts in the heads of others.
Whenever I insist to some complainer that specific instances of racism be cited, he usually stammers and talks in generalities. “Well, you know what I mean,” he will intone, as if I’m supposed to fill in the blanks. What he means is that he takes offense at any form of rejection. Although all human beings face personal rejection at the hands of others, these blacks want exemption from such uncertainties in life. They want no leeway for personal discrimination against themselves.
Recently, a commenter on a popular blog expressed that lame black mantra, “until-you-have-walked-in-my-shoes,” by claiming that the white commenters in the forum, being people “who have never experienced racism on a daily basis since the time you were a child,” could not understand his anguish. Racism, every day, from childhood right into adulthood? Are we really supposed to buy that? And then he really poured it on, by claiming that this racism “makes your heart start to race, your blood start to boil, and tears start to form in your eyes.”
Pictured: Oppressed black folk
I suspect that if we were to probe deeper into this man’s grievances, we would discover some sticky stuff going on here. Does he cry whenever he finds himself rejected socially by a party or parties with whom he wished to engage? Does social rejection send him into mourning? Or, as in the case cited below, from a black blog, might he harbor a host of insecurities that only competent practitioners in the psychological counseling field could deal with adequately?
On the blog, Within the Black Community, black blogger “Constructive Feedback” writes about the black actor Boris Kodjoe, who complained about a delivery man, who made him feel “dirty and black,” at the door of Kodjoe’s mansion in Atlanta. Because it appeared from the delivery man’s attitude that he did not believe Kodjoe to be the owner of such a grand house, this apparently irked Kodjoe, so much so that he talked about it in public. Is this millionaire actor admitting that his own self-worth rests on the basis of what he thinks others are thinking about him”even a minimum-wage delivery man? Constructive Feedback observes:
This wealthy Black man’s self-worth is still subject to confiscation by the lowliest of service men who ring his door bell … The only thing at play is the pathology that is resident in the minds of Mr. Kodjoe and other African-Americans who hand over their own self-worth for someone else’s blessing. We have people who wear their self-worth on their shirt collar, expecting everyone to validate them about their insecurities. They project these insecurities as “racial assaults” upon our entire race.
It was never put better. This is a subject that blacks discuss all the time, but most whites are fearful of contemplating. When the approval craved is not forthcoming, the cry of “racism” against the entire race goes out. And when a degree of deference cannot be extracted from a white especially, as in Professor Henry Louis Gates’s interaction with Officer James Crowley, this is another “assault” on the black community.
Constructive Feedback continues:
It is clear that the expectation was for the police to show due deference to this accomplished BLACK professor of great stature at this elite White school. The fact that his outbursts were responded to by the group of police men, just as they would have done to those of a less established person, the peanut gallery feels that this Black man was not treated fairly, per his position.
The blogger then facetiously asks, about this prestigious Very Important Person,
Why didn’t they know who Dr. Gates was when they confronted him? Didn’t they see him on television with Oprah and Chris Rock, as they connected with their ancestry in Africa from so long ago?
And, for those who understand the reference to the haughty, 19th century Harvard-educated W.E.B. Du Bois, he adds, “I detect some W.E.B. DuBois-esque “Talented Tenth” elitism among the commentators. Prof. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, appears to have taken on some of the airs of his mentor.”
What a mockery Gates’s behavior turns out to be, when we look at the pressure put upon black athletes and entertainers to behave respectfully, so they might be role models to the young. Yet here is this highly touted, prestigious Harvard Professor, who expels coarse vulgarities to a police officer, even spewing out the “Yo’ Mama” insult, like a common street thug, carrying on like the proverbial “Crazy Nigger.” Are we to believe that such behavior is not characteristic of this black V.I.P., this Distinguished Scholar?
Constructive Feedback asks just when will blacks feel they have enough societal control that they can move on and finally deal with the pressing realities that “are actually killing African-Americans.” The answer to his question was given long ago.
Black elites, those who have always had the power and the resources to ameliorate much of the suffering within the black community, made it clear from as early as the 19th century that their interests will always rest outside the group, even as they exploit the theme of “race” to personally elevate themselves. You need look no further than Henry Louis Gates and the entire entourage of professionals and academics, who covet white society’s credentials in their striving to be socially acceptable. Some of the earliest observations and commentaries by both blacks and whites about the American Negro personality still hold up (see especially Harold Cruse).
Yet even in these venues among whites that they have chosen, these elites remain in a combative stance, always pushing the envelope in a need to prove who they are. They have no more concern today about the genuine needs of the black masses than did their fathers and grandfathers. And, if given the chance, these elites would just as eagerly oppose Booker T. Washington for his temerity in insisting on putting the welfare of the masses first. So, the answer to the rhetorical question as to when blacks will move on and deal with the real stuff is: Never.
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