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COMPLAINTS ABOUT racism still dominate media discussion of the disparity between black and white success. Comedian Chris Rock tells white audiences, "None of ya would change places with me! And I'm rich! That's how good it is to be white!" I assumed that the success of Barack Obama, as well as thousands of other black Americans and dark-skinned immigrants -- many of whom thrive despite language problems -- demonstrates that America today is largely a colorblind meritocracy. But a white campus lecturer, Tim Wise, gets tremendous applause from students by saying things like, "[W]hite supremacy and privilege continue to skew...

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If, as a westerner, you are going to visit Africa, the earlier in your life you do it, the better A pretty, earnest young woman came up to me at the end of an African talk I recently chaired at the Royal Festival Hall. She wanted some advice. She had organised a trip to Rwanda with a group interested in development, but was experiencing some misgivings. Was she doing the right thing? Absolutely, I answered, assuming she was worried about security. Eastern Congo, just across the border, might have fallen prey to rampaging militias, but rigidly policed Rwanda, Africa's version...

Is Ralph Nadar Right About Obama Using White Guilt? by Delores WilliamsJune 26, 2008 06:28 PM EDT (Updated: June 26, 2008 06:37 PM EDT) For my new readers, let me disclose from the top that I am not an Obama fan. I refuse to pull the lever for him because I think he is unqualified, lacks judgment, and borders near the unethical and illegal too often. Having said that, is Ralph Nadar right when he says that Obama is using "white guilt" and trying to talk "white." I think I have a split decision on that. As far as...

OBAMA XLVI: GO RALPHIE! June 25th, 2008 No matter what else one may think of Ralph Nader–that he’s a spoiler, a great voice for consumers or a horse’s ass–most people would have to admit he’s honest. Today, Ralphie took honesty to a whole new level when he said that Senator Obama “wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love...

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader accused Sen. Barack Obama, the presumed Democratic Party nominee, of downplaying poverty issues, trying to "talk white" and appealing to "white guilt" during his run for the White House. Nader, a thorn in the Democratic Party's side since the 2000 presidential election, has taken various shots at Obama in recent days while ramping up his latest independent run for president. ----- The Obama campaign had only a brief response, calling the remarks disappointing. Asked to clarify whether he thought Obama does try to "talk white," Nader said: "Of course. ---- Nader said he plans to...

"Barack Obama told a group of Florida donors Friday night that Republicans will try to make voters afraid of him, and suggested they would use his race to scare up votes for John McCain," Fox News reports. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid," Obama said at the fundraiser. "They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black? He's got a feisty wife." [Snip] This is a very clever bit of rhetoric....

It occurs to me that all of these people who are backing Obama-who-hates-them because of their "White Guilt" are the reverse equivilants of "Uncle Toms."

When did "liberal guilt" get such a bad reputation? You hear it all the time now from people who sneeringly dismiss whites who support Obama's candidacy as "guilty liberals." There are, of course, many reasons why whites might support Obama that have nothing to do with race. But what if redeeming our shameful racial past is one factor for some? Why delegitimize sincere excitement that his nomination and potential election would represent a historic civil rights landmark: making an abstract right a reality at last. Instead, their feeling must be disparaged as merely the result of a somehow shameful "liberal...

White Guilt is the locomotive propelling the Obama campaign. Without it the Junior Senator from Illinois would be just a skinnier Bill Clinton. American kids are being guilt-tripped in all the public schools today, from grade school to graduate school. By the time they get to voting age, they feel so bad about the slave trade and Jim Crow that they are ready to pay up for forgiveness. That's Senator Obama's Youth Vote.

In what has become an annual rite of passage, University of Colorado students are being subjected this month to a round of diversity workshops preaching that all whites are racist. The latest round, hosted by the university's women's resource center last Friday, was titled "White on White Taskforce: Acting to Dismantle Racism." According to organizers, it was "designed to give White people tools to dismantle racism on campus." At the workshop, students received a handout espousing the "underlying assumptions" of its leaders. Most notably, it read "reverse racism is impossible," meaning that non-whites cannot be racist. And also of interest,...

Muslim leader accuses police of being 'over cautious' in stopping Asian gangs pimping white girlsBy PAUL REVOIR - More by this author » Last updated at 22:44pm on 25th March 2008  A muslim leader has accused the police of failing to tackle Asian gangs suspected of prostituting young white girls. Officers are accused of being "over cautious" when investigating Muslim criminals because they fear being branded racist. Scroll down for more...Prostitutes: Becoming easy targets for Asian pimping gangs Last night Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Ramadhan Foundation, said the police were differentiating between criminals on the basis of race....

While watching Scarborough's show this morning, Chris Matthews was on, and he made an unbelievable comment. Chrissy said that up until the time he joined the Peace Corps, from grade school through Duke University, he never had one black student in his classes! I simply find this unimaginable, yet it all made sense. He's simply unwilling to call Barack out for throwing his grandmother under the bus, because he feels guilty for living in his lily white world.

The Obama Bargain By SHELBY STEELE March 18, 2008 Geraldine Ferraro may have had sinister motives when she said that Barack Obama would not be "in his position" as a frontrunner but for his race. Possibly she was acting as Hillary Clinton's surrogate. Or maybe she was simply befuddled by this new reality -- in which blackness could constitute a political advantage. But whatever her motives, she was right: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position." Barack Obama is, of course, a very talented politician with a first-rate political organization at his back. But...

The Check Obama Can’t CashBob Parks, Intel Radio Network I’ve been tossing this about for a while, and made brief mention of it. It just took a little push off the cliff to really get me going. According to London’s Times Online,  “Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, claimed that the Democratic front-runner would ultimately disappoint the African-American community and dismissed the notion that he would be "the harbinger of a post-racial America" if he becomes the country’s first black President. “Writing in Prospect, the monthly current affairs magazine, Mr. Phillips suggested that guilt over transatlantic slavery was behind...

"The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and suicide bombings worldwide have changed not only the way we live but the way we look at those around us, especially Muslims. "Islamophobia" has entered the American vernacular, and the anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudice it describes remain common. Content Special Section: What Would You Do?But what if you witnessed "Islamophobia" in action and saw someone being victimized because of someone else's prejudices? What would you do? ABC's production crew outfitted The Czech Stop, a bustling roadside bakery north of Waco, Texas, with hidden cameras and two actors. One played a female customer...

      Cops snub hero for being white     Star visit ... Ben poses with Ross Kemp during filming of Sky One show       By BRIAN FLYNN Published: Today     A SOLDIER who saw nine comrades killed in Afghanistan told yesterday how he was stopped from becoming a cop — because he is the wrong colour.  Brave Lance Cpl Ben Mayer, a regimental police officer with the Royal Anglians, was shown capturing Taliban terrorists on a telly documentary screened last week.   Rejected ... Ben with his letter  But when he quit the Army...

You can almost almost sympathize with Bill Clinton. But only almost. It's not easy to run against the man with a halo. The Clintons bought the grief that threatens to derail their train, and paid for it with arrogance and self-importance. Only the Clintons would imagine they could play the race card in modern America, and their only defense is that the sin is not contempt for their presumed inferiors. They're contemptuous of everybody. Promising to rise above race is an important part of the considerable charm of the campaign of Barack Obama, one of the most attractive candidates, black...

SYDNEY, Australia — The new Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will apologize for past mistreatment of the country’s Aboriginal minority when Parliament convenes next month, addressing an issue that has blighted race relations in Australia for years. In a measure of the importance Mr. Rudd attaches to the issue, the apology will be the first item of business for the new government when Parliament first convenes on Feb. 13, Jenny Macklin, the federal minister for indigenous affairs, said Wednesday. Ms. Macklin said she had consulted widely with Aboriginal leaders, but it was still not clear what form the...

CHILDREN as young as three are being taught anti-racism lessons as part of the first State Government-funded program designed to stamp out bigotry from a young age. The program will be rolled out at a preschool in western NSW and youngsters will be given regular lessons in tolerance and multiculturalism.

DALLAS, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- A Dallas minister who marched with civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said Monday's birthday observance holiday is an insult to his legacy. The Rev. Peter Johnson, 62, director of the Texas operations for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, told The Dallas Morning News the holiday should be on April 4, the anniversary of the date King was assassinated. "We have ignored the essence of his life and the horror of his death," said Johnson. "We've allowed white America to escape the guilt of his assassination and we've allowed black America to...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's upset victory in the New Hampshire primary last week was every bit as impressive as Sen. Barack Obama's Iowa caucus breakout five days before -- if anything, more impressive, since his win was predicted and hers unforeseen. But the reactions to the two events couldn't have been more different. Obama's Jan. 3 triumph let loose a giddiness bordering on exhilaration among voters and, especially, media commentators, who hailed his triumph as "historic," even though he was not in fact the first African American to win a major presidential nominating contest. (Jesse Jackson won 13 primaries and...

Before Haiti became the world's first black republic, it was a slave nation. On the island, there were quarantines, where a new slave was broken down, beaten physically, informed of his inferiority and told to be thankful to his captors — because it was the work that the slave would do for his masters that would lead to forgiveness and acceptance into heaven. Now, more than 200 years after the slaves revolted, a former Colorado couple wants to commemorate the quarantine, which they believe is the source of the Western world's violence, racism and greed. "Our culture, our society did...

BANGOR, Me. — In October, the N.A.A.C.P. chapter for northern Maine got shocking news. A man from a nearby town had threatened to shoot “any and all black persons” attending the group’s meetings at an old stone church here, and state prosecutors were worried enough to seek a restraining order. Such remarks are not unheard of in Maine, the nation’s whitest state, which has fewer black residents — 10,918 in 2006, or less than 1 percent of the population, according to the Census Bureau — than some neighborhoods of Chicago or New York. But nor are they usually so blunt....

TRENTON, New Jersey: New Jersey lawmakers begin considering this week a measure that would make theirs the first northern U.S. state to offer an expression of regret for slavery, an institution that one Republican lawmaker said blacks today should remember led to their becoming Americans. The resolution, which is to be discussed in a state Assembly committee on Thursday, expresses "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery and apologizes for the wrongs inflicted by slavery in the U.S. If approved, it would make New Jersey the fifth U.S. state to offer a similar apology or expression of regret for...

Sarkozy speechwriter 'racist'09/10/2007 17:26  - (SA)    Paris - A star French philosopher attacked President Nicolas Sarkozy's speechwriter as a "racist" on Tuesday over an address suggesting Africans were to blame for their continent's problems. Speaking on France Inter radio, Bernard-Henri Levy attacked presidential advisor Henri Guiano over the contents of a speech delivered by Sarkozy in the Senegalese capital Dakar in July, which sparked an uproar on the continent. "Guaino, he's a racist.... He's the one who wrote this vile speech... saying that if Africa wasn't developed it was because Africans were not part of history," Henri-Levy charged. The writer stressed...

Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour. "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters. "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency. Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory. Protestors also...

Livingstone breaks down in tears at slave trade memorialLast updated at 18:49pm on 23rd August 2007  Controverial London mayor Ken Livingstone broke down in tears as he apologised for his London's role in the transatlantic slave trade, saying the city is still tainted by it.  The notoriously outspoken Livingstone seldom apologises for anything, but he choked up as he read an account of the brutal tortures suffered by slaves in Britain's Caribbean colonies. scroll down for more  Livingstone broke down in tears as he apologised for his London's role in the transatlantic slave trade And the politician once nicknamed...

The objective would be to set the record straight in an international forum and for nations to correct injustices that are STILL AFFECTING (in REALITY, not the shake-down Jesse/Al folks) the lives of many people. In reality, isn’t Africa, the Middle East and many parts of Asia regions where slavery still exist today. Not only does it still exist, but it has existed for 1000s of years and social hierarchy ensures its legacy still affects the majority of the citizenry. It seems Moses and Western Civilization were the only well-known entities to take direct action to end slavery. Some interesting...

Equity and Race Relations White Privilege Conference For the first time, Seattle Public Schools are sending students from four high schools to attend the annual White Privilege Conference, sponsored by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Denver, Teaching Tolerance, Study Circles Resource Center, The Matrix, Center for Judaic Studies, GLSEN, and many more organizations. Speakers include Geneva Gay, Peggy McIntosh, Joy Leary, John-Paul Chaisson-Cardenas and many others who are actively engaged in anti-racism. This year's conference takes place in Colorado Springs from April 18th through the 21st. There are workshops designed specifically for youth, as...

Complaints about racism dominate the media discussion of the disparity between black and white success in America. Comedian Chris Rock captures the prevailing sentiment between both races when he tells white audiences, "None of ya would change places with me and I'm rich! That's how good it is to be white!" A white author, Tim Wise, gets applause from students on American campuses for talking about "white privilege." Wise's message is in huge demand -- he does 80 speaking engagements a year. When we taped an appearance at Skidmore College, students of all races praised him as "eloquent," "phenomenal," and...

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 3 (UPI) -- The chairwoman of the African People Solidarity Committee says white residents of the United States should support reparations for African-Americans. Penny Hess spoke to a reporter with the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune Friday on the eve of African People Solidarity Day. The activist is one of nine speakers at a Nov. 4-5 reparations event in Oakland and San Francisco. "The wealth of the West is built on slavery of African people," said Hess. "White people need to recognize it and support (reparations)." The committee was formed by mostly white members in 1976. Besides reparations, efforts...

White guilt in the West -- especially in Europe and on the American left -- confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism -- not their continuance -- forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened...

My university recently announced the appointment of Dr. Tamra Minor as our new Associate Vice Chancellor of Institutional Diversity. Dr. Minor said her appointment illustrates that the entire university leadership is now serious about the commitment to diversity and the promotion of a “culture of inclusiveness” at UNC-Wilmington. I respectfully take issue with her socially constructed interpretation of reality. As a preliminary matter, this Associate Vice Chancellor of Institutional Diversity position is not actually a new position at all. The name of Dr. Minor’s old position of Director of Campus Diversity was simply changed to sound more important. Her previous...

Advocates who say black Americans should be compensated for slavery and its Jim Crow aftermath are quietly chalking up victories and gaining momentum. Fueled by the work of scholars and lawyers, their campaign has morphed in recent years from a fringe-group rallying cry into sophisticated, mainstream movement. Most recently, a pair of churches apologized for their part in the slave trade, and one is studying ways to repay black church members. The overall issue is hardly settled, even among black Americans: Some say that focusing on slavery shouldn't be a top priority or that it doesn't make sense to compensate...

Contrary to Jack Kemp's thesis, the greatest civil rights challenge of our time is not granting congressional representation to the District of Columbia. It is helping black Americans throw off the chains of liberalism, which for nearly 50 years has caused enormous harm to the black community, and held back the social and economic advancement of blacks while other minority groups in our society were developing, achieving, and prospering.

The former conservative star supports a Congressional seat for D.C. to put Republicans "on the right side of history." How insulting. Recently, in Human Events, the New York Sun, and several other newspapers, former Republican Party vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp has been arguing that Republicans need "to get on the right side of history" on racial matters, by supporting the creation of a permanent seat in the House of Representatives for the District of Columbia. Mr. Kemp's article is an outrage. His premise -- that the Republican Party is on the "wrong" side of history on racial matters -- is...

In Shelby Steele's new book, "White Guilt," he mentions an encounter with a white liberal who fiercely defended the welfare state programs and policies of the 1960s. "Damn it, we saved this country!" he all but shouted. "This country was about to blow up. There were riots everywhere. You can stand there now in hindsight and criticize, but we had to keep the country together, my friend." Before we turn to facts, we need to understand the vision. This is a vision of the world more precious than gold. To those who believe it, this vision is a treasure beyond...

  Shelby Steele   On May 1, Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution delivered the ninth of the 2005-2006 Bradley Lectures. Edited excerpts follow. The full text of the lecture is available here.One of the most remarkable events of the late twentieth century was the collapse of white supremacy--not just in America, but around the world. The presumption was that whites had the authority and the right to make the world their dominion. After World War II, we began to have revolutions across the world that defeated the authority inherent in white supremacy. The civil rights movement in the United...

There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II. For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along--if admirably--in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even...

The calls have just started coming in. This should be interesting. More on Shelby Steele on this thread.http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1590873/posts

Now consider what this Harvard student is called upon by his racial identity to argue in the year 2002. All that is creative and imaginative in him must be rallied to argue the essential weakness of his own people. Only their weakness justifies the racial preferences they receive decades after any trace of anti-black racism in college admissions. The young man must not show faith in the power of his people to overcome against any odds; he must show faith in their inability to overcome without help. As Mr. Connerly points to far less racism and far more freedom and...

The worst guilt is to accept an undeserved guilt—and that is what you have been doing all your life. (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged) In the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in American history, we have seen a spectacular resurgence of the indictment against white merica that has been an organizing theme of our national discourse since the 1960s. Starting from the liberal assumption that any undesirable outcome for black people is the result of white racism, black leaders and spokesmen—supported, according to one poll, by 66 percent of all blacks—have charged in the most virulent terms that white...

Last week's episode of the Sopranos featured a conversation between the daughter, Meadow Soprano, and her unemployed live-in boyfriend. While discussing his out-of-work status, the character says that he won't go to work at McDonald's because he doesn't want to take a job from a minority. I was struck by just how condescending and patronizing this is. I grew up in a relatively non-political black household. My parents are more religious than political. However, like most blue-collar black men, my father leans Democrat if anyone ever asks. I grew up believing in affirmative action and I actually liked Bill Clinton...

Columnists have had a field day with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's Supreme Court decision (Grutter). In effect, O'Connor declared diversity to be a "compelling state interest" that trumps the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Sowell described the five-member majority as "vacancies without resignations." Shelby Steele declared the ruling "a victory for white guilt." Michael Kinsley wrote that O'Connor was "splitting a difference that can't be split." The most striking feature of the decision is the absence of legal argument. The ruling rests on sociological babble about "critical mass diversity." The substitution of sociology for law is the...

One of the most dangerous myths in our lifetime has been that liberalism and the Democratic Party are black America's best friends. For all of us who desperately want African-Americans to prosper, the destruction of this myth may be the single most important step to that end. The recent Supreme Court decision affirming the centerpiece of liberal policy concerning blacks -- affirmative action -- provides a perfect example of a liberal policy that hurts blacks. If the Ku Klux Klan were given the responsibility to develop social policy to hurt blacks, they could not have come up with something more...

At last the Supreme Court has ruled on the use of racial preferences in university admissions. And now that it has happened, one wonders why the court took up the matter in the first place -- unless its goal was to make a bad situation worse. If the two Michigan decisions disallowed the formulaic practice of affirmative action, they simultaneously opened the door to a new non-formulaic subjectivity in which admissions officers are even less accountable in their use of race as a factor in admissions than before. At least in the past they worried that race would be ruled...

<p>At last the Supreme Court has ruled on the use of racial preferences in university admissions. And now that it has happened, one wonders why the court took up the matter in the first place -- unless its goal was to make a bad situation worse. If the two Michigan decisions disallowed the formulaic practice of affirmative action, they simultaneously opened the door to a new non-formulaic subjectivity in which admissions officers are even less accountable in their use of race as a factor in admissions than before. At least in the past they worried that race would be ruled unconstitutional, and this had begun to have a chilling effect on racial preferences. But the court has now removed that anxiety. Universities can, with confidence, take the matter of race and admissions into the proverbial smoke-filled room where, with Cheshire grins, they can titter at the phrase "narrow tailoring."</p>

Few Americans have heard of the National Slave Memorial Act (HR 196), legislation that proposes to erect a national slave memorial on The Mall in Washington. Last year, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) made this suggestion whilst groveling at the feet of black politicians and civil-rights activists after his remarks supporting the 1948 presidency of then-segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). Since then a few Republicans have joined with Democrats to cosponsor the legislation. Supporters say the National Slave Memorial Act will begin the racial "reconciliation" and "healing" processes. It's amazing how people can say this with straight faces and believe it....

The New Republic, at its best, offers pieces of observation such as “idiocy watch” whereby the reader is amused by the stupidity of the scions of pop who offer moronic opinions about 9/11 such as it being a magnificent artistic statement or that Osama Bin Laden would not be so violent if we could just get him in touch with his true loving nature [sic]. At its worst, it produces articles like Michelle Cottle´s Guilty Verdict about the Jayson Blair imbroglio at the New York Times. Her piece is valuable because it offers us an inside glimpse of the theory...