The Left Tries To Label Legitimate Dissent As Racism

That’s one of the trends now. If you can’t argue the merits of the legislation, make gross and unsubstantiated assumptions and claims and take off from there. For instance, this from Keith Boykin at “The Daily Voice”, which claims to be “black America’s daily news source”:

In the past few months, we’ve witnessed the unleashing of the radical elements of the Republican Party base. The anti-tax economic conservatives, racist Obama-haters, gun-toting Second Amendment fanatics and birth certificate conspiracy theorists have two things in common: they’re mostly white and they despise President Obama.

With the groundwork laid (one has to wonder – if blacks despised George Bush, was that because they were racists or because they were ideologically and substantially opposed to his agenda?), however loosely with everyone lumped into the same category and characterized by race, Boykin finally gets to his point:

And it doesn’t matter that the president’s domestic policies of providing universal health care, middle class tax cuts, and economic stability will benefit the very people who cry the loudest. This is not about policy. It’s about politics. The politics of rage and race.

Of course Boykin again assumes things not in evidence to make his claim that it is all about race. First, he dismisses the legitimate arguments which have been brought forward about health care, secondly he seems to believe that the spending spree the administration has been on won’t have to paid off and third, he’s apparently blind to the fact that the “economic stability” he touts has been purchased with a future debt which will cripple us economically. Notice I made those points easily and without once even hinting about the race of the president.

They all are legitimate reasons to speak out, all legitimate reasons to be a bit enraged about the direction of the country. But, with his grand generalities and false assumptions in place, Boykin continues to build his case for this all being about race:

The town hall meetings have been branded “town brawls” by the media, but they are really “town mauls” where angry mobsters silence dissent and discourse. And despite the denials from the right, race is a deciding factor here.

So now, Americans acting like Americans are not only un-American for doing so, they’re racist.

And Boykin isn’t the only one pushing this line. David Boaz at CATO has a couple more examples. Paul Krugman, whose arguments for the health care legislation have been weak at best, also pulls the race card to lump “town hall mobs” in with “birthers”:

But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.

That is, the driving force behind the town hall mobs is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship.

Philip Kennicott throws race around in a Washington Post piece entitled “Obama as the Joker: Racial Fear’s Ugly Face”::

[T]he poster is ultimately a racially charged image. By using the “urban” makeup of the Heath Ledger Joker, instead of the urbane makeup of the Jack Nicholson character, the poster connects Obama to something many of his detractors fear but can’t openly discuss. He is black and he is identified with the inner city, a source of political instability in the 1960s and ’70s, and a lingering bogeyman in political consciousness despite falling crime rates…

Superimpose that idea, through the Joker’s makeup, onto Obama’s face, and you have subtly coded, highly effective racial and political argument. Forget socialism, this poster is another attempt to accomplish an association between Obama and the unpredictable, seeming danger of urban life.

This is a building theme (an MSNBC anchor calls socialism the “new n-word”) which is a classic diversion by the left. Using it allows them to play the powerful “politically correct” card they’ve so lovingly cultivated for decades. And it is something which needs to be nipped in the bud right now.

The assumption that this is all about race attempts to plaster that claim over the obviously horrendous problems evident with government taking control of health care and the history of Americans of all races protesting such attempts at government expansion. It is, in reality, a classic move by the left to use political correctness as it was intended to be used – to stifle debate. And what we see coming out of the likes of Boykin, Krugman and Kennicott are the racialists laying the ground work to make the charge.

Their arguments are weak, but their intent is clear – broad-brush tarring of those who oppose this administration as nothing more than racist whites opposing the administration’s plans for no other reason than the president is a black man. That, of course, makes dismissing their arguments much easier to do and that is precisely the intent of playing the race card.

[Crossposted at QandO]

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