Earlier this week at a Houston rally, conservative activist Apostle Claver Kamau-Imani called the Democrats a racist party of the KKK. The words were spoken at an event sponsored by the Clear Lake Tea Party where GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain was the keynote speaker. Kamau-Imani is the chairman of the right wing blog RagingElephants.org. The name of organization may ring a bell because it was responsible for this foolishness.
Cain took the stage after Kamau-Imani and has not condoned nor condemned the comments. "Our campaign is all about promoting civil dialogue -- while there may be differences of opinion on a wide variety of topics, we believe in never being disagreeable," Cain's spokesman told NBC News. Cain was not on stage while Kamau-Imani was speaking and his spokesman said he does not think Cain was aware of Kamau-Imani's contentious remarks.
In his speech, Kamau-Imani resorted to one of the oldest tricks in the GOP playbook. Just as I said in a post earlier this year, Republicans/conservatives will often go back in time to prove their "theory" that today's version of the Democratic party is racist. You'd have to be stupid on multiple levels to buy into that line of thinking. Does Kamau-Imani really expect to lure blacks to the GOP with his distorted, inflammatory rhetoric?!
Conservatives crack me up when they relive the glory days of the GOP's history of civil rights. It would be like a Miami Dolphins fan talking about the franchise's distant past as if that has anything to do with the 2011 team. The Dolphins were great at one time. However, they flat out suck right now with no signs of improving. Sadly, the GOP is the political version of the Miami Dolphins.
9 comments:
Well, there is the recent comment by a Democratic Party representative who called Cain a "black man who knew his place". I've seen other bashing of Cain by Democrats for his skin color, on some liberal blogs.
Dmarks: Can you provide me with a link to the comments you referenced about the Democratic party rep? I think I know who you're referring to, but I want to make sure before I respond.
Here is one link. Of course it is racist.
The Dem commentator would not have made this statement had Cain been white., which is a pretty good test of whether or not such statements are racist or not.
This is reminiscent of several racist comments against Obama I've seen from the Right (and also the Left, as shown below)... like this one worded in a failed attempt by the commenter to push their own racist intent on others.
Like Geraldine Ferraro's racist remarks about Obama's success during the primary campaign.
Dmarks: Thanks. I thought you were referring to Ms. Finney. However, her comments were not racist. She never said Cain was "a black man who knew his place". What she said was:
“I think he makes that white Republican base of the party feel okay, feel like they’re not racist because they can like this guy. I think he is giving that base a free pass and I think they like him because they think he’s a black man who knows his place and I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me.”
The key words you left out were "they think". Those two words make it clear she is referring to what she feels the white Republican base thinks about Cain, not what she thinks about him. Also, since whites aren't minorities, it wouldn't have made any sense for her to have made that statement if Cain was white.
You can disagree with her comments, but to call them racist is way off the mark.
People who make "they think" comments like this can't hide their own racism. She'd be bashing Cain like this if he were not black. There's no evidence of her made-up claim, anyway.
I also have heard plenty of "they think" comments by those bashing Obama, typically wild conjectures (like this one) that also need the extra verbiage factored out to get to the heart of it.
"it wouldn't have made any sense for her to have made that statement if Cain was white."
The same is true of much racist bashing, but that does not justify it.
Dmarks: We'll have to agree to disagree on whether or not Ms. Finney's comments were racist.
Let's get to the actual topic of this post. Are you going to defend Apostle Claver's comments?
I generally don't agree that the Democratic Party is racist, except for comments like from Finney and Ferraro, and when they support racist public policies (like when some Democrats fought against the CRI in California and elsewhere).
Dmarks: I'm glad to hear you basically say that Claver's comments have no merit. To me, Claver's speech is another example of how the GOP doesn't want to do the legwork necessary to win over black voters. Instead, what Claver gave us was a distorted view of history and GOP talking points.
The "party of Emancipation" and "the party of slavery"... true, but there's way too much water under the bridge, too much time has passed.
As has too much time passed since segregation. "Great" Democrats like Bull Connor and Robert Byrd are dead, and their ideology is now banished to the farthest fringe of anything (including the Democrats).
And I always cringe at anyone using the term colored people, or any clumsy rewording there of, as this speaker does.
I think some of Claver's comments do have merit, such as when he takes aim at the corrupt preachers. But they are easy targets, and i get the impression Sharpton and Jackson are irrelevant in the Democratic Party.
Where Claver could have gotten some ground in the accusations would have been by highlighting some racist gaffes by very major figures in the Democratic Party. These are numerous, and range from the Ferraro quotation mentioned above, to the Vice President strongly implying that clean and articulate African-Americans are rare, to Mayor Daley (though a mayor, still a major national figure in the Democrats) campaigning and claiming that Chicago needed a white mayor.
Republicans have plenty of these too, but Claver's case about Democratic racism would have been better if he had stuck to this rather than bring up Abe Lincoln-era issues.
And then there is general Democratic support for hiring on skin color instead of ability. Some call this 'reverse racism', but to me racism is racism no matter where it is aimed. This is controversial... and besides, so many Republicans support it also.
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