Racism and Obamacare

Racism and Obamacare
Star Parker
Monday, April 05, 2010

Like chewing gum stuck to the heel of your shoe, racism seems to be stuck forever to American public discourse. No matter what we do or what happens, somebody will find a racial motive.

Democrats have passed government health care with no Republican votes. Their leadership threatened and bribed their own members to eek out a majority. They resorted to an arcane procedure that maybe 100 people in the whole country can explain in order to pass a massive bill that polls show a majority of Americans don’t want.

The federal government, for the first time ever, will force every American to buy, with a big chunk of their income, a product designed by government bureaucrats, with an army of IRS agents snooping on each of us to make sure we did it.

And how are many liberals explaining why so many Americans are ticked off?

It’s because our president is black. It’s about racism.

Even me. I’m steamed. And even though I happen to be black – I’ve even spoken at some tea party rallies – I still must be a racist.

Obama’s approval rating has dropped from 70% when he was elected to 50% today. His disapproval has skyrocketed from 10% when he was elected to 42% today.

Per the Washington Post, in January 2009 58% of Americans said that the Obama presidency helped race relations. By January 2010, this was down to 40%.

Has this wave of disillusionment with Obama been driven by a sudden realization that the man Americans elected president is black?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s approval has dropped from 41% in January 2009 to 36% today and her disapproval has risen from 42% to 54%. Is she black?

Were the raucous townhalls last summer – which gave birth to the tea party movement- where irate constituents gave their representatives a piece of their mind about Obamacare, racially motivated?

Care to understand what all this is really about?

Consider a powerful observation about a former time by one of America’s great historians, Jacques Barzun. Barzun was a professor and dean at Columbia University and a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner.

“We make a great mistake in calling the American War of Independence, the “American Revolution,” he wrote. “In 1776 the Americans rebelled against recent rules and impositions. What they wanted was not a new type of government, but the old type they enjoyed. They were used to many freedoms, which they claimed as the immemorial rights of Englishmen. Once they defeated the English armies and expelled the Loyalists, they went back to their former ways, which they modestly enlarged, and codified in the Bill of Rights.”

In a similar fashion today, Americans are rebelling as the freedom we have enjoyed, freedom which defines life in this country, is being taken away and new “rules and impositions” are being imposed.

It’s not about theory or some abstract ideology. The intense feelings flow from losing what you have and what you know is vital.

What is new today is we can no longer continue the illusion of having our cake and eating it. We can no longer afford to be both a big government entitlement state and a free, creative, and prosperous nation. It’s the prosperity created by our freedom that has financed the entitlements. But now the entitlements are overtaking and strangling our freedom.

So now is a time of choosing. We’re either going to remain the land of the free or transform into the land of the bureaucrat.

The antipathy of activists toward Mr. Obama is not about how he looks but what he has done. That he has chosen and imposed on us the path of bureaucracy.
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Post Racial? Bah Humbug!
Joseph C. Phillips
Monday, April 05, 2010

Perhaps it was unfair to expect that the election of Barack Obama would “bend the curve” on hundreds of years of racial attitudes and the politics that developed around those attitudes. Then again, for a man that entered office with a promise to calm the seas and heal the sick doing “post racial” should have been a piece of cake. Moreover, with all the talk of “hope and change” it was not outrageous to imagine that there might be some positive change in the tone surrounding discussions of race. Certainly it was not unreasonable to imagine that at the very least this President- who was going to win back the worlds respect -- would not stoke the fires of racial enmity here at home. Well, as my mother used to say: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Instead of bringing Americans together, this President is proving to be the most divisive and racially polarizing president in recent memory. And France still isn’t all that crazy about us.

The press of course has been filled with reports of the racism rampant on the political right. There is no doubt in my mind that there are American citizens that dislike President Obama because he is black, who are threatened with the increase in the population of “brown” people and resent the idea of a black man with as much smarts, power and charisma as Barack Obama. I am also absolutely certain that there are Americans that continue to believe O.J. Simpson did not murder Nicole, believe men from space have landed and infiltrated our citizen ranks or believe the recent healthcare bill passed by congressional democrats and signed by the President will actually reduce the deficit.

Particular invective has been directed at members of the various Tea Party’s, who are depicted as violent racists come together to protest a brother with power and prone to chant the N-word at members of the congressional black caucus. Of course this yarn is spun with an absolute disregard for the truth and absolutely no evidence. The tea party’s were formed in response to profligate spending by a white Republican President. And in this day and age – with every cell phone equipped with a video camera – it is difficult to imagine that not one frame has materialized showing dozens of tea partiers chanting the N-word and spitting on black congressmen as has been reported over and over again. The charges, however, fit so neatly with the new lefts narrative that facts just get in the way. As does any notion that playing the race card every time someone disagrees with this President hinders political debate and stirs the pot of racial animus.

Now comes news that the Obama Justice department has filed an amicus brief supporting a return to the use of racial preferences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Following the 1996 decision in Hopwood v Texas the University of Texas was forced to find race-neutral means to increase the enrollment of minority students on its campus. The school began granting automatic admissions for students graduating in the top 10% of their high school senior class.

In 2003 the Supreme Court in Grutter v Bollinger held that some use of race is permissible only if race neutral methods fail and then they must be narrowly tailored. The University of Texas chose to hold onto the top 10% program and return to the use of race preferences for students falling outside that percentage.

In 2008 Abigail Fisher, the lead plaintiff in Fisher v University of Texas, graduated in the top 12% of her high school class and was denied admission to the university. Her lawyers argue that the race-neutral 10% plan has been successful and therefore any use of race preferences oversteps the dictates prescribed by the Supreme Court and is unlawful.

What is of particular interest is that the administration has gone beyond simply filing a brief in support of existing law. The President has extended the argument beyond what The University of Texas applies and the Supreme Court envisioned in Grutter and endorses the use of racial preferences in all "educational institutions"---K-12, undergraduate, and graduate. As Roger Clegg, president and general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity points out, “The Supreme Court has never found there to be a compelling interest in the former instance---nor, for example, in post-doctorates for chemistry---and it is aggressive and wrong to argue that, because the Court found there to be compelling educational benefits in diversity at the University of Michigan law school, therefore any educational institution can make that claim.”

In the battle against discrimination Obama seeks to take us backward. This administration does not envision an America moving away from preferences, but a nation of increased preferences based on race! Just as unfounded cries of racism lead to an increase in racial enmity, racial preferences create racial hostility.

It was anticipated by many of us that a black man sitting in the oval office would fundamentally change the racial discussion in America. This nation would finally and at long last leave the chains of race on the ground and thus unburdened soar to the heights promised at our founding. This new post racial America would be the defining contribution to the American narrative by the first post racial president, Barack Obama. Or so we hoped.