Prometheus 6

Henninger's list of Crispy Critters is significant in terms of what it actually reveals about his own cast of mind and the thinking of folks who share his views. A member of the U.S. Senate declares that the country would have been better off if a colleague of his who ran for president on a platform that enthsiastically supported racial segregation had been elected is a victim of a PC witchhunt. The president of the most prestigious university perhaps in the world publicly expresses the view that women may be underrepresented in the sciences because they lack an innate aptitude for mathematics.

The Duke lacrosse team was accused of raping a woman. The accusations were later found to be without merit but Henninger wants us to believe that the only reason they were ever charged with a crime was because the alleged victim was black. Don Imus and his cut buddy, Bernard McGuirk, call a group of young women who were guilty of no discernible offense other than playing for a national basketball title "nappy headed ho's" and were cruelly treated by people who didn't understand that Imus and McGuirk were only making a joke.

Deep down inside, I suppose, Henninger actually considers "nappy headed ho's" a term of endearment that the political left simply refuses to embrace for fear of upsetting the folks who Trent Lott's dear friend, Strom Thurmond, wanted to keep in racial holding pens for perpetuity. And Jimmy the Greek who was a bookmaker and gambler by trade, not a biologist or geneticist, should have never lost his television job for daring to say what all right thinking white people, including Strom Thurmond, believed was true about why black people could jump higher and run faster than whites.

People like Henninger will never give up their delusions and their need to defend the indefensible. Never. 

Nobody likes to read ignorance, but shutting down the boards won't make the ignorance go away. I just ignore the racist trolls.

a different POV.....not.

I just ignore the racist trolls.

They did it because it's humiliating to the mainstream folks.

I wonder what John Ridley thinks of it all... 

I don't want to shut down anything except the American War in Iraq. Racist trolls and those who pretend not to be racist trolls like Daniel Henninger should feel free to continue disseminating their foolish views. P6 is right on target, though. The real aim of folks like Henninger is to make people who are not racist trolls feel as if they have countenanced the mistreatment of men (and maybe a woman or two) who deserved better. The reason I speak out is that Trent Lott, Lawrence Summers and Don Imus did not deserve better. They got exactly what they deserved.

As for Howard Cosell, who was not a racist troll, he should have found some other way to describe the football player who he called a "little monkey." Cosell did not mean any harm but when you're Howard Cosell your enemies are always gathered at the gate waiting for you to slip up.

I am willing to give Mr. Henninger, white amerikkkan males and others the right to say whatever they want about race, and class when my black friends of all classes (especially those who are in academica) can talk about....

white americans lack of morality
jewish control of the record industry
the phony black -jewish relationship
white male violence in american schools
white americans sexual pervison
white americans responese to Katrina
stop quoting Dr. King for 'black guilt'

without loss of job, career or death threats like white Americans did to the Rutgers Women basketball team. The only white person who showed any proper breeding was Diedre Imus who was against these poor black women having their lives threatned. I didn't see Mr. Imus or any other white conservative who made racially offensive statements have African- Americans threaten their lives. White Americans like Imus get called "folk heroes" and "brave" for saying anti- P.C. but African- Americans have to hide their viewpoints for fear of losing a job or appointment. As for those 'poor white boys' at Duke,If those were black men who raped say  a "white stripper" she would have been casted as a woman of moral virture like Nicole Brown Simpson who in Black Hollywood loved the brothas and like Ralph Wiley wrote in his third book quoting a Basketball Star 'Nicole got a public makeover' and said 'she was a st8 freak for a Black Ball Player. while those "Black althletes" would have been called depraved, sexually perveted and no lawyer black or white would defend them, those white boys are fortunate they had money.

flag those comments and post them in a separate location to serve as a reminder that the national tenor and virulence around fundamental questions of "race" remain fairly constant in certain circles. There is a certain cadre of folk who would like to reserve the right to say whatever they want in any forum. newsoulus raises some interesting counter arguments - and folks would be wise to consider framing those as part of their discourse on these topics. It makes no sense to spend time defending our humanity/morality when there is so much to address "on the other side of the aisle." I don't do the moralizing thing, but if the topic comes up, I'm sure to shift the focus away from our folk. I do this principally because I consider morality to be akin to breathing. It is a given that any collective that adheres to a set of moral principles will be able to improve their collective lot - and for me, it is also a given that an absence of morality is a piss poor empirical method to explain the deficits suffered by African peoples in the US and abroad. As such, it is not a non-issue, but a highly specific and contextualized issue. It is not a topic of general conversation. It is not a shoehorn to discussions with elders about today's "wayward youth." Nor is it an entry to "correctives" for youth about growing up - and it is certainly not a topic of discussion with white folks for precisely the reasons stated above.

Quite frankly, I was shocked this weekend (and I don't shock easily) to hear a young blond girl singing a song about giving head to an 80-year old man on television at 2:00 in the afternoon.  How did I find this?  YouTube?  Nope.  MTV?  Nope.  BET?  Nope.  Church social?  Nope.  E! Network - Playboy's Girls Next Door was on and some young bunny was singing to Hef.  Now, I only saw this because ESPN is channel 28 - and in working my way down the channels, I hit E! (C. 24).  I can only imagine if my elders or children were innocently watching television around the same time of day.  If folks want to talk about morals, it's fine - but the real deal is that the conversation about American morality will always be a farce with respect to race because of the foundations of the relationship.  

The options have been to either too heavily on the root causes or to focus too much on contemporary interpersonal relationships...and in each instance, something is lost in translation.  A red herring by any other name is just as diversionary.