Racism

Yes, I believe we have finally come full circle. Where the color of a person's skin dictates special privileges or extra derision. We also seem to be moving into class warfare as well. When times are tough, the devil himself comes out to play. God help us all to see things with love instead of hate.

I received this email recently from a very passionate libertarian, I thought it was an interesting perspective on racism, liberalism and capitalism.

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not
vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for
president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a
Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is
worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of
America .

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no
smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of
triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I
would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human
flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United
States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and
all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny
the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America .

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that
you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on
for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has
no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your
rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and
mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of
the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks
like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that
they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him
because he does n't look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of
people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in
his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at
the Harvard University 's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would
have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of
service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I
would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes
from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it
into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a
man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by
destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the
scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park,
Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe
all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits,
journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that
capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan,
objected to their assumption that the particular version of the
anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own
version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a
Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the
wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane
Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern
must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too... And the Kennedys have at
last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare
statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having
elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s
bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America . Shout your glee
Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley.. You have
elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black
man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do
Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon
Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your
freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel
good.
There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

ANNE WORTHAM

Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at IllinoisState
University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University 's
Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological
Association and the American Philosophical Association.

She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a
Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal
Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were
featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas" The
transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his
book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical
Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness
is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual
rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on
theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently, she has published articles on the significance of
multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of
victimization and the social and political impact of political correctne
ss. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.