Racism Then . . . Manufactured Racism Now
By REY FLORES
Man’s inhumanity to man is just another part of our fallen nature. We have brutalized each other in so many different ways. Today we are rediscovering that brutality and trying hard to find new ways and worse ways to hurt each other.
There is no excuse for any kind of racism, given that as Catholics we all believe we are made by the same Creator. And even the worst of us deserve to be treated with human dignity since we are made in His image and likeness.
Systemic slavery and institutional racism are realities we cannot erase from man’s history. There are countless examples throughout the ages of how certain cultures and people have become the slaves of others, having their native land colonized by more advanced societies.
There’s a funny little thing called time, and time passes. Only God is timeless, but we are not. When will we stop beating the proverbial dead horses of racism and bigotry and leave them in the past?
It appeared that after the civil rights movement of the 1960s we had come to almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps not institutionally, but certainly through popular culture as we embraced more movies and music which no longer relegated blacks to secondary roles or being banned from radio airplay.
Integration was a fast-growing social experiment in America’s inner-cities. While the idyllic breaking down of racial barriers was the desired intent, the reality was that formerly white neighborhoods deteriorated into low-income slums and an ugly urban sprawl to the suburbs became white America’s escape.
By the 1980s, bad fashions and all, we had black musical artists like Michael Jackson and Prince dominating the Billboard Music charts, and Bill Cosby had single-handedly redefined how America saw the black family.
The cruel but factual irony is that Cosby embodies how we went from the idyllic new black family of the 1980s to recent revelations of what really was going on behind the scenes in the actor’s life. Cosby was portraying a successful, faithful husband and father, while in real life he was a lecherous man in power who took advantage of scores of women in the worst ways possible. Cosby was not Dr. Huxtable, but a “player” of the worst kind.
We went from “Good Times” to “The Cosby Show” and now we are facing “bad times.”
The light at the end of the tunnel was supposed to be our first black U.S. president.
Barack Hussein Obama was exalted as the final piece of the puzzle that would eclipse all the evil racism which had been unleashed on all black people throughout the ages. Obama was to be the great uniter and savior.
In his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama shared some words many thought would bring “hope and change,” but all we got were platitudes: “Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”
Where, I ask you, is that America? It certainly isn’t here because I don’t see it. I see an America which is more racially polarized than ever. I see an America which would have made Martin Luther King Jr. shake his head in disbelief had he not been assassinated.
Right here, right now, thanks to Barack Obama and an endless list of his administration lackeys and the propagandist “news” media, I officially declare that Martin Luther King Jr. did indeed die in vain. Tell me it isn’t true given the socially fractured environment we live in today.
The latest example of all of this was a recent uprising in Milwaukee, where mobs of our black citizens decided that they would go out and target random white citizens for a “beat down.” This all based on yet another situation where a police officer was trying to do what police officers are supposed to do: catch criminals.
What many among the liberal news media propaganda pushers didn’t tell us is that the police officer who shot the black suspect was also a black man. Truth be damned, because that wouldn’t have fit the ultra-left’s narrative.
Following the Alinskyian philosophy to never let a “crisis go to waste,” people like Obama, the professional agitator Al Sharpton, the fading Jesse Jackson, and the insufferable Maryland Cong. Elijah Cummings, all jump on these situations to stoke the embers, and now we have the roaring flames of a renewed, manufactured racism. A new custom-made racism for the global elites like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to divide us and to keep at each other’s throats!
Race-baiting stories for the low-information masses are always a ratings boon for the liberal “news” media. On television they’ll sell more ads, while websites publish the same provocative and incendiary stories to garner more clicks on their websites, thereby increasing their ad revenue potential.
What are we supposed to tell our children today?
Racism has become worse than I’ve ever seen it in my entire life and I’m nearing 50 years of age. It truly is sad how the majority of Americans had overcome their bigotry, at least to some degree, but I guess it would be more racist to ignore our God-given differences.
The one bigotry I fear will never end is the soft bigotry of low expectations. This is when the so-called progressive left believes that “people of color” are just too dumb to fix their own problems, so in come the great white hope liberals to save us from ourselves. The sad thing is that while they tell us we’re getting a “free ride,” we are always kept in the back of the bus.
We do not need liberal Democrats to tell us we “need” their help. We need to help ourselves and with God’s help and grace we can stop being victims of our own minds and limitations. It’s high time to end the manufactured racism of the left.
At the end of our days here on earth, our souls will have no color, but they will either be good or evil — for all eternity.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
