This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:
As those of you who follow this blog know, almost every Saturday I highlight the use of the race card for political purposes.
The use of the race card for political purposes is the prime legacy of the Obama campaign and presidency, as witnessed in the macabre feeding frenzy by the mainstream media and left-wing bloggers pushing the astro-meme that Tea Partiers and others opposed to Barack Obama’s agenda are racist.
These false allegations are a deliberate attempt to stir up racial strife so that the strife can be used to smear tens of millions of people who oppose Obama’s agenda for reasons having nothing to do with skin color.
Last week we explored the Mother of All Race Cards. Tonight we take a trip into the Twilight Zone of card games.
Tonight we examine how a Democratic activist used her own racist past, in which she let a black child die, to launch an attack on the Tea Parties.
Really. No sh-t.
Here is the relevant portion of the post by Melissa Webster, Communications Director of the Mobile, Alabama Area Democratic Association, recounting how she let a drowning black child die because she supposedly had been taught not to kiss black boys, Racism and the Tea Party (emphasis mine):
It was the summer of 1980, when I was eleven years old, a friend of mine and I decided to spend a day at the swimming pool of my neighborhood hotel. As we walked toward the pool we noticed a crowd of black children staring into the water at the deep end. When we got to them one of us asked what they were looking at and a little girl pointed into the water and said, “He’s been down there a long time.” We looked to where she was pointing and saw a little boy, no more than eight or nine, lying on the bottom of the pool. We immediately jumped in and pulled him out while one of the children ran to get an adult. We laid the boy on the concrete along the pool and I felt for a pulse. It was faint, but still there, and my friend and a man who ran to the pool began CPR on him. As I watched frozen in fear, knowing they were doing it wrong, thinking I should move my friend out of the way, tilt the child’s head back to open the air passage and do the mouth to mouth myself because I was the only one there who really knew how, a voice in my head screamed, “You don’t kiss a black boy. You don’t kiss a black boy.”
So I said nothing, did nothing, and watched him slowly die. Yes, I was only a kid in a scary situation, but I knew even then it was the color of his skin that kept me paralyzed, and I’ve felt the shame and remorse ever since.
Webster uses her own racist experience to, you guessed it, launch an attack based on the now discredited claims that health care protesters at the Capitol shouted racial epithets and spit at black Congressmen.
Here is Webster’s hook into the Tea Parties (emphasis mine):
For the most part, I have ignored the fringe group turned mainstream antics of the so-called Tea Party protestors, considering them more an embarrassment and nuisance than someone to be taken seriously. I’ve ignored them, that is, until this past weekend when a benign difference in ideology turned into an angry mob of racial slurs, homophobic rants and excessive mouth phlegm as President Obama and congress set out to make history with the health care reform bill. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I know firsthand the consequences of racism and am appalled such a lack of respect for our American lawmakers occurred, reminding me of an incident from my own childhood and how far I’ve come, and how far all of us have yet to go.
Someone who let a child die because of her own racism has the audacity to take discredited allegations that a handful of people engaged in racist conduct, and use that to smear tens of millions of people.
Go wallow in your own sordid past, Ms. Webster, but don’t project your own inadequacies onto the rest of us.
I think this comment to Webster’s post says it all:
Sad story, but I grew up in Texas, and no one ever told me it was wrong to kiss a black boy. I have a hard time understanding how you could let that inhibit you. But I’m a tea partier who supports several black and latino candidates, so what do I know. I’m less of a racist than you are, but you call me racist. Go figure.
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Related Posts:
Saturday Night Card Game
An Allergic Reaction To The Race Card
“Race” As Political Weapon
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Comments
I'd bet my next paycheck the drowning episode never happened. If it did, it only proves Webster is a racist. Not the rest of us.
This fabrication (between Sam Stein, William Douglas, John Lewis, and Eldridge Cleaver) has to be exposed repeatedly until they confess. The tactic has to be frozen and polarized like the Alinskeyites are used to, Then the practitioners of race hustling need to be ridiculed at every opportunity. Just like Saul taught us.
Geesh. What a sicko that one is!
I was trained as a Red Cross lifeguard around the time I was 14. Just a few years beyond the age she was when she "let a black child die." And…man, o, man…. it NEVER even occurred to me that I would not do whatever was necessary to save a person of color. Just NEVER, EVER, EVER.
I am sorry, Ms. Webster. I am sorry that, when you were eleven, you still were not thinking for yourself about right and wrong. (Nine is the age of reason, ya know.) And please don't extrapolate your shortcomings to the rest of us.
Some of us actually grew up valuing life and equality for all.
Notice how she has built an elaborate rationalization to let herself off the hook for her failure to do the right thing. It wasn't her fault she was taught, "you don't kiss a black boy." She was as much a victim as the poor boy she stood by and watched die wasn't she? She has had to carry this burden for all these years and now she can use it to instill yet more hatred which she would never acknowledge as her purpose.
If she truly learned anything from that experience she would think long and hard before casting aspersions against an entire group of people she seems completely unwilling to listen to or acknowledge. Here is what I really resent in this, I have spent as much time reading the opposing point of view to the health care debate as I have read those I agree with. I know you have probably done that and then some. I don't agree with the left on this but I do understand that some believe it should be a moral imperative that government provide health care to everyone. Some believe the only way to increase competition in the insurance market is for government to get in there and compete. I disagree but I have no need to paint them all as racists or hate-mongers.
I will call out evil when I see it though and those Congressman who purposefully set out to raise phony charges hurt the cause of racism and discredit themselves in the process. They are inciting hatred which Ms. Webster is only too happy to pick up and run with. She blasts the opposition for inflexibility in their ideology but where is hers? She should hang her head in shame for using that boy's death this way. I won't hold my breath waiting for her to hear that though, she's likely too busy lapping up the applause from her audience for her bravery.
Unbelievable.
Cleaver himself has now said he never claimed he was spat upon and yet they still cling to the lie like it was a security blanket so they can tell themselves "They are the haters….not us"
I think Ms. Webster has earned this:
http://dragis.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/picard-facepalm.jpg
I believe she was there and probably participated in helping rescue the drowning kid from the bottom of the pool. But she has taken that unfortunate incident to create a narrative that is not believable.
She says a "man who runs the pool" started performing CPR. Wouldn't knowing CPR be a basic requirement for employment to be "a man who runs the pool"? (You can think through the relationships between the hotel's financiers and insurance carriers and imagine they might demand someone be certified in CPR to supervise a public pool). That's the first red flag. But maybe she's right and "the man who runs the pool" didn't know how to properly perform CPR. Let's move past that to the next red flag.
Now let's do a mental exercise and change the drowning victim's race to white. She says the authority figure on the scene, the "man who runs the pool", is desperately trying to revive the kid. Do we really believe an elementary school age child has the confidence in an emergency situaton to heroically push aside the authority figure and take charge of saving the kid's life? She wants us to believe that if only the drowning victim had been white, she would have. Unless she was a super hero as a child, I call B.S.
She took what was presumably a tragic event in her past, twisted the narrative to such an extent it isn't believable, and used it to smear millions of innocent people as racists. Despicable.
To me, this was one of the most egregious race card stories yet.
@MaggotAbroad I would imagine that the person would need to be a certified lifeguard. That means that the person would know how to give mouth to mouth resuscitation. Heck I knew how to do that at the age of 7 because I got my life-saving certificate from the Mentone Life-Saving club here in Australia.
I agree with your take on the narrative of the woman. If she did in fact fail to give mouth to mouth to a child because of skin colour then that is her problem and not that of members of the T(axed) E(nough) A(lready) Party.
@Mary Sue those are very good points.
It goes to show that these left wing liberal nutcases will do anything to smear anybody – Moderate Democrats, Republican and Independent. They are truly despicable types.
I do believe that what was done by the Black Caucus was truly disgusting. These people should be ashamed of their actions. Instead they are acting like braggarts.
Webster's disgusting tale reminds me of another episode involving a drowning black child and a future Republican president. Thankfully- no surprise, really- this is a happy story:
On July 4, 1967 California Gov. Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy were giving a staff garden party by their pool when a young black girl started drowning and slowly tumbled to the bottom of the pool. Before anyone even realized what was happening, Reagan- a former lifeguard who saved 77 lives as a young man- threw off his jacket and dove into the water. He rescued the young girl and set her, living, on the wet concrete. (There's a picture I've seen of him standing in the pool with his dripping wet clothes on- hair still Hollywood perfect somehow- and the young girl sitting on the ledge).
Funny how an "evil hate mongerer" like Reagan- during the racially turbulent mid-to-late 1960's, mind you- never had any reservations about saving a young black child's life; he simply acted to save somebody, unlike the pathetic, careless thought processes of a sicko like Webster. (And by the way, few people know that as a young college football player in the 1930's Reagan also refused to stay at a hotel that would not allow two of his black teammates to stay there- he drove over an hour to his parent's house so that they had a place to sleep). I think all the comments above have been spot on- this isn't a "true confessions" of a white person story- it's a glimpse into the mind of a person with serious problems.
By the way, what's the deal with liberals watching people die in swimming-related episodes? Melissa Webster, Ted Kennedy…
More here on the Reagan story: http://toy-story.media.mit.edu:9000/servlet/pluto?state=3030326964303034333339393030347061676530303757656250616765
Did anyone else notice that this little child knew the proper techniques of CPR to the point where she knew they were doing it wrong? This was 1980, not today. In 1980 they trained first responders, EMT's, nurses, doctors, and life guards. Somehow this little girl recieved the training sufficient to know the proper techniques of delivering CPR. I'm a cop and the funny thing about training is that it kicks in when something happens and you just act. I guess this particular 11 year old was advanced enough to sit back, contemplate, theorize, and make a decision in a crisis situation based on racism. Is she working in the Obama Administration now?
I find disgusting her deplorable comment about the other black kids just standing there staring at the body of the little boy for a long time as though they were too ignorant to jump in and rescue the child and only the arriving white kids were smart enough to jump in. She's a complete liar and a typical liberal who must project her racist feelings and thoughts onto others. In this case she projects her self-hatred onto the non-racist Tea Party movement.
it galls me to no end that the MSM and the left portray me (a TEAbagger) as such and have no clue how i think, feel, or react. i also agree with dave b about being CPR trained in 1980. i was 15 that summer and working at a boy scout camp for the summer and got training as all staffers had to learn CPR. i seem to recall that you couldn't get CPR certified unless you were 15 then, but i may be wrong.
I believe the basics of the story, although I think she has built it up in her mind over the years. Just being in the presence of a drowning child, when you are eleven years old, would have to be a traumatic experience, and it has got to mess with your head. It's hard to remember ordinary things exactly as they happened, even the next day. While the circumstances probably cemented the memory in her mind, I am sure she has subconsciously added to it as well, including the part where she imagines she could have helped if only she'd tried. That was probably her own guilt at not being able to do anything, or maybe guilt at some prior hateful thought about black people, such as a wish she could kill one or see one die.
People's minds work in funny ways, and that would especially be true for an eleven year old girl confronted with a situation like this.
Remember, this was Alabama in 1980, or thereabouts, so her family was probably-yep, Democrats. Bear in mind, she would have been born in either 1968 or 1969, and I can believe her parents taught her never to kiss black boys, probably because of their fear of recriminations against her by the Ku Klux Klan-otherwise known as the militant wing of the Southern Democratic Party.
If I had ever behaved in such a manner for such a cowardly and inhuman reason, even when I was eleven, I would still be trying to work off the guilt by projecting my spiritual emptiness onto others as well. Webster has a lot to answer for when she meets her Maker.
Just noticed that HufPo is full of lunatics?
Have you read "Brainwashed" by Tom Burrell? He's got the whole race card dealio nailed in a quote by Rev. Carrie Jackson: "There is a self-serving aspect that the race card has helped a lot of people. It's been the fallback position in lieu of critical thinking. You just whip it out. It's similar to 'the devil you know is better than the devil you don't know.' We know how to play that card. We have not a clue of what hand we'll wind up with if we give that up."
I think EVERYONE should read this book.
I agree wholeheartedly with DaveB. This is a fraudulent Southerners are so racist they don't even save dying black kids, post. I don't believe it for a second. First, as DaveB points out, CPR wasn't invented until 1960 and it wasn't until the late 80s or early 90s that CPR training was expanded to the general adult population. It wasn't until the mid 90s or later that children began being taught CPR. Thus I don't believe the blogger had had any CPR training in the 70s (when Melissa would be under ten years of age). Indeed even today most CPR training courses ban potential students who are under the age of 16 and certainly would ban potential students under the age of 10 years of age.
Thus is another liberal lie undone. But there is some psychopathology apparently going on in what's left of Melissa's mind (of course liberalism is a deep pathology, but I mean in addition to that affliction). To invent a dying black baby scene, hold yourself responsible for not intervening, engage in egotistical and narcissistic delusions that an eleven year old has more knowledge on a then less than widespread CPR technique than the trained lifeguards and would have saved that non existent black kid, is bizarre. Even the thought that the adults there would have allowed an eleven year old to administer such procedure, even had she been so trained (again despite the fact that no such child training existed then or now) is beyond the point of sanity.
I hope Melissa returns to her meds and learns to free herself from these delusions so that she may lead a more productive life.