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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