Random thoughts while not ‘protesting’
AT a time in America when one’s race has never been less important, the left has taught an entire generation of the most privileged Americans ever to view the world through race-tinted glasses.
There were 13 Baltimore high schools where, in 2017, zero percent of students could do math at grade level and another half-dozen high schools where only 1 percent were math proficient. Do you really think these students even know enough about Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to be mad at him?
During the Father’s Day weekend in Chicago, when 14 people were shot and killed and more than 100 were wounded, how many Confederate generals were spotted leaving the scenes of the crime? Just curious.
Shouldn’t monuments and schools dedicated to Barack Obama come down? After all, Obama’s ancestors on his white mother’s side were slave owners.
Whoever called compound interest “the most powerful force in the universe” never encountered “white guilt.”
Next up on the “cancel culture” docket are movies whose names might be offensive under the new woke standard: “Blackboard Jungle,” fictional characters Boston Blackie and
Sam Spade, and all Shirley Temple/bill Robinson dance scenes.
Can we skip to the part where the “protesters” who burned and looted stores denounce business owners as racist for refusing to rebuild?
Words from then-sen. Barack Obama, on Father’s Day in 2008: “But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.”
If the United States is “institutionally racist,” why stop at defunding the police? Why not defund public school education? Or public transportation? Or the military? Or the Federal Reserve System? Or government-funded PBS and NPR?
There are far more bad public school teachers than there are bad cops. And it practically takes an act of Congress to get a bad public school teacher fired. So when and where can we expect the #Defundpubliceducation rallies?
Social justice warriors promise not to rest until there is a complete and total elimination of racism. Really? Elimination? In a country where, 25 years after his death, 8 percent believed “there is a chance” that Elvis Presley is still alive? Good luck.
Winning an argument is far less important than winning someone over to a new, clearer way of thinking.
Because I don’t think of myself as a victim, I’ve been asked, “How many times have you been called the ‘N-word’?” Rarely am I asked, “How many times have you been called an ‘Uncle Tom’/’coon’/’sellout’?” — even though I’ve long since lost count.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host. Follow on Twitter @Larryelder.