GOP insanity on display

Ever since the Affordable Care Act became law Republicans in the U.S. House have voted not once, not twice, not 10 or even 20 times, but a total of 37 times to repeal the law. Strangely, the speaker of the House, who is responsible for scheduling all 37 votes, knows all too well that the action will have no effect whatsoever in overturning the law.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that the cost of running the House for just one week is $25 million. We have only to add up the debate times and the endless speeches by Republicans bashing the law to determine that the 37 votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act have cost American taxpayers a whopping $55 million.

As voters we have been told time and time again, year in and year out, by various Republican congressmen and senators, along with the parrots on their shoulders at Fox News, that the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility, the party most concerned about government waste and mismanagement, and that they are the only political party that can put the country’s financial house back in order.

If this is the blueprint of the method the GOP is going to use to straighten out all our economic ills, then it must be called what it truly is — insanity. tion — fighting racism in America.

I do not believe a single white person in America misunderstands the negative connotation and degrading implications of the N-word on the African-American psyche. The term originated from the world of white-supremacy masters who held blacks in abject chattel slavery for 246 years, and another hundred years of night-riding, terror and “lynch law.” To this day the N-word has the most dehumanizing, humiliating and degrading meaning possible, when spoken by a white man or woman to or about a black man. No apology for its use when directed against a black by a white erases the damage done. Its scars are on the soul.

There is no term that blacks can call whites that will equal the negative, hatefilled meaning of the N-word because there is no equal comparative analysis in the social equation. Blacks have never hated, segregated themselves from, and carried out 400 years of dehumanizing behavior toward all whites because of their skin color.

The most damaging disposition hindering harmonious race relations in this country is the social, economic, political and religious denial by white America that white racism exists; the contention that blacks are now treated equal, enjoying equal protection and justice before the law. This will remain so until there is an open, honest and authentic dialogue on racism in America, and until the debt of justice and redemption for black slavery is paid in full.

Whatever happened to the old saying “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”?

I was raised (in the South) to believe