Come back from battle with your shield...or on it.
In other words, do your duty and bring victory for your country, or die in the attempt, and never, ever dishonor yourself in any way. So, what does this have to do with Mitt Romney and the NAACP? Hang out a few, and I'll explain it to you.
The Big News of Romney's address to the NAACP is not, as the press has been quick to point out, that he got himself heckled and booed. This is par for the course when any Republican addresses the General Motors of Official Blackdom in America; no, the Big News was that the NAACP has proven itself, again, to be something other than what it claims to be, and in the process, proves for the umpteenth time that while the claim that the "last vestiges of Racism" in America are still felt in many quarters just might be true, it would appear that those last few strongholds are not to be found in so-called "White America" circles.
Now here I must stop and explain a thing or two. When I say "Official Blackdom", I do not mean that to be some sort of racial code; there is, sadly, a division in African-American Land which pits the bulk of African-Americans against a self-selected elite, mostly composed of the Old Guard Civil Rights leaders and organizations spiced with a smattering of individuals who enjoy status as the favored pets of the democratic party, i.e. the Official Blacks. This is a form of self-segregation which is harmful, in the long run, to us all, regardless of race.
Why? because organizations like the NAACP are trapped in a romantic past. The organization still lives off the notoriety and moral standing it assiduously built up during the struggle for equality, and rightfully so, but there is also an emotional attachment to that past within the "leadership" that...ahem...colors... it's advocacy on just about every other subject under the Sun. It's as if the NAACP leadership, and most of it's rank-and-file, have been living in a bubble: having won the war for equality, they are content to continue fighting the old battles over and over, as if they live in a real-life version of Groundhog Day.
The rhetoric of the NAACP is still the same. One would think listening to the likes of the NAACP leadership that nothing in America has changed since 1954. That people are still being denied basic human rights and subjected to the worst of Jim Crow and poll taxes, segregation and degradation, inequality in hiring, housing, education, and before the law, and this is simply not true. And even in those rare cases where an injustice does occur, the legal system in this country does it's level best to right the wrong.
No, the NAACP is not about "advancement" because if it was, it would have moved forward with the rest of us. It's all about using the past to beat Whites up with the memories of days gone by, and in doing so, to ensure that there's enough guilt-by-association, enough intimidation, enough sheer whining to ensure that whatever idiocy Official Blackdom advocates today gets a fair hearing -- for better or for worse -- in the corridors of American Power.
Even the organization's name exudes these qualities of segregation and attachment to the past; does anyone, these days, even use the term "Colored People", which back when, was considered a polite -- and condescending -- way of saying Nigger? Does anyone even say Nigger anymore? Well, except black people, I mean? The cultural mindset of today is completely different; so why is it that the NAACP still uses a term that went out of fashion -- thankfully so -- several decades ago, and which, if it had been uttered by someone like Romney, would be considered mortally offensive?
Well, because if there wasn't a mechanism by which Official Blackdom could continue to pick at the social scabs of America's racist past, and through which it has created another mechanism to extract other people's money for it's own benefit, the NAACP would have gone the way of the tyrannosaurus and the hoop skirt. Having achieved it's original, stated goal of true equality, it would have no reason to continue to exist, and people like Julian Bond would have to find a real job.
Now, give Romney full marks for attending what he had to have known would be a bad situation for him. He gets credit for making the effort, in my book, but anyone who sent him into that Lion's Den expecting that he was going to change any minds should be taken out and gang-raped by a herd of donkeys hopped up on Viagra and Crystal Meth. You simply can't be serious, and your mental faculties are suspect; Romney was not going to make the case for Conservatism -- even his watered-down brand -- in front of an audience which is mostly composed of people who are, for all intents and purposes, wards of the State (Welfare advocates, professional bureaucrats/politicians, those who suck off the taxpayer teat in myriad ways), and those who have a vested interest in keeping the idea of there being two -- or more -- separate Americas alive as a matter of cash flow and personal prestige.
These are people who don't want to hear about Conservatism: they don't want to hear a politician, especially a White one, tell them that they have the power to improve their own lot in life through effort, work, personal responsibility, savings, obeying the law, and in joining the common culture. No, these folks want to hear the completely opposite argument, that they're owed because of the legacy of slavery, that they are entitled to other people's money and property because they're Black, that there should be an unequal playing field -- so long as the inequality works to their favor -- in hiring, education, and so forth. They wanted to hear not what Romney would do, if elected President, they want to hear what Romney was willing to give them in order to be president.
And then they would have voted for Barack Obama, anyway.
And while we're on the subject of Official Blackdom and Obama, I have to say a few words. I'm often accused of being a racist for simply pointing out that president Frequent-Flyer-Miles has a massive load of defects in his character which translate directly into bad policy and poor decision making. Let me repeat this for those of you who still haven't gotten it: I can't be a racist, because I hate Obama's White Half, too. My dislike is not based on his race, it is based upon his sheer ineptness and lying rhetoric (written by someone else -- probably a bunch of white guys -- and stuffed into a teleprompter for him).
There's more self-pitying-and-self-serving racism in Michelle Obama's "I'm proud of my country for the first time" nonsense, than there ever was in anything I have written about the man (Obama). In fact, Barack and Michelle Obama are living examples of what's wrong with Official Blackdom, and its need and obligation to continue to live in the past. Only in America can Ivy-League-educated, millionaires-by-virtue-of-political-and-social-connections, Affirmative-Action-beneficiaries complain -- in both veiled references and bald-faced lies -- that this is a Racist Country where blacks can't and don't get a fair shake.
Seventy years ago, Michelle Obama would be mopping my floors, doing my laundry, or maybe cooking someone's meals for a few dollars a week, not attending Princeton and becoming wealthy as a hospital director. Barack Obama, likewise, would be mopping floors, or cleaning toilets, or sharecropping, and never in a million years, if things were still as they were then, would he have attended Harvard Law, or become President of the United States. That was the reality for many blacks back then, it is not the reality now. but somehow, that message never gets sent by Official Blackdom, does it?
Then again, Official Blackdom seems to have troubles of it's own. For it often cannot decide just who belongs in it's exalted ranks, and who doesn't. A charge often made against other black people that Official Blackdom have a beef with is that so-and-so isn't "Authentically Black", an Uncle Tom, a Sellout, a backstabber or brainwashed. These charges have been levelled, at one time or another, by Official Blackdom at the likes of Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, and...Barcack Obama.
Basically, you get the label "Not-Authentically-Black" for three reasons:
1. You espouse policies that don't elevate African-Americans and their concerns above all other considerations, despite that fact that some of those concerns might be downright misguided. If you need an example of this assertion, then digest this: shooting deaths and murders of black people in both the cities of New York and Chicago (265 in Chicago this year alone!) -- at the hands of other black people -- have increased ever since more direct and aggressive policing strategies have been labelled "Racial Profiling".
2. You do not advocate for Reparations for Slavery, in any form one might manage to obtain them, i.e. Welfare, ObamaCare, Cash-for-Clunkers, a tax system that punishes the successful and productive to feed the mindless and slothful, mortgage renegotiation schemes that are designed to let deadbeats live mortgage-free or to wear the banks out with paperwork and legal fees. If you don't publicly state, often and forcefully, that Black America is entitled to the Wealth of All America, and that "someone needs to make it rain dollah-dollah all up in this bi-otch!" then you aren't a friend of "The Black Commmunniii-tayyy", as Reverend Al might say.
3. Political or public relations requirement. In this case, it would explain the anomaly of Bill Clinton being considered the First Black President, Louis Farrakhan and Cornell West are taken seriously, while the likes of Thomas Sowell, Ward Connerly and Larry Elder are dismissed out-of-hand.
4. When it comes to telling the truth; that the problems of many African-Americans are the result of self-inflicted wounds, and that many of these walking wounded were led -- cheerfully, stridently, and with malice of forethought -- by the very Generals of their own Movement.
According to many in Official Blackdom, most notably the "reverend" Je$$e Jackson, Barack Obama isn't Authentically Black in the sense that a Harvard educated, Proper-English-speaking, apparently good-husband-and-father, half-white man raised in middle-class circumstances in Hawaii hasn't the perspective and experiences of the ghetto in his background. Until, of course, he appears set to be elected President of the United States, and then, all of a sudden, Obama becomes the epitome of the Black Experience...so long as the checks keep coming.
No, the problem with Romney's speech the other day isn't that he got himself booed. Anyone who tells an audience unpleasant truths -- that the way out of your circumstances is by fostering competition for public services,by re-discovering a work ethic, for playing by society's rules, and by destroying the carefully-erected edifice of government that keeps you on The Plantation in a figurative sense -- is bound to hear a few catcalls. The problem is that the people who would benefit from Romney's ideas are blinded and deafened by the very organization -- and it's sycophants -- that promised to lead them to a better future, but instead sold them out for reasons of political clout, money and prestige.
Mitt Romney came home with his shield; he did himself credit for dealing with a hostile crowd, and for making an unpopular case. One wonders when the NAACP will come home on it's own shield, and if that circumstance would, finally, lead to something other than the crass and unnecessary class and racial warfare rhetoric of many on the Political left.
The NAACP is about as useful as the Ku Klux Klan, and about as relevant.
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