In 2016, American documentary film-maker Ami Horowitz conducted an interesting experiment. First, he visited ultra-left-wing UC Berkeley and asked its white liberal passers-by about voter ID laws. All of them agreed that voter ID discriminated against black people, citing reasons that people on the streets of black Harlem agreed were at best ignorant, and at least a little bit racist.
Novelist Roger L. Simon goes even further.
Ninety percent of the racism in America today comes from the Democratic Party and the Left.
Unfortunately, Simon doesn’t offer any quantifiable justification for his claim, only his “I just reckon”. So his claim of “ninety percent” seems unlikely. But – and remember, Simon wrote this in 2015, long before Trump Derangement Syndrome and the accompanying tsunami of race-hate hoaxes – he is right about the left’s obsession with and cynical exploitation of mostly imaginary racism.
They live off it and exploit it. It is unconscionable to the degree they do this, ruining the lives and futures of the very people they say they are helping in the process.
It’s not like Simon is unfamiliar with real racism.
I spent most of my life on the Left and was a civil rights worker in the South in my early twenties. I was also, to my everlasting regret, a donor to the Black Panther Party in the seventies.
So I have seen this personally from both sides and my conclusion is inescapable. The Left is far, far worse. They are obsessed with race in a manner that does not allow them to see straight…From Al Sharpton to Hillary Clinton, they all do it.
But the race-baiting tide engulfing left America can be sheeted home to one person more than any other.
Barack Obama is one of the worst offenders in this regard.
From the earliest stages of his first presidential bid, Obama was exploiting imaginary racism. Obama almost immediately played the race card against rival nominee Hillary Clinton. As president, he was even worse, deftly race-baiting wherever it suited his political prospects.
In reaction to the horrid actions of the deranged, but solitary racist Dylan Roof, the president claimed racism is in our DNA…Is Obama telling me that racism is in my DNA? What a wretched and insulting statement. If he means that, he should tell it to me face-to-face.
Towards the end of the 2000s, “racism” had sunk so low on the media-political elites’ radar that Forbes confidently declared, “Racism In America Is Over”. Apart from perennial race-baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, whose entire income is based on stoking racism, hardly anyone cared.
Then Obama took office.
The racial situation in this country has gotten decidedly worse since he took office. And he is a great deal to blame. Ever since the beer summit it was obvious he was disingenuous and harmful on the subject of race, seeking to stir the pot when it was actually empty or nearly. His claim that if he had had a son he would look like Travyon Martin was ridiculous and self-serving in the extreme. Barack Obama is a product of the fanciest private school in Hawaii and his children go to Sidwell Friends, the fanciest school in D. C. He takes vacations on Oahu and his wife parties in Switzerland. He had as much in common with Trayvon as I do with the queen of Spain.
Contrary to the obsession of the media-political elite, ordinary Americans still do not generally obsess about racism. Despite a recent uptick, almost certainly fuelled by the left-media’s hysteria, the majority of Americans remain optimistic about race relations in their country. America still rates as one of the least racist countries in the world.
I’ve spent time abroad and speak Spanish and French and if Mr. Obama thinks the U.S. is a racist country, he ought to do a little bit of traveling not on Air Force One. Try sitting at a French dinner table for twenty minutes and listening to the casual conversation if you think America is racist.
Try India, or South Africa, where black South Africans are hostile to even other black Africans.
The truth is the USA is remarkably un-racist for a country its size. We weren’t always that way, obviously, but we walked the walk and we are now. Or were. The Democrat Party and its assorted media hacks are trying to take us backwards. They suffer from nostalgia for racism for the glorious days when they could assert their moral superiority.
pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2015/6/25/90-of-the-racism-in-america-comes-from-the-democratic-party-and-the-left
And there’s the heart of the matter: the left are convinced that they have a monopoly on moral purity. The only way they can maintain their self-delusion is to denounce everyone else as “racist”, even as they treat black people like ignorant children.