Rush, Rams and Reverse Racism

Rush, Rams and Reverse Racism:
The Right's Search for a Black Racist

Paul Scott



With the announcement of Rush Limbaugh's failure to purchase part of the St Louis Rams football franchise, the Right went on a safari to track down the ever elusive, black racist. As usual, the race hunters came up empty. The best specimen that they could capture was Fox News Channel's token black commentator, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill with a picture of former Black Liberation Army member, Assata Shakur on his website. Hardly, evidence of a violent plot to take over America by spear wielding black militants.

The reason why the Right Wingers have never been able to successfully cage a black racist is simple. They don't exist.

Now this may be a hard pill to swallow for those who, wholeheartedly, believe in a warped version of the law of opposites.

If there is white racism, surely there must be black racism. If whites have ,historically, enslaved and oppressed blacks, there has to be some remote island out in the Atlantic where Bobby Whitman is being forced to pick cotton and sing Barry Manilow songs while Tyrone Jackson stands over him with a whip and a tall glass of Country Time Lemonade.

However, this Bizarro World of black supremacy only exists in the minds of Ultra Right talking heads and those who set their watches by the Glenn Beck Show.

For years, the Right has used the charge of "reverse racism" to hide their collective fears that they are losing control of America. Oddly enough, many people who scream racism don't have the foggiest idea what the word means. While the definition of "racism" may be a doctrine of racial superiority, the functional definition is the power of a group to exercise this doctrine over others. Therefore, as author Nelly Fuller wrote "the only form of functional racism that exists among the people of the known universe is white supremacy."

The doctrine of white supremacy is so entrenched in this society that even an African American president of the United States is not exempt.

So, sorry folks, by this definition, African Americans cannot be racist. We can be a lot of things; prejudiced, bigots, etc but the one thing that we cannot be, for social and economic reasons, is racist.

It must be noted that in order to find a black racist apologists for white supremacy have had to reach back centuries.

In his book, "The Ice Man Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man's Racism, Sexism and Aggression," Canadian author, Michael Bradley traces the foundation of the myth of black racism back centuries when the Bantu-speaking people conquered the Khoikhoi and the Saan. Because anthropologist CS Coon divided the Africans into two separate races, some have used this as evidence of "black supremacy." However, Bradley also quotes anthropologist Ashley Montague as saying, " The modern conception of race owes its widespread diffusion to the white man. Wherever he has gone he has carried it with him."

America's search for black racists carried into the Civil Rights Era when Mike Wallace introduced America to Malcolm X via the documentary "The Hate that Hate Produced," which, like future programs ,confused reactionary racial rhetoric and calls for black self empowerment with black socio-economic supremacy.

This was also evident in the late 60's and early 70's, when those attempting to label the Black Panther Party as "racists" ignored the fact that Panther ideology was based on Marxism which downplayed race in order to organize the oppressed working class and also the fact that the party had many white supporters including celebrities such as Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando.

This frantic search for black supremacy continued into the 80's and 90's when black leaders such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Minister Louis Farrakhan and Rev. Al Sharpton were labeled racists as well as entertainers such as the rap group, Public Enemy.

We see the same trend continuing over the last year as Conservatives tried to link black racism to the Obama administration by their attacks on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Even the Latino community was not spared as Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor was portrayed by the conservative media as a brown racist.

So, it is not black racism that is the problem, it is conservative talk show hosts such as Sean Hannity, Mike Savage and Rush Limbaugh who spew their hate filled venom across the planet via their satellite powered pulpits, 24 hours a day.

If Limbaugh and his ilk want to see a real racist, they need to look no further than their own bathroom mirrors.


Paul Scott is a self-syndicated columnist and author of the blog, No Warning Shots Fired.com. He can be reached at (919) 451-8283 or info@nowarningshotsfired.com