Racial Hyprocrisy on Trial

Here’s an interesting word from the New Oxford American Dictionary – hypocrisy, noun ( pl. -sies): the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform; pretense.

You are probably wondering why I would choose to highlight this word. The truth is, I’m afraid there are far too many people in this country who pretend to know what the word means, but either neglect or choose to ignore it when it comes to their own actions. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised coming from a nation where personal responsibility is an increasingly rare commodity.

The concept of racism is one that is way too often molded from the point of view of the accuser that has created a distinct dual standard. When a person not sharing the genes of the black race uses the “N-Word” in describing another, he or she is considered racist. No matter when or under what circumstances, a person uttering something that even sounds like the “N-Word” will have their life destroyed in perpetuity – they are branded as racist. If you attend a show with a black comedian in it, the chances of not hearing the “N-Word” used are astronomical. It’s also a common street language in predominantly black communities – nothing racist about it.

The irony of the “N-Word” is that it originated in the 17^th century to describe people with black (French: nègre and Spanish: negro, Latin: niger) skin. The “N-Word” was purportedly associated with slavery in the pre-civil war south, and therefore today should be strictly taboo when referring to black skinned people. Okay, let’s purge our vocabularies and dictionaries of the “N-Word”.

“Cracker”, on the other hand, is a term very closely associated with slavery. A cracker was an over-seer who used a whip to keep slaves in-line and working. Even though there were also black over-seers with whips, the word is somehow associated only with the white ones.

Nobody even raises an eyebrow then a black person uses the word “Cracker” in any company to describe a white person. They don’t even bother to disguise the word with a euphemism such as “C-word”. That’s not racist? If not, then it’s at least hypocritical.

During the George Zimmerman trial, there were thinly veiled attempts to cast Zimmerman as racist. Were there reports of him uttering the “N-Word”? If so, it must have been censored in the news, because I didn’t hear or read about it. On the other hand, a witness stated she had a conversation with Martin right before the altercation that took his life where he used the word “Cracker” to describe the man following him. Let’s see, Zimmerman must be a racist but Martin is what, a choirboy?

The left wing news media are always portraying any opposition to Obama’s policies as racist. But while Obama gives $7 billion of our tax dollars to improve African electric power, and simultaneously cuts our National Guard and furloughing people at the pentagon, there is nothing racist about that it’s just plain wrong.

Universities notoriously lower standards for blacks so they can admit them over much higher qualified students of what? Other races! Nothing racist about that (wink-wink).

Now that George Zimmerman has been acquitted of murdering Travon Martin, our black head of the justice system, Eric Holder, is scrambling to find a way to charge this innocent man with some violation of the civil rights law, an act signed into law in 1964 aimed specifically at ending discrimination. I suppose if a non-black person kills a black man in self-defense, it must be discrimination. After all, why couldn’t he have chosen to shoot a white passer by instead of the black man that was pounding his head into the concrete? Was Martin discriminating when he said a “Cracker” was following him? If this isn’t racism, it surely is hypocrisy.

You can bet the farm that if this had gone the other way – Martin killing Zimmerman – there would have been two short paragraphs in just the local newspaper, and most of the country would have never heard of George Zimmerman.

How many Hispanics are killed every day by any race, without high profile news reporting? How many blacks are killed each day by other blacks without even a hint of protestation? How many whites are killed by any race with only back-page coverage in the local newspaper?

In 1995, a black man was acquitted of killing his white wife and white houseguest. White people took to the streets in hoards destroying property in protest of the injustice done to the white woman and man. No wait, that’s wrong! The white people did nothing, while the black people rejoiced at the acquittal of O.J. Simpson. What did reverend Al Sharptongue have to say about that? Do you hear crickets chirping? Or is that the sound of hypocrisy?

Although it’s not, I am certain there will be some people calling this column racist. There is no way anyone can call it hypocritical, though.

You Are a Winner!

So I go to the mailbox to retrieve my daily allocation of bills and junk mail, and neatly stuffed between the odd-sized grocery store papers and Penny Saver there is a window envelope with a very official sounding return address: Records Div. Payment Information Dept. Above the address window, a line says, “Check Payment Reference.” I know this has to be important, because it has the word IMPORTANT all over it.

The “important” letter enclosed has the heading, “Report of Payment to be Rendered.” The letter appears as official as any I have ever seen before, so I read further. There are ID numbers, Filer numbers, and impressive forms buried in the letter, but the part that pops right out is where it says, “Awards Payment -- $2,500,000.00.”

Yep, someone wants to give me two- and-a-half-million dollars. Who would ever say no to that? Of course, there is always fine print – the part they hope everyone skips over, and usually printed on the back. I only have to send them twenty bucks and the two-and-a-half- mill will be mine! After, all you can’t expect someone giving away $2.5 million to be able to afford to process the form for nothing.

We get several letters like this every week. They don’t send them to me, though. They are all addressed to my dear wife. Years ago, she bought into the Publisher’s Clearing House scheme. Yes, she keeps sending her forms in and even buys something now and then. Unfortunately, Dick Clark and Ed McMahan are both long dead and we still haven’t had a knock on our door from anyone bearing a giant check.

What this did, though, was put her name at the top of a list of people prone to taking the something-for-nothing bait. They are the same adults that still believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. They’re the ones you can always find headed to one end or the other of a rainbow in search of the Leprechaun with the pot of gold.

Are these “notifications” real? Again, in the fine print, they all offer to make a list of winners available. I haven’t taken them up on that offer either, but no one I know has ever won anything on these schemes.

I find it hard to believe that somewhere in this country there is a One-percenter that feels so guilty about being rich that he or she wants to give large sums of money way to complete strangers. And he or she has built a whole organization to come up with random names of recipients. Naturally, we can’t expect him or her to foot the bill for the organization, so those on the (sucker) list will need to pay to find out if you are actually on the short list to get “your” check.

I am old enough to remember back in the ‘50s there was a television show called The Millionaire. If I remember the theme correctly, some guy named John Baresfoot Tipton sent Michael Ansara out to give complete strangers a check for a million dollars. The only hitch was that they had to spend it. Back then spending a million dollars was actually difficult. Today that might make a substantial down payment on a house in an upscale subdivision. Maybe this same guy is now sending letters to strangers since Michael Ansara is dead. Nope, it was just a TV script – darn.

“Everybody loves a winner,” goes the song. Everybody would love to be a winner, is more appropriate. No body wants to be a loser, and they believe they are endowed with that ethereal quality called luck. Casinos make billions from these people. Desperation fuels the belief in luck, and in far too many cases those least financially able to send $15 or $20 every time they get one of these letters are the ones supporting this scam.

One of the wisest people in the world, my grandfather, once told me, “You do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” I have always remembered that sage advice.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to answer an email from a poor Nigerian widow with a dilemma. She wants to shelter her dead husband’s millions in my bank account. Maybe there is an Easter Bunny after all.