S O U T H E R N
A U T H O R
"A Play for Power"
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If we'd known the trouble it would cause, we'd have picked our own damn cotton!
A friend recently saw this bumper sticker on an old pick-up truck somewhere in South Georgia. This prophetic remark pretty well sums it up. No, I'm not being racist. I'm not talking about segregation. Not about integration or busing school kids either. I'm not being critical of Affirmative Action or any of the other social programs the government used in an attempt to level the playing field and open the door of opportunity for all Americans, regardless of nationality or skin color.
What I am talking about is the culture of sorry-ass freeloading bums the federal government's handouts since the 60s have created. A friend from Texas tells this story: "When George Bush brought up the poverty issue with Katrina, I cringed. Oh the excuses for why people are poor! Most of the time it's sheer laziness."
He continues, "I went to a University of North Dakota gathering the other night - mainly to discuss what we are going to do to keep the 'Fighting Sioux' name. A fellow grad told me about how his mother had encountered a "Katrina victim" in a Wal-Mart. The large black woman opened a bottle of oil of Olay in the store and proceeded to rub the product all over her body. She then replaced the cap and put the product back on the shelf.
"My friend's mother was flabbergasted and told the Katrina victim that she had better pay for that product or she was going to call security. The victim told her that she was a Katrina victim (that rings as well as someone who tells me that she's a single mother - another badge of victimhood) and that ‘this is how we do it in Louisiana.'
"My friend's mother then proceeded to a phone to call security and the victim relented. She took the opened product to the cashier to pay for it, probably with FEMA funds. She had also told my friend's mother that she didn't have any money which begs the question of why she was in Wal-Mart to begin with."
Now Katrina was a tragedy. Both in the cost of human lives and in its wanton destruction of property. But Katrina laid bare just how sorry some folks are and just how inept the government of Louisiana and New Orleans really is. Despite the philandering and political patronizing that's going on now in Washington, even the most liberal-liberals inside the beltway must have shuddered as they witnessed first-hand society's dregs looting and pillaging the city that was New Orleans.
Katrina also exposed the likes of race-baiters like Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson who never set a foot in the city. It illustrated the mettlel of Geraldo Rivera, the compassion of Shepard Smith and others from Fox News that covered the story. It showed just how helpless and dependent those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder have become.
While many wonderful stories of human kindnesses came out of the Katrina disaster, it clearly showed that far too many people take no responsibility for themselves. Even when they knew a storm was coming, they didn't evacuate. They didn't stockpile water. They didn't rush out to buy bread and flashlight batteries. They sat and waited for the "gov'ment." Then when the gov'ment didn't show, they were outraged. They trashed the city. Trashed the Superdome and the Ernest Morial Convention Center. When the cameras were on, a few waved their arms in defiance. Others appeared humbly grateful when help finally arrived.
Now, some two months after Katrina, horror stories about the aftermath are leaking out. Stories like my friend told about the woman in Wal-Mart. Stories about inappropriate purchases with FEMA money ... including strippers and lap dances. Stories about the millions the federal government spends each night to provide lavish hotel accommodations - even suites aboard cruise ships! Stories about evacuees trashing the homes of benefactors, robbing them, even killing them (Don't believe me? See the article entitled "3 hurricane evacuees accused of killing woman who helped them" in the October 30 edition of the Houston Chronicle.
A couple of weeks ago, the Millions More Movement descended on Washington. Behind the podium sat the relics of the Civil Rights Movement - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan and others. Speaking to the group, Reverend Jesse Jackson said, "We march this year because there are two Americas, where gaps continue to exist."
Reverend Al Sharpton said, "Some of us will not remain silent ... while our leaders are afraid to stand up and speak back."
Louis Farrakhan said, "Together we will achieve for our people and others in 10 years what we have not been able to achieve in the 450 years of our sojourn in this hemisphere."
Dr. Conrad Worrill said, "The Millions More Movement will continue to unearth the organizing and mobilizing for the just demand of Black people in America for Reparations."
Black Power? Reparations? Give me a break! Black democrats now control City Hall in more than 500 cities and towns across this country. In big cities, too. Cities like Houston, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta, Memphis, Detroit, San Francisco, Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio, New Orleans and Denver.
Much to his credit, the president they so despise has appointed more blacks and other minorities to high government positions than any other president in history. There are presently 42 blacks in the US House of Representatives. All are democrats. Barack Obama, the newly elected senator from Illinois, is currently the only Black in the senate; however, he is the third Black senator since reconstruction - the other two being Carole Moseley Braun and Edward Brooke.
With few exceptions, once black democrats are in office, they vote as a block. They turn their backs on their white constituents and focus on helping "their people" with more and entitlements and government handouts.
John H. McWhorter, a writer for City Magazine says America has already paid for slavery. He writes, "You'd think from listening to these people that after the Civil Rights Act, the American government just left black people to sink or swim. Somehow, these victimologists consider it irrelevant that the 1960s witnessed a battery of ‘reparations' for blacks that continue in full force today - the expansion of welfare, affirmative action, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, and so on.
"What ails the black community today is the very illusion that holds the reparations gang in thrall - that serious black achievement is impossible except under ideal conditions. That white neglect must be at the root of any black-white disparity, and that only the actions of whites can significantly improve the conditions of blacks."
The voices in the black community that oppose this thinking are few and far between. Condi Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Vernon Jordan, Bill Cosby. Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell. Janice Rogers Brown, Andy Young and J.C. Watts. Unfortunately, they aren't in the black mainstream. In fact, Cosby recently set off a firestorm with his remarks suggesting that blacks are somehow responsible for their own plight. The ones most listened to are the race-baiters: Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and the cutest communist in Congress, Georgia's own Cynthia McKinney.
These people sow seeds of hate and separatism. They lie and spread malicious rumors. Cynthia has implied that President Bush didn't act to stop the terrorist attack on 9/11 because his friends stood to gain financially.
After proclaiming that the government bombed the levees in New Orleans, at a National Press Club conference on October 13, 2005, Louis Farrakhan made these remarks: "When you have people who politically feel that they get their advantage by killing people and blaming it on somebody else, then it makes us wonder what really happened to the Twin Towers," another reference to the terrorist strike that brought down the World Trade Center.
He added, "Was the heat from fuel from two airplanes sufficient to compromise the steel in that building? People said they heard explosions and then buildings came down like they do when we implode old buildings in Vegas or in Florida or in other places. So who was the victor there? Who got the advantage there? It wasn't the American people."
You don't have to look any farther than New Orleans Ninth Ward to see that, yes, there are people that take these folks seriously. Even after all we've done to prop them up, even after all the money we've thrown at the problem. Even after all the taxes we've paid, these folks hate our guts.
Yep, if our forefathers had only known. If they'd only known what trouble they'd cause future generations, they'd have picked their own damn cotton!