Race Card

I want to respond to the column written by Leonard Pitts Jr. titled, "Race just one factor in tea party rage against Obama" (Feb. 28). I am offended by the argument that anyone who disagrees with President Obama's policies must be a racist. Playing the race card is a cheap attempt to marginalize the differing opinions on the issues. Many conservatives also disagree with points of view stated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Joe Biden, among many others. There are many conservatives who agree with President Obama on some issues but not others.

It may be too soon to label it a trend, and there is insufficient data to confirm it, but President Obama and his party may be losing their iron grip on their most loyal and enthusiastic voting bloc: African-Americans. Last Friday in Chicago, a group of black residents of the city's South Side, staged a protest against the violent shootings that are becoming as commonplace as White Sox games at Cellular Field. It wasn't just the protest that should concern the administration and Democrats; it was the language used by some of the protesters, many of whom at the time of the president's 2009 inauguration likely joined other African-Americans in worshipping at the Obama shrine.

The president's lap dog blew his dog whistle. In case you didn't know, in politics a "dog whistle" is coded language that has a superficial meaning for everybody, but also a special resonance for certain constituencies. Using dog whistles lets politicians deny they meant to say anything nasty, bigoted or controversial. Speaking to the National Action Network the day after a testy but racially irrelevant exchange with Republican members of a House panel, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "The last five years have been defined ... by lasting reforms even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity.

The president's lap dog blew his dog whistle. In case you didn't know, in politics a "dog whistle" is coded language that has a superficial meaning for everybody, but also a special resonance for certain constituencies. Using dog whistles lets politicians deny they meant to say anything nasty, bigoted or controversial. Speaking to the National Action Network the day after a testy but racially irrelevant exchange with Republican members of a House panel, Attorney General Eric Holder said, "The last five years have been defined ... by lasting reforms even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity.

In a political climate where President Obama has gotten dinged for "playing the race card" when he acknowledged taking offense at being described as "uppity" by Republicans, I guess it's only fair to ding Herman Cain for playing the race card over accusations that he sexually harassed female employees when he headed the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. Never mind that some white politicians have been chastised for similar offenses. Mr. Cain's fellow Republican, Newt Gingrich, was roundly criticized for his serial marriages, although it doesn't seem to have hurt his career much.

Does anyone besides me get irritated at the hypocrisy and race-baiting that is made worse by articles like the one penned by Auset Marion Lewis ("A river of tears for all the Trayvons," July 16)? It belonged in a bad romance novel instead of a theoretically legitimate paper, except the subject was tragic and the interpretation absurd and spurious. I can see her just happen to be walking into a Starbucks that just happened to be playing refrains from Jimmy Cliff, which would make her cry as she reflected on the terrible plight of African-Americans in America at the same time she worries about her hoodied nephew.

Richmond -- FOR 12 years, Democrats -- often led by Bill Clinton -- rightly condemned the code-word racial politics of the Reagan era.But last week it was President Clinton who used code-word politics to try to help Mayor David N. Dinkins, declaring at a fund-raiser in New York that "too many of us are still too unwilling to vote for people who are different than we are."And did Democrats rush to condemn him?Far from it. Some admired the president's skillful manipulation of the race card to rally African-American racial pride and white Democratic (actually white Democratic Jewish)

Back in January, Mayor Martin O'Malley and police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm went to the War Memorial Building for a public meeting on crime and policing that turned raucous and defiant. Comments from the crowd put O'Malley and Hamm squarely between the rock and a hard place: Some citizens complained that they've been abused by aggressive police tactics, while others said the city needs to do more to fight crime. Since Baltimoreans eager to see crime reduction made him mayor in 1999, O'Malley has been hearing complaints that his aggressive zero-tolerance police strategies, influenced by Rudy Giuliani's tenure as mayor of New York City, have led to thousands of bad arrests and stop-and-frisks that jailed or intimidated law-abiding citizens.

ATLANTA - Let's say you're a rich white guy who - according to the feds - has cooked the books at his company to get even richer, inflating earnings to the tune of $2.7 billion. What do you do when the law comes after you? Do you throw yourself on the mercy of the court? Do you flee the country before you're arrested? Do you stick to a traditional defense of staunchly maintaining your innocence? Well, if you're Richard M. Scrushy - founder and former CEO of Birmingham-based HealthSouth, a rehabilitation services company - you try to pass yourself off as a black man who is the victim of government persecution.

Washington. -- There is a new buzz word -- more accurately, a new buzz term -- in town: "playing the race card."The "race card" is a "very attractive political tool," Sen. John C. Danforth, the Republican from Missouri, said in a July 11 speech on the Senate floor. But playing it "threatens the very fabric of this country," he said.Just the day before, Sen. Bill Bradley, the Democrat from New Jersey, caught the attention of his congressional colleagues and the Washington media when he, too, went to the Senate floor to read what he called "an open letter to President Bush."

Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican, recently pointed out that many anti-poverty programs create disincentives to work. Appearing on Bill Bennett's national radio show, the 2012 GOP nominee for vice president proceeded to bemoan a "tailspin of culture" where young men, many in our inner cities, fail to learn "the culture of work. " He added a challenge for conservatives to help those who fall "through the cracks in America" to reach their potential. Mr. Ryan's remarks were immediately characterized as "racist" by the progressive blogosphere.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. " -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Sometimes, you get the feeling that's the only King quote conservatives know. They can't quote what he said about unions: "We can all get more together than we can apart. " They can't quote what he said about poverty: "The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.

"Why do they seem so determined to also make it racial?" So asks Joy-Ann Reid, the managing editor of The Grio, a web magazine owned by NBC News whose mission is to "focus on news and events that have a unique interest and/or pronounced impact within the national African Americans audience. " The "they" in question are conservatives and journalists asking, among other things, why President Barack Obama hasn't inserted himself into this case the way he did in the Trayvon Martin tragedy.

An ugly fight unfolded last week between gubernatorial aspirants Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler regarding their campaign rhetoric. Mr. Gansler was surreptitiously recorded saying, "I mean, right now [Mr. Brown's] campaign slogan is, 'Vote for me, I want to be the first African American governor of Maryland.' ... That's a laudable goal, but you need a second sentence: 'Because here's what I've done, and here's why I've done it.'" The Brown camp and other Democratic bigwigs are appalled: According to The Washington Post, which broke the story, Brown campaign manager Justin Schall stated that Mr. Gansler is "out of touch with Maryland's values," and to ensure that there was no lack of overreaction, Brown supporter Montgomery County Council member Valerie Ervin actually said, "White people don't like the race card being pulled on them, and he pulled the race card on Anthony.

Well, well, well, The Sun has reported that the first "gaffe" in the governor's race came when Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler was secretly recorded (surely not by someone involved with the Brown campaign, wink, wink) telling supporters that Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown is basically running on his race alone because he has "accomplished little" while serving as lieutenant governor. ("Gansler's gaffe," Aug. 14). Please stop me if you've heard this before, but The Sun basically said the same thing about Michael Steele when he joined the ticket of Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. as his lieutenant governor a decade ago. I believe the actual quote was, "Mr Steele brings little to the table besides the color of his skin.

Does anyone besides me get irritated at the hypocrisy and race-baiting that is made worse by articles like the one penned by Auset Marion Lewis ("A river of tears for all the Trayvons," July 16)? It belonged in a bad romance novel instead of a theoretically legitimate paper, except the subject was tragic and the interpretation absurd and spurious. I can see her just happen to be walking into a Starbucks that just happened to be playing refrains from Jimmy Cliff, which would make her cry as she reflected on the terrible plight of African-Americans in America at the same time she worries about her hoodied nephew.

Many whites are expressing outrage or, more calmly, disgust, at the use of the "race card" in the O. J. Simpson trial.They see this as akin to the Japanese adage that "to the small boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail." They believe that race is a hammer for some African-Americans who will pound everything in sight with it.But the worry over this, even if justified to some degree, is lost in the larger historical scheme of things. It was whites, not blacks, who were the earliest players in the race card game, especially through racial stereotypes that supported slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination whether de jure or de facto.

RACE HAS NOTHING TO DO with the Baltimore area's reticence to forge regional solutions -- and everything to do with it.It is the unspoken but first thought that comes across the minds of many when the conversation is poverty, crime, education or health -- all areas where the city could use help from its neighbors.Because the affluent suburbs are largely white, the condition of the predominantly black city appears related to race when it's really about wealth. That point is made by strife within the suburban counties that pit richer vs. poorer communities.

The Sun editorial staff makes some irrational comments on George Zimmerman's not guilty verdict in saying that "two undercurrents are clearly responsible for what happened that night and for the way the case has played out since: racial prejudice and Florida's reckless stand-your-ground self-defense law" ("No justice," July 16). First, prior to the trial, the FBI conducted extensive investigation and found zero events, comments or actions that indicated racial prejudice was in Mr. Zimmerman's background.

The Sun has developed a bad case of selective memory when it comes to judicial nominations ("Judicial profiling," June 5). When President George W. Bush nominated candidates for judgeships during the years that Republicans controlled the Senate, the Harry Reid-led Democrats, for the first time in history, filibustered several of them, including a Hispanic nominee for the same D.C. Court of Appeals they are complaining about today. There was no cry of outrage from The Sun then about this shameful practice, nor was there any attempt by The Sun to play the race card, despite compelling evidence that the filibuster was done solely to prevent Mr. Bush from appointing a Hispanic to a high-profile judgeship.