Another View of the Van Jones Incident
This afternoon, still troubled by the resignation of Van Jones, I decided to speak to a Black co-worker friend of mine, to see what his take on the situation was. He had not been following the incident, but he was familiar with it. When I said that I was angry that a whack-job from Fox News had forced Van Jones’ to resign, he just smiled and said, pointing to the color of his skin, “it just goes with the territory.” He continued, “See, you White people just don’t understand what it is like to grow up Black. You don’t know what kinds of hurdles we have to jump over. I think President Obama did the right thing – he chose to focus on the larger task, because he knows that the angry hornets will never go away and to combat them just diverts energy that needs to be used to fight the bigger battle.”
You know what? He’s right. On all counts. There is no way that I can walk a mile in his shoes. I do not have any idea of what it is like to grow up Black. I do not know what hurdles have to be jumped. I’d be distracted by jerks like Beck. All I know is that the campaign to force Van Jones to resign is a racist campaign. Those who are mouthing ignorant shrieks of outrage about communism and Van Jones’ poor choice of words (even though he apologized, that wasn’t enough for the screaming hordes – President Bush didn’t have to apologize for calling New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a “major league asshole” in 2000 after all) are scared out of their minds that there is a Black man in the White House. In the White House, of all places!!! And a Black woman!! And they’re doing it in the bedroom!!
If any reader wants to try to learn more about racism, I recommend going to Tim Wise’s website. His articles are hard to take because they don’t pull any punches. But if you read a few of them, you’ll get a better feeling for what is really going on here.
Beck and his fellow travelers (and I use the phrase fully recognizing the irony) need to take a “time out” and stop behaving like two-year olds throwing a temper tantrum.
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