National Republican hypocrisy over Reid comments

National Republicans demonstrate hypocrisy over Reid comments

By Ray Hanania

During the heat of the president campaign in 2008. Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic party leader, said he thought Barack Obama would do well because he is “light skinned” and did not use a “negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.”

That was disclosed in a new book, “Game Change,” about the 2008 presidential campaign authored by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.

It’s kind of a stunning statement. It can be taken several ways, as a comment about the reality of life in America, or as the comments of a racist. I doubt Reid is a racist, but not surprisingly the National Republicans have jumped all over this controversy, portraying it as racism and calling for Reid to resign.

I might heed the comments of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who is himself African American, except that Steele, if we apply the same standard that Steele applies to Reid, is an even bigger racist.

Where has Steele and other Republican leaders been when members of the Republican Party and GOP scions like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and the coterie of racist haters have slammed Obama’s race and made the most egregious racial comments?

Steele was silent in the face of his party’s racism. But when an opponent says something that is debatable as to whether it is racist or just a comment about today’s America, Steele is all over it.

Many Americans would like to believe that racism doesn’t exist in America, but the truth is it is worse today than it was in the early 1900s. It’s just that racists and bigots struggle to be more subtle, clever and crafty in their racism.

That racism mainly comes from conservatives and Republicans, whose party has chased away most African American minorities mainly because of their history of racist rhetoric.

For example, Beck, an icon of the Conservative Republican Party, recently said on his radio/FOX Cable TV show called Obama a “racist” and said the president has deep-seated hatred of White people.

Reid apologized for the comments and President Obama accepted the apology, taking the comments obviously in the context of the rightwing environment of racism created by former President George W. Bush and former Vice President and lingering loudmouth Dick Cheney.

Reid isn’t the one who should resign. Steele should resign.

What doesn’t help bring down the racist attitudes in America are the ways in which people exploit race to achieve their political goals. Reid made an observation about Obama’s chances of becoming president. And the truth is his skin color and his dialect did appeal to many American voters who do judge issues based on race. And there are many Americans among whom race and ethnicity are primary factors in elections.

Steele, on the other hand, is quick to jump on controversial Democratic rhetoric, but is silent and complicit in his silence on incitement rhetoric by his party comrades.

In fact, Steele has come under the harshest attack not from “anti-Black” Democrats but from hardcore racists in the Republican rightwing, which is in fact not so much a wing but nearly the entire GOP household.

Steele may have jumped on the Reid comments in order to turn the racists in his party towards a new target.

Racism is a problem in America. But the bigger problem is the hypocrisy that racism generates among enablers and coddlers who tolerate racism except when it can be exploited for their own political opportunism.

END

Take your U.S. Census form and SHOVE IT!

Opinion Columnist Ray Hanania explains why he opposes the U.S. Census. He wants the word "ARAB" added to the form. There are now 28 ethnic and racial groups listed on the form, but no Arabs. Arabs and the Middle East are the most important issue facing this country and Americans should know more about us, but they don't. We are ignored when it counts and counted only when it is harassment and negative (like at airports).

American Arabs get nothing from the U.S. Census so the U.S. Census should get nothing from Americans Arabs. And, the U.S. Census does a TERRIBLE job of outreach to the American Arab ethnic media, and yet they spend a fortune doing exactly that -- nothing!

Save us from government bureaucracy.

Here's Ray's YouTube video on the issue (2.8 minutes)



-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Hypocrisies abound in handling of Christian versus Muslim hoaxers

Dueling hoaxes expose more than youthful lies in bonfire of the bigotries
By Ray Hanania

The incidents happened weeks apart, a young Christian girl in Palos Heights, a community notorious for anti-Arab hatred and racism, told police that she had been sexually assaulted by an man she described as “Arab looking.”

Police developed a sketch of the suspect and the community response was immediate. The sketch was posted on nearly every store window not just in Palos Heights, but throughout the Southwest Suburbs across a 15 mile span that happened to correspond with the regional settlement of Arabs.

Although widely reported, the story even made America’s Most Wanted and host John Walsh repeated the description of the assailant being “creepy” looking.

Several weeks later, a Muslim girl reports she is assaulted at Elmhurst College. The news media covered the event and Muslim organizations stood up denouncing the attack as an example of rising anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate crimes.

In contrast, there wasn’t a peep from Arab American groups as they are ineffective and dysfunctional. And, America’s Most Wanted, which always seems to highlight cases where the victims are White and the Assailants are Black and “creepy” looking Arabs, didn’t bother to even give the incident 15 seconds on their popular national weekend TV program.

Safia Jilani, 19, told Elmhurst Police that she was attacked in the bathroom at the Southwestern suburban college and the incident was declared a “hate crime” when police found threatening graffiti written on the bathroom’s mirrors and walls.

Just about the time of the Muslim attack, the family of the Christian assault victim hired an attorney and the attorney announced his client had lied to police and that no such sexual attack had taken place.

The attorney expressed genuine remorse from the family, apologizing to the public, the police and later to “ethnic groups” who felt targeted, a reference to the Arab American profile of the hoax. Police said they would not prosecute, although the investigation into the crime cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The girl has agreed to do community service.

But when Jilani’s hoax was discovered, after she admitted to police that she had made up the attack details, police immediately announced they would file charges against her. She is charged with a Class 4 Felony and can face up to 4 years imprisonment.

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) which helped lead calls to declare the event a Hate Crime, responsibly and immediately issued a statement saying that false reports like Jilani’s undermine efforts to fight the many other, frequent incidents of discrimination that do occur.

Hate groups immediately flooded the Internet with statements denouncing Muslims as anti-American and citing the Jilani case as evidence that claims of discrimination are false.

Arab groups remained silent, reinforcing their view that doing nothing is oftentimes the best course of action.

What caused these students to do what they did?

In the case of the young Palos Heights girl, who is under-aged and her identity is therefore not made public, she was afraid to tell her parents about something she had done. The sexual assault would help her cover that up.

In the case of Jilani, earlier before she made up her lies, there was a clash between rightwing conservatives on the campus and students, including many Arabs and Muslims, who were protesting the abuse and violation of the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo, a detention center many compare to a concentration camp and a Russian Gulag. Many of the prisoners there are victims of politics and have never been charged with any crime, other than being Arab or Muslim.

Tensions were high at Elmhurst College but college officials acted responsibly to address the issues. Tensions were also high at Palos Heights but officials there have notoriously refused to address the rising incidents of hatred that have given the community the shameful moniker, “Palos Hates.”

Palos Heights was the site of the 2000 community protest to prevent their Muslim neighbors from establish a Mosque where they could pray. Palos Heights has two dozen Christian Churches, and no Synagogue.

While both girls are responsible for their lies, they are also victims of societies that put ethnic and religious faces on crimes. It’s not enough to capture a criminal. The suspects are used to argue racial issues that dominate American society and politics.

But there is one thing very clear.

When a Christian girl, who is White, cries wolf and it turns out she is lying, society is more willing to excuse her actions and not punish her with imprisonment of fines.

When a Muslim or Arab girl cries wolf and it turns out she is lying, the bonfires of bigotries and racism are ignited.

Although most of the police sketches of the phony “creepy” Arab assailant have been taken down from store windows, the mental sketches of hatred remain seared into the racism of a community disabled by hate.

(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com or by email at rayhanania@comcast.net.)