Pure Madness

I don't even have anything to add.

Bananas are racist fruits.
Eating bananas is racist?
Finding racism everywhere

Ok, I do have something to add. This is what has become of us. A bunch of fools who have become so paranoid we are threatened by the ghost of a slain monster. The specter of racism seems to haunt the black community. We're so ingrained with the idea that it's out there looking for us that we can't accept the fact that there aren't many true racists out there. Sure, the organizations exist, and there are bigots and people who just think they're better, but it's not prevalent.

The worst part is that we've been so trained to see racism in one form from one group, that we miss it when it really happens. Examples:

George Allen's mother is from Tunisia. Recently he used a North African racial slur and later claimed he made it up. Here's the question: is it possible he really thought it was a made up word? He was born in California, with an American father. He may have heard his mother say it when he was very young and not known what it was. There are other allegations that he used other slurs in his youth, but they are somewhat unsubstantiated. But the "macaca" comment has sent him up in flames, along with the idea of the other suggested incidents..

By contrast, Robert Byrd is American through and through. And, as a former member of the KKK, he understands his domestic racial epithets. But no one's mad at him. He opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964...even filibustered for 14 hours. Of course, he's off the hook for that because he voted for the '68 act. He opposed desegregation of the military, and in 2001...the first year of his current Senate term, he responded to a question about race relations by saying this on national television:

There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time. I'm going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much.

On national TV! Was there any outcry? Was there a 3-week news cycle on his history as a racist/segregationist? Was there a call for his resignation? Of course not! This is from March 7, 2001, three days after the interview:

Interestingly enough, a Nexis search of major newspapers retrieved just four stories about Byrd's comment on Monday and zero Tuesday morning.

Nexis unearthed no coverage of Byrd's remarks in America's so-called "paper of record," the New York Times. Meanwhile, this story was page-two news in Monday's New York Post.

Compare that with the 20 second-day articles that popped up in 1995 when Dick Armey referred to gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank as "Barney Fag." (Armey later called it a slip of the tongue.) The Gray Lady did consider that news fit to print.

Byrd also called "a mistake" his long-ago membership in the Ku Klux Klan. How many Republicans could get away with discussing their previous involvement in the KKK while deliberately using the word "niggers" twice in one TV interview? Answer: zero.

This is the double-standard. Republicans get no second chances, while Democrats can do whatever they want as long as they apologize. The black community and refuses to realize that the Democrats aren't for us, they're for themselves. So they'll use us to get elected, then say whatever they want, knowing that we're too deeply invested to get out, regardless of what they do. The Republican party is no better, but that's the point. We need to take off our blinders and see what's really out there.