So let me get this straight. Seven teenagers who can’t swim go swimming in a river in Louisiana a week ago. When one starts to drown the others try to save him as their families, who also can’t swim, watch helplessly from the shore. The teens who tried to save the first drowning teen all die in the attempt, while the first teen somehow is rescued and survived.
And this is all somehow the white man’s fault?
That’s right. It sounds like a bad cliché, but the teens and their families in this tragedy were all black. And according to an Associated Press story, the fact that none of them could swim is because “segregation kept blacks out of public and private pools for decades” and because black children today “have limited access to pools or instruction.”
Oh, bite me.
This was, indeed, a terrible, horrible tragedy. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be blamed for the fact that (a) those kids couldn’t swim, and (b) went swimming despite the fact that they couldn’t swim, and (c) their families let them go swimming when neither they nor their kids could swim.
When does personal responsibility and common sense start applying to black folks in this country instead of always blaming the white man?
And while we’re on the race issue, Omar Thorton, a 34-year-old man in Connecticut, was caught on a surveillance camera stealing beer from the beer distributor he was working for. Thorton was confronted with the evidence by management and given the choice of quitting or being fired.
He quit….and then promptly went to his lunchbox, pulled out two 9 mm handguns – both properly registered for you goofball gun-grabbers over at the Brady Bunch – and proceeded to kill eight innocent co-workers before offing himself.
Before committing this racist hate-crime (though it will never be called that because it was a black-on-white crime), Thornton reported called his mom and told her he did what he did because he was being racially harassed by co-workers….though no such complaint had ever been filed with either his employer or his union.
The only “evidence” of such racial harassment comes from claims by his girlfriend that Thornton claimed he was the subject of racist graffiti in the company bathroom.
Sorry, Charlie. Even if true, and I have my doubts, that’s no excuse to steal beer and shoot to death eight people. There are just some things the charge of racism can’t excuse, and this certainly tops the list.
Which brings me to Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters.
Both of these members of Congress are on the hot seat for some pretty serious ethics violations. They’ve been investigated extensively by a bi-partisan committee. The evidence against them appears to be pretty solid. And even some of their colleagues from their own party are calling on them to resign.
In their defense, however, the Congressional Black Caucus this week whipped out the race card. It complained that Rangel and Waters were unfairly being targeted for their unethical behavior because they’re black.
No, they’ve been targeted for their unethical behavior because they’re unethical.
But have no fear, Charlie and Maxine. If history is any guide you’ll be re-elected by your constituents no matter what you’ve done as long as you’re not actually thrown in prison. And maybe even then. I mean, if the black mayor of mostly-black Washington, DC, can get himself elected and re-elected after being caught smoking crack with a prostitute, what’s a little white collar crime, am I right?
Aren’t you glad we now live in a post-racial world with a half-black man in the White House?
