“Treat the Negro as a citizen and a voter — as he is, and must remain — and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle.”
So wrote President Ulysses S. Grant in a message to Congress in 1875. As Grant biographer Ron Chernow points out in his recent book, this was a “prophetic message” indeed from the man who won the Civil War that freed black Americans. Black Americans chained into the tyranny imposed in a political deal with slave owners that created the Democratic Party — and established the culture of racism that exists in the party to this day.
All of this, sadly — make that very sadly during the week that celebrates the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — surfaces yet again. Surfaces as, once again, the reflexive racism of the American Left is front and center in the controversy over President Trump’s alleged “s***hole” remarks.
Let’s leave “alleged” out of this. While two Senators present for the meeting say they didn’t hear the remark and the Senator who says he did — Democrat Dick Durbin — was outed by the Obama White House for making up comments by Republicans at a leadership meeting with President Obama. Let’s say President Trump did say it. Then?
Then a comment that had nothing to do with race was immediately transformed into an example of out-and-out racism. In the New York Times, Emory University’s Professor George Yancy asserts that the President is a “white racist.” And over at CNN, my old sparring partner and friend Don Lemon closed his “Trump is racist” monologue saying this: