Race-Baiting, Ambulance-Chasing, And Incendiary Protest - How Racial Hatred Is Fueled By Political Shamelessness

The Rev. Isaiah Brown got his hair done, mustache and mullet trimmed and new gabardine suit and silk tie pressed and ready for his next trip to racist America.  He had earned his street creds defending the fraudulent case of a young black girl who shouted ‘rape’ decades ago, never lost his ambulance-chasing instincts and racial savvy, and became the Johnny-on-the-Spot spokesman for aggrieved black communities everywhere.  No racial slight was too small, no outrage too parochial, no anger too minor to ignore.  Brown was everywhere, at the head of protest marches, in front of cameras and microphones, and before crowds of admirers and supporters.

When he got exercised and his racial dander up, there was no stopping his flowing, Biblical oratory.  Facts, logic, temperance, judiciousness, history were all irrelevancies, distractions from the only issue that mattered– the white man’s oppression of the black man; systemic, institutionalized racism; white supremacy, elitism, and hatred.  He harangued his black audiences, demanded justice and action.  Nothing white should escape their scrutiny – the police, American exceptionalism, and above all capitalist, greedy ambition. 

Wall Street was capitalism’s succubus, the demon; the eater of black flesh and the drinker of black blood.  These so-called ‘investment’ bankers invested only in themselves, robbed the poor to line their own pockets, filled their coffers with filthy lucre, roamed the streets of ordinary people to suck up whatever life left after their marauding massacres.

There was no such thing as an honest white policeman, Brown declared, so corrupted had they been by the Fascist powers that created that misnomer of all misnomers, The Agents of Law and Order. 

 ‘Whose order?’, the Reverend shouted to an angry mob.  “Not yours, nor mine, but theirs!’ and of course the crowd knew who ‘they’ were, the forces of disorder, mayhem, untoward racist violence.  “Defund them, defund them, abolish them, destroy them”, yelled the restive crowd, hyped to a fever pitch by Brown and ready to storm anything white.  No Martin Luther King or Ralph Abernathy or Barack Obama.  Rage must be fueled, anger enflamed, righteousness championed.

Brown’s incendiary appearances were applauded by his supporters in public office.  The racial claques in Congress cheered his every speech, encouraged his particular brand of divisive activism.  One outspoken shill claimed that in today’s oppressive, slave-owning, Bull Connor, Jim Crow America divisiveness was a good thing, a necessary thing, a right thing.  It was a dialectic she said, point, counterpoint, revolution!

And so Brown, encouraged by his political support, high approval ratings for his appearances on MSNBC, and the overwhelming embrace by the black community, kept it up.  His aides were on top of every breaking story, travel agents ready to issue a ticket to St. Louis, Newark, Baltimore, or Detroit.  Brown was in the community even before the press so that he had time enough to prepare the set, fix the lighting, position the crowd.  He needed no prepared speech, for the issue was always the same – white, supremacist, racist hatred – and he only needed to change the name of the city and the neighborhood. 

While the Left claims that only the Right, especially Trump-supporting radicals are responsible for racial violence and unrest, they ignore the psychology of blame.  The more that whites are indemnified, scourged, and belittled in the name of racism, the more they will resent and eventually reject claims for racial equality.  The exaggerated, inflammatory claims of the Reverend Isaiah Brown are applauded only by the most guilt-ridden white progressives, abject followers of everything inclusive, diverse, and racially inspired. The rest of white America, essentially tolerant and willing to accept anyone who abides by democracy’s principle rules of equal opportunity, individualism within civic responsibility, and sound secular morality, reject them out of hand.

For years now, the shouts and claims of the progressive Left have stifled objectivity, true diversity, and tolerance.  By insisting that every American is racist, that the black experience is more legitimate than the white, that African ancestral roots are more humane, intelligent, and socially valid than European, progressives are alienating the great American middle class, most of whom have looked disinterestedly and dispassionately at demographics, history and social analysis.  

Prisons are crowded with black inmates not because of white injustice but because of their own transgressions and the dysfunction of the communities from which they came. There are social, demographic, economic, and moral reasons for the disproportionately high rate of murders, assault, robbery, and sexual violence in the inner city.  While the history of racial injustice, slavery, and Southern prejudice cannot be overlooked in the calculus, to ascribe all black ills on white racism is wrong.

To regain white support for racial justice, the Left needs to back away from the Isaiah Browns of the world, to back off from their deliberately inflammatory claims, and to return to a modicum of Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela principles of tolerance, understanding, and joint responsibility.

It is unlikely that in America’s hot media environment the Reverend Isaiah Brown will trim his sails.  Every appearance before an angry black crowd makes headlines.  His media sycophants portray him as a man above violence, mayhem, and incivility.  His is the voice of righteous outrage, democracy, and liberalism.  He is above it all and can do no wrong.

The more conservative press, still tentative on reporting racial incidents because of the Left’s successful woke juggernaut, is beginning to wake up, a sleeping giant finally flexing its muscles and reproving the irresponsibility of progressive exaggeration.

The issue is not whether racial animosity still exists in America or whether pockets of racial hatred can still be found.  It is about revisiting King’s claim to an inclusive support for racial justice.  

King knew that most Americans would respond to a temperate, legitimate call.  His successors – radical black leaders like the Black Panthers and later Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan – took America far beyond equality’s spiritual center, and today’s racial justice warriors have taken their provocative, incendiary, and divisive calls to a discouraging and frightening place.