Monthly Archives: July 2009

Updated: Barack Wants More History From Below

Affirmative Action, Africa, America, Barack Obama, History, Pseudo-history, Race, Racism

For the Atlantic slave trade, contemporary Americans and Britons have been expiating at every opportunity. But as historian Jeremy Black points out in The Slave Trade, Europeans also brought about the demise of this despicable practice in Africa.
Having made the obligatory pilgrimage to Ghana, Barack told Anderson Cooper—the “journalist” noted for introducing the country to the practice of tea bagging—that “slavery is a terrible part of the United States’ history and should be taught in a way that connects that past cruelty to current events, such as the genocide in Darfur.”

What a change that makes, doesn’t it?

Does our overlord seek to repetitively rub in the never-changing theme of the white man’s burden, the theme WASPs welcome like wimps? Or is he open to teaching Americans about the robust slave trade conducted by Arabs across the Sahara Desert? Or across the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to markets in the Middle East. How about the vibrant, indigenous slave trade conducted well into the nineteenth century in the interior of West Africa?

I suggest that Africa’s own Little Lord Fauntleroy read the words of a brother who’s seldom seen on the idiot’s lantern, and whose works are not distributed widely across the racial tyranny that is America: Keith B. Richburg.

Wrote Richburg in Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa:

“I feel for [Africa’s] suffering, I empathize with her pain, and now, from afar, I still recoil in horror whenever I see yet another television picture of another tribal slaughter, another refugee crisis. But most of all I think: Thank God my ancestors got out, because, now, I am not one of them. In short, thank God that I am an American.”

Repeat after Richburg, Mr. president.

Update (July 14): Myron, I had objected to the use of “slavery” with reference to the West. Alistair addressed the so-called plight of women in the West. The Third World is a different matter (or is it what remains of the Second World that you decried?). There, statutes may declare slavery illegal, but tradition sees nothing wrong with forms of it. Guess what wins out?

Sonia Sotomayor Versed In Classics … Kiddie Classics

Affirmative Action, Education, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Law, The Courts

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SotoSetAsides Mayor, whose confirmation hearing starts on Monday—and who’ll be confirmed—is bound to be a judicial wrecking ball. Or, she may prove to be just the dim liberal bulb the doctor ordered.

In case you’re still looking to the Republicans to make a principled stand on anything, CNN reports that they “have promised a fair but thorough hearing … [only] A few have said they intend to vote against her nomination when it reaches the full Senate.”

As always, national treasure Pat Buchanan puts things into perspective by exposing the fraudulent “Ivy-League” institutions that have disgorged Soto So-and-So:

“By her own admission, Sonia Sotomayor is an ‘affirmative action baby.’

Though the Obama media have been ballyhooing her brilliance – No. 1 in high school, No. 1 at Princeton, editor of Yale Law Review – her academic career appears to have been a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.

Two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton, Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and study basic grammar books during her summers. How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of ‘Chicken Little’ and ‘The Troll Under the Bridge’?

In video clips dating back 25 years, and now provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor, according to the Times, even calls herself an ‘affirmative action product.'”