When Americans subscribing to evangelical Christianity are prohibited by the law, and the Constitution, from controlling and imposing their beliefs on other Americans, a common complaint is that they are being persecuted due to their religion. It has also been a very popular strategy among conservative’s infected with racial animus against other Americans to claim it is racist to call out their blatant and dog whistle racism. Now, when an authority figure and leader turns a blind eye to racism against people of color under his protection and the people band together to finally demand redress, conservative media goes ballistic and claim the authority allowing racial abuse to continue is being pressured for the “crime of being a white male.”
After protesters at the University of Missouri pressured University of Missouri President Timothy M. Wolfe to resign over blatant racism he continually ignored, conservative media figures’ heads nearly exploded and immediately criticized people of color, football players, and protesters and calling them “a mob” and “thugs.” They also said that the only reason Wolfe was “forced to resign was for the crime of being a white male.” The truth is that Wolfe was called on to resign by students and faculty for not taking any steps whatsoever to address the blatant racism targeting African American students on campus; despite months of appeals from students and several incidents Wolfe seemingly approved of or he would have acted.
The events leading up to Wolfe’s resignation are covered here, and conservative media were certainly aware of the racists incidents at the University targeting African Americans; including gangs of white students openly shouting the “N” word at Black students and drawing a swastika, more than once, using feces in African Americans’ residence halls; what Rush Limbaugh claimed is simply white people not being nice enough to Black students.
The historically racist Limbaugh weighed in on Wolfe’s resignation over protests by students and the boycott by members of the football team and concluded that Wolfe leaving the Missouri University system is likely “the end of college football as we know it.” Limbaugh completely avoided the true nature of the protests and reason for Wolfe’s resignation and went straight for the ‘liberals and Blacks are racists targeting white men argument. He said,
“The pressure on the university president really began with a student’s hunger strike with a list of demands. The major problem is that there are too many white people at this place who are not nice enough or considerate enough to the 10 percent of the people there who are black. But if you think this is the end of something, you don’t know liberalism. This is the continuation of something.”
Limbaugh is partially correct; this is a continuation of the shock to white racist conservatives that African Americans are rightfully damn sick and tired of being treated like third-class citizens. And dependably, the racist conservatives have lashed out at the protesters, people of all colors, for having the temerity as American citizens to use their First Amendment right and protest an injustice. As usual, when a person of color protests they are not Americans exercising their Constitutional right, they are thugs, racist mobs, and all manner of pejoratives that the nation heard during that other time African Americans protested against institutionalized racism in Ferguson, Missouri.
In Texas, conservative radio host Michael Berry lashed out at Missouri football players he said were “thugs” who refuse “to shut their mouths and play football.” The players threatened to stop playing unless Wolfe resigned or was fired for blowing off student concerns and complaints about the escalation of racially-driven abuse targeting African Americans. Berry was so incensed that he even lashed out at Wolfe for “pandering to the thugs” by resigning; instead of telling football players to “shut their mouths” and just take the racial attacks like the “thugs” they are. According to Berry,
“The real problem is not the ‘creative shaping of poop’ by somebody on your campus. You got a major problem with your priorities. If you can’t reign in a few football players to shut their mouth and play football, you’ve got a problem of culture. You’ve got a problem of priorities, and you’ve got a problem of pandering.”
One writer for a right-wing website pinned Wolfe’s resignation on Democrats and “the race mob” who he claims are out of line for having the gall to “complain about institutionalized racism on campus.” Notice that the writer never disputes the ongoing “institutionalized racism” on the Missouri campus, but he is quick to call the people who have had enough of it “a race mob” for daring to speak out for change.
Over at the conservative Red State site, a contributor lashed out at football players and “sports media” he claims are “more sickeningly liberal than their news media counterparts.” The contributor said that the media is wrong in reporting that the football team threatened to go on strike over institutionalized racism on campus. He wrote;
“Thirty black Mizzou football players are allegedly going on strike over racism on campus. This is being presented as an act of courage likely to foster social change, rather than as the act of lazy cowardice that it is. The story is not as the sports media would have you believe – these are not brave change agents, but lazy cowards. This isn’t a courageous strike against racism. It’s a lazy strike against practicing for a bad football team. The fact that the media isn’t reporting it this way is evidence of the media’s own laziness.”
An editor for Breitbart and DailyWire.com, Ben Shapiro, was incensed over the protests that led to Wolfe’s resignation and pulled the “racism against whites” card. He claimed that, “‘white privilege’ means getting fired for your race,” and naturally attacked Democrats by asserting that “the left just declared at University of Missouri that white people must be fired for being white.”
On Fox News, radio host Todd Starnes condemned the protesters for complaining about institutionalized racism on the Missouri campus and said that poor “President Wolfe was run out of town by a rampaging mob armed with torches & pitchforks,” and that the “protesters were a mob of race agitators” attacking beleaguered president Wolfe whose only guilt is “being a white man.”
Although African Americans are well-aware that racism is flourishing in America since Republicans began actively inciting animus towards Black Americans after the people elected Barack Obama as their President, many Americans are oblivious to the institutional racism still plaguing the nation. Republicans and every iteration of conservative knows racism is rampant and seemingly nothing enrages them more than African Americans demanding change and to be treated as Americans; what conservatives claim is racism against white people by “thugs” and “race mobs.”
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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