By Selwyn Duke
We’ve all heard about the little dust-up between Black Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Harry Alford and Democrat senator Barbara Boxer during an Environment & Public Works (EPW) hearing on “green” jobs. Boxer, the chairman of the EPW committee, was trying to refute a report commissioned by Alford’s organization stating that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act — which I’ll call “cap-and-sap” — would actually cause a net reduction in jobs. So, marshalling her arguments, she cited many sources that support cap-and-sap — among them the NAACP and the leader of 100 Black Men of America.
This didn’t sit too well with
Mr. Alford. He responded, “Madam Chair, that is condescending to me. I’m the
National Black Chamber of Commerce, and you’re trying to put up some other black
group to pit against me . . . . All that’s condescending, and I don’t like it.
It’s racial.”
In a later interview, Alford was
even more pointed in his criticism, saying that his Boxer match was “like being
in Mississippi in 1945” and “vile Jim Crow.” He described the essence of the
senator’s comments thus, “Colored boy, what are you doing with this
sophisticated report?”
Well, Mr. Alford, tell us how
you really feel.
Now, although I had never heard
of Alford before this brouhaha, I like what I see; he seems a stand-up fellow,
down-to-earth, commonsensical, sincere and spirited. In other words, the
antithesis of a liberal. I also could not agree with him more on cap-and-sap. I
go even further in fact: it is part of a destructive agenda often animated by
diabolical motivations. Nevertheless, I must do something that is a first for
this scribe: defend Barbara Boxer.
At least, that is, a little
bit.
Lest I be misunderstood, I
think Boxer is the worst politics has to offer — this makes her the worst of
the worst. And I can certainly see why she would have irked Alford, as she was
not only condescending, she was her usual imperious, supercilious,
paternalistic self. And this is par for the course. Remember when Boxer chided
Brigadier General Michael Walsh simply because he abided by military protocol
concerning the addressing of those of higher rank and called her “ma’am”? It
was a pathetic display. But, then again, the general did err. It takes a bit of
detachment from reality to view Boxer as any kind of superior. There are better
things to call her.
Yet, having said all this, a
good man can be wrong and, well, you know what they say about a broken clock.
So, I ask, was her approach during the hearing truly reflective of bigotry?
It was certainly racial. Boxer
never would have cited the NAACP had a white man been locking horns with her.
But everyone seems to be missing the pink elephant in the middle of the room:
Alford isn’t the president of the Chamber of Commerce.
He is the president of the Black
Chamber of Commerce.
I’ll illustrate this fairly
obvious point further. Let’s say I’m head of an organization called the
Catholic Chamber of Commerce and I appear before the right honourable Senator
Boxer. Now, would it be surprising if, in an effort to sway me, she cited
opinion rendered by the Catholic League and Opus Dei? Or should I accuse Boxer,
a Jewish woman, of anti-Catholic bias? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the woman
is anti-lots of things; regardless, it wouldn’t be just to accuse her of
bigotry simply because she inferred my passions from my associations and built
her argument around them. After all, if you’re going to define your
organization based on a characteristic, you cannot blame people for viewing you
through its prism.
I’ll also point out that during
Alford’s opening
statement he said the following, “that [the projected disparate impact of
cap-and-sap] worries me and my members because the black community suffers
mightily when the economy goes south.” Of course, Alford’s emphasis on the
black community reflects a special concern for it; given this, however, is it
surprising that Boxer would counter by citing entities that lay claim to having
the same special concern?
The answer is obvious. Despite
this, however, many of my ideological brethren are now using the EPW incident
to paint Boxer as a bigot. And, insofar as this goes, I regret to say that
they're guilty of intellectual dishonesty. Oh, I do understand the overwhelming
temptation. The senator and her leftist ilk wrote the book on playing the race
card and using Stalinist tactics to destroy opponents — and they do it for the
most specious of reasons. There are the examples of Bill
O’Reilly and golf commentator Kelly
Tilghman, who innocently used a variation on the word “lynch” during
commentary about blacks; there was university student Keith
John Sampson, who was persecuted simply for reading an anti-Ku Klux Klan
book; and then there was the pillorying of Rush
Limbaugh over his analysis of black quarterback Donovan McNabb’s boosters.
These are just a sampling of numerous instances where the left sent lynching
parties after those they hated for only one reason: because they could.
Thus, just as when Hillary and
Bill Clinton were accused of bigotry while campaigning against Barack Obama,
the Boxer controversy is an example of liberals being mauled by a hoary and
horrible monster of their own design. And many conservatives relish the chance
to give the left a taste of its own medicine because, well, now they can.
Yet it takes a good dose of
rationalization to convince oneself that something only racial is “racist.”
This may be easy for the left, but for those on the right it probably takes a
bit more effort. After all, many liberals are so detached from reality, so
solipsistic and relativistic, that they mistake their feelings for Truth. They
have the lie on retainer. Conservatives, on the other hand, embrace it only
occasionally, as a consultant.
Another difference between the
right and left is that we traditionalists know we’re called to be better than
that. We know that the Truth will not only set us free and carry the day when
the last chapter is written, but that it’s all we have. The lie will never
serve us like it does the liars. That is, unless, as they have done, we make it
our master.
And the Truth is the point.
Whenever we peddle that lie called the race card, we contribute to the mass
delusion and lessen the chances that the Truth will be known, all for some
momentary political gain. We trade something beautiful for thirty pieces of
silver. Liberals make this a practice, and it’s why they’re contemptible. But,
remember, silver is all they have.
As for my friends on the right, for the moment, I could be even madder at you. After all, your trespass is the greater. You forced me to defend Barbara Boxer.
© Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved
