The Clare Spark Blog

Ever since the privately taped scandalous racist talk of billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, was revealed over the weekend of April 26-27, news media have been agog over the matter, each pundit or reporter proudly declaring her or his—even a regenerated America’s– freedom from racist sentiments, unlike the appalling Sterling. Some went so far as to declare that America has eliminated the national sin, even as they pinpointed billionaire Sterling as the retrograde outlier. (For the Wiki bio see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Sterling.For my own struggle with racism see https://clarespark.com/2012/01/21/the-persistence-of-white-racism/.)

Several commentators on Fox News (including Greg Gutfeld who should know better) went so far as to condemn the 80 year-old sports mogul as delinquent in his attitudes, since he was old enough during the 1960s to have repented and made reparations for the national sin—as opposed to mouthing anti-black opinions in his dotage.

The subject of this blog is to observe 1. That racism is not so easily obliterated, as even liberals indulge themselves in a subtly racialist discourse (i.e., multiculturalism), and 2. That liberal elites as early as 1968 promoted “cultural anthropology” as a curriculum item that would explain cultural relativism and presumably support affirmative action; and 3. Though it would be difficult to stop what we now call “hate speech”, in the privacy of one’s home or other sheltered venues, it would be okay to use the “N” word or other obnoxious put downs of non-whites “at the dinner table,” and “underground.” A conference at Martha’s Vineyard was called apparently to address the burning down of big cities after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

The suggestion that racist talk be driven underground and hence smothered was put forth by the up and coming black advisor to liberal elites, Christopher Edley (see https://clarespark.com/2010/07/18/white-elite-enabling-of-black-power/).
Here is the money quote from Christopher Edley, affirmed by a son of FDR:

[Christopher Edley (Program Officer in charge of the Government and Law Program at the Ford Foundation):]…I’m convinced that the way you eliminate prejudice and racism in America is not by talking and education and explanation. I think you have to start with a simple cliché‚ like God, motherhood, or country. You have to have something that has a noble ring. And it seems to me that what this country needs is a movement, and I don’t know that this is the appropriate group to sponsor it. This country needs a movement. The way to eliminate prejudice is to smother it. If we could bring about a climate in this country where no one could express a prejuducial viewpoint without being challenged, we would begin to drive prejudice underground. And I submit to you that prejudice unexpressed and unacted upon dies–it doesn’t fester and grow–it dies. Now this is high sounding, and I don’t expect people to agree with such a simplistic solution. But I really believe that you can stamp it out. And if you look at our national figures today, there are certain people who cannot make a prejudicial remark. Many of our Governors, the President, many responsible Senators are precluded in their public lives from ever making a prejudiced public statement, and if they make a statement that sounds like it’s prejudicial, they’re called on it and the next day, as General de Gaulle found, it was necessary to recant. So we don’t allow them to get away with anything. But at the lower levels, over the dinner table…[ellipsis in original, Edley is an African-American now teaching at Harvard Law School.]

[Franklin Roosevelt (Former Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Congressman from the Twentieth Congressional District in New York during the eighty-first to the eight-third Congresses):] The citizen level…[ellipsis in orig.]

[Christopher Edley:] At the citizen level, we say it’s perfectly all right for a bigot to express his bigoted thoughts. If you’re anti-Negro you can speak out against the Negro at supper. The simplicity of the idea I submit to you is the thing that gives it some national potential for changing the climate (145). [Identifications as published, xiii-xv].

The National Basketball Association has ostensibly put the scandal to rest through various punitive measures, but that will not stop the chatter about Sterling’s venality; nor will the smugness stop in the media. For not only are these ostensibly unbigoted journalists lacking in self-criticism, they lack curiosity about the competing attempts to combat racism in the 1960s and even before that. I refer to the integrationist strategy versus the separatist black power approach, that kept blacks and other minorities and women at bay in the academy and elsewhere. That controversy has also disappeared down the collective memory hole. One wonders how long and how widely the legacy of self-proclaimed “fascist” Marcus Garvey has lingered, or how many “African-Americans” follow the Nation of Islam, and for whom Louis Farrakhan is a revered figure.

Detroit race riot, 1967