Appeasing Ignorance

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.”– Dean Acheson

A freind of mine said something disturbingly flavored with the taint of truth today:

I predict that a time will come in the very near future when black becomes the new n-word. It will be considered the equivalent of calling someone a nigger if you call them black.

Write it down:
Hotspur
June 11, 2010

Well, we haven’t reached that point yet, but we are getting close.  Who could forget this stunning display of political correctness in action?

 

Now this wasn’t all that long ago.  And this guy is still says it is racist.  Why?  Because it’s “black”.  Duh!

And the “explanation” only gets stupider the longer he talks.

Where to begin?  Do we start with the idea of perpetual victimhood that requires not only the purported victim to identify something that victimizes them, but also requires others to find victimization on their behalf like the famous addition of the word “Boy!” to Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst “You Lie!” as the President stood before Congress and…well, lied?  I know I saw the clip numerous times, and I never heard the word, but seeing as how I’m not “enlightened” enough to shovel shit write for the New York Times, like the correspondent who claimed she heard it nonetheless, maybe there is a secret ability of such people to hear things never said.  She didn’t say Congressman Wilson was thinking it, but the implication was there just the same, and he was tarred with it, as the following controversy demonstrated.

This pretending to know what people are thinking and not saying would be reprehensible enough…we can expect a certain level of conduct in the daily discourse of civility, but this tacit notion that some people have a right to declare their knowledge of what people they don’t like are thinking, and ascribing these unsavory thoughts to people who have never said them smacks of a craven cowardice seeking to avoid an honest discussion.  And yet the rest of society entertains this notion that the victims have a right not to be offended by things that were never said, or by how they wish to interpret them, rather than the plain (and sometimes stated) meaning of the speaker.  And like many good intentions, it can lead us to places we don’t want to go.

So today, as I drove home from the office, I heard this story:

Once is a coincidence, twice is a trend.  And once again, a card that has been on the market for three years has been pulled from the market to appease the ignorant victimhood of the a civil rights group that has clearly lost its way.  Reading the news story only made it worse.

It is a graduation greeting from Hallmark that says, “Hey world, we are officially putting you on notice.”

Members of the Los Angeles NAACP did take notice. As characters known as “Hoops” and “Yoyo” banter on, African American leaders hear offensive language.

“And you black holes, you are so ominous. Watch your back,” the card vocalizes.

“That was very demeaning to African American women. When it made reference to African American women as whores and at the end, it says ‘watch your back,’” said Leon Jenkins of the Los Angeles NAACP.

Who knew the study of the Universe could be so racist? I never suspected that Stephen Hawking was actually “very demeaning to African American women”.  Of course, seeing as he’s actually a British subject, one might reasonably ask if his intent was actually to be very demeaning to the female British population of African extraction.  And it only gets more embarrassing from there.  He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.  Who will Barack Hussein Obama throw under the bus for this? 

Once the claws were out, the NAACP decided to flex its muscle.  And once more, concessions were made to appease the offended.

When Hallmark was reached by phone, they said the card is all a misunderstanding. The card’s theme is the solar system and emphasizes the power of the grad to take over the universe, even energy-absorbing black holes.

The card company says the card speaks about the power the grad will wield.

“The intent here is to say that this graduate is not afraid of anything,” explained Hallmark spokesman Steve Doyal.

But that’s not what some people heard.

Meaning be damned.  This was about POWER, damn it!

Hallmark is now notifying all of its stores to pull the card. Walgreens and CVS are doing the same.

“In any situation where there is a circumstance that we need to be sensitive to, we try to learn from that experience,” said Doyal.

Ok, it is about a greeting card company.  I get it.  They are in the business of catering to emotion.  That’s how they make their money, but really.  They have a card that features the phrase “”Black Hole” a term first used in 1967 to describe a cosmological phenomena that was first theorized in 1783.  What the Hell else do you call a gravity well so powerful that not even light can escape?  The 2011 Budget?  And now it is offensive?  I don’t recall the boycotts and picketing of this:

 

Truly, the opposition to the use of the phrase is ridiculous.  Black people do not have ownership of the word “Black” like they have taken the ownership of the word “nigger”, a word that no one and everyone have simultaneously determined that is automatically racist and evil if someone who isn’t black utters it, but perversely acceptable and celebrated if it passes the lips of a black person.  (And I use the word “black” because not everyone in this country with black skin considers themselves “African-American”.  I had a Haitian classmate who got very offended when anyone called him “African-American”. )  This hypocrisy aside, there is a marked difference.  The former is a word that defines a color, and therefore is used to describe any number of things that have that color as a characteristic; the latter was always meant as a derogatory term, even if at one time, it was not used to refer to blacks.  That said, it should be apparent to many readers that this isn’t just a case of political correctness gone amuck in the hands of people who have conflated “advancement” with “victimhood” and its thuggish cousin, “denunciation”, it is a symptom of a soft tyranny that is characterized by such petty displays and enthusiastic endorsement of dubious notions such as “hate crimes” which seek to make crimes more criminal by inferring intent based on the race or sexual orientation of the victim.  These notions rob all Americans of the genius and promise set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  In a world with hate crimes legislation or protests based on a descriptive word, there can be no equality before the law, because such things make some people “more equal” than others.  This perversion is pernicious.  It is pervasive.  And it will criminalize your thoughts, even if authority cannot know your thoughts, because they will be attributed to you regardless.  And even the well-meaning will learn that appeasement doesn’t work, as the last line of the story tells us:

However, NAACP members say they do not want to see the card on store shelves ever again.

This kind of victimhood, much like the license of the Congress and the Administration to blame their own shortcomings and failures of leadership on George W. Bush, must be revoked.  If they are not, they will destroy us.

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