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Jun 24, 2008 
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I’ll be the first to admit that I talk about people being racist asshats a fair amount here. That’s in part because I’m more focused on issues of race now that I have kids of a different ethnicity and have to worry about how the world treats them. But it’s also because, to be blunt, I’m right. There are a lot of racist louts about. Like ignorant anti-Asian oaf Mike Seate. Or white supremacist judicial candidate Bill Johnson. Or certain people who ask creepy questions about the ethnicity of adopted kids.
I have no doubt that racism in America is real. I also think that much of the time, cries of “he’s playing the race card!” are not thoughtful discussions of race issues like Patrick’s recent post, but simple attempts to ridicule and marginalize any discussion of the impact of race on American politics and society. Many people who like to complain about “playing the race card” are part of the “just shut up” brigade — the group that thinks the best way to deal with entrenched racism is to pretend it doesn’t exist. As the theory goes, if these tiresome black people would just stop going on an on about it, and stop with their terrible exclusionary NAACP, we’d finally have harmony. I stand amazed that anyone can believe such drivel.
But sometimes accusations of racism are complete manipulative garbage that should be called out and ridiculed. Case in point, people who complain that neutral application of food safety rules is comparable to a return to slavery:
Council President Jo Ann Davenport-Littleton said health inspectors told them it was illegal for the group to serve the sandwiches because they were not prepared at the site where they were served.
Gino Solla, the county’s top health official, said state law prohibits any food service operation from having food prepared in a private home for public consumption.
“I hate that it happened,” Davenport-Littleton said in a story for today’s edition of the Odessa American. “I wanted people to go away talking about how great the celebration was this year. All you heard was ‘They were going to deny us barbecue. Here we are in modern-day slavery again.’ ”
. . . .
Solla said he won’t apologize.
“We have to be aggressive when the public interest is involved,” he told the paper. “If there was any kind of forwardness and if it was perceived as rude, that I’ll apologize for. But when it comes to public health, I don’t think I have any apology for that.”
Yea, Jo Ann Davenport-Littleton, that’s exactly what slavery was like — plantation owners made people eat their sandwiches where they cooked them.
Look, this is just the sort of hysterical self-serving bullshit that helps racists and racism-apologists everywhere to push the Tony Snow agenda that there is no longer serious racism in America, not to mention the agenda that anyone who brings up race is a huckster. The Odessa Black Cultural Council and Jo Ann Davenport-Littleton ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Via Michele Malkin, who is exactly the sort of malign person empowered by this nonsense.
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