OPINION:
Is Jamie Foxx a racist? The actor recently hosted “Saturday Night Live,” delivering a rant that was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t. In fact, had a white person delivered the same monologue but simply exchanged the word “white” for “black,” his career would be over. The hypocrisy and double standard are egregious. They must stop. Black bigotry should no longer be condoned, let alone celebrated.
Mr. Foxx joked about his new film, “Django Unchained,” saying, “I kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that?” He went on to brag “how black” it is to butcher whites.
It did not end there. Mr. Foxx espoused a crude racial nationalism, celebrating President Obama’s “blackness.” For the actor, Mr. Obama is defined by one overriding characteristic: the color of his skin.
“But I’m going to tell you right now, speaking of blackness, my president, President Obama, is back up in the White House four more years. How black is that?” Mr. Foxx said. “And not only that, he’s so black, he was playing basketball during the Election Day. How black is that? But he was also late for his acceptance speech. OK, all the white people, this is your turn — how black is that?”
His rant was riddled with condescending stereotypes.Had any white comedian said such things, there would have been a national uproar. The Congressional Black Caucus, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the entire “civil rights” community would have demanded an apology not just from the actor but from “Saturday Night Live” as well. Instead, they have remained silent. The reason: racial tribalism. In multicultural America, only blacks can say offensive things about other blacks. The same applies to other groups with official “victim” status — Hispanics, homosexuals, lesbians and Asians. The result is a gradual Balkanization whereby our culture is being fractured along ethnic lines.
Moreover, it is allowing the cultural establishment to excuse blatant racism, especially directed toward whites. Anti-white bigotry has become embedded in our postmodern culture. Take “Django Unchained.” The movie boils down to one central theme: the white man as devil — a moral scourge who must be eradicated like a lethal virus. For decades, Hollywood, U.S. textbooks and higher education have stressed that America was founded upon slavery, sexism and genocide. In other words, white European civilization is the root of evil and imperial subjugation around the world. Hence, it should come as no surprise that many black leftists — Cornel West, Mr. Sharpton, Mr. Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Mr. Foxx — share this view. It is simply anti-Western, anti-American propaganda masquerading as history.
This pervasive discrimination against whites has become not only institutionalized but ossified. Affirmative action, racial set-asides, university quotas, the relentless push for “diversity” and the constant drive to purge our European Judeo-Christian roots from the public square amount to a liberal campaign of anti-white racism.
It explains why black racists are never confronted, let alone ostracized. Mr. Obama’s longtime pastor, Mr. Wright, spewed vile, anti-Semitic, anti-American ideas for decades. Black liberation theology views the white race as the source of Third World oppression. The fact that Mr. Obama associated himself with these views is irrelevant to liberals. In their minds, only whites are true racists. It also explains why liberals have refused to denounce Mr. Farrakhan despite his repeated, twisted racial theories about the innate perversity of “white civilization” and the supposed “supremacy” of blacks.
Going back to Malcolm X and the emergence of the black power movement in the 1960s, there has been a virulent strain of anti-white hatred seeping through parts of black culture. It is seen in rap and hip-hop songs that glorify the murder of white police officers and champion a coming race war. It is seen in the disturbing rates of black-on-white violence, especially homicides and flash-mob attacks. It is seen in many black studies departments on college campuses, vilifying capitalism, America and Western civilization as fronts for white imperialism.
Mr. Foxx recently referred to Mr. Obama as “our Lord and Savior.” He summed up the feelings of many progressives: the president as a black liberal messiah, the man who has come to atone for America’s sins of slavery and segregation. His supporters openly embrace a cult of personality, one most often seen in authoritarian socialist regimes, not constitutional democracies. The irony is that Mr. Obama’s presidency was supposed to bring about racial healing and reconciliation. Instead, the country is more polarized racially and ideologically than at any time in modern memory. This is because Mr. Obama and his allies insist on seeing everything through the lens of race.
Racial-identity politics is an ugly thing. It tears at the very bonds of our national unity. The problem with black nationalists such as Mr. Foxx is not only that they are peddling racial division and hatred. In society, as in science, a powerful action often causes an equally strong reaction. Black racialism could fuel the rise of an angry white nationalism. That would be very bad for Americans — white and black.
Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist and editorial writer at The Washington Times. He hosts “The Kuhner Report” from 6 to 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. to noon on WRKO AM-680 (www.wrko.com) in Boston.
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