Saw that. What? You didn't draw ozone for having the temerity to post the information?
/s
Thanks for both pings, melancholy.
“Derbyshire doesn't do the really obvious racist stuff — the stuff that goes up at FreeRepublic.com, for example — like post photos Obama in stereotypical tribal garb with a bone through his nose. Instead, he talks about how his East African parentage means he might be suspect to some black voters, who are more likely to be of West African heritage.”
The link is here: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/04/why-john-derbyshire-hasnt-been-fired-yet/50803/
The Atlantic then provides numerous links to various things Derbyshire has written, going back at least four years, with links, that don't sound very good.
I don't know enough about Derbyshire to have an intelligent comment on his views. However, I believe Jim Robinson and the community of those of us who post on Free Republic need to make **ABSOLUTELY** clear that Free Republic does **NOT** support racism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Jim, but I think someone posting photos of “Obama in stereotypical tribal garb with a bone through his nose” would get in trouble here, especially if that was part of a pattern of anti-black ranting.
Maybe I've been lucky but I simply haven't run into a lot of the “bad blacks” that some people like to talk about. I've seen some, but not many, and I know from firsthand experience that even in high-crime areas, most residents are basically decent people who have been intimidated into a code of silence. That's coming from someone who, back when I was in college and graduate school, was living in the inner city and was attending a church that was in the process of successfully changing from predominantly white to predominantly black. Once my neighbors and fellow church members got to know me, they decided “he's okay” and I had no more issues.
Yes, I take precautions when in an area where I'm one of the few white people, but I'd do the same in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, and my Italian ancestors would have done the same in a predominantly Irish neighborhood, and a hundred years ago walking into a neighborhood full of “wops” and “dagos” would have scared the living daylights out of many WASPS.
It's not just blacks and Hispanics who get this treatment. When I walk around in Korea, I have to be careful not to hold my wife's hand, and I always have to wear a suit and tie in public, because otherwise people could look down on her as a “race-mixer” of questionable morality. That's reality; I don't like it, but I have to deal with it — there are lots of cultures where white people are looked down on as immoral wicked people whose goal is to “knock up” innocent Asian women.
Bottom line: if you act like and dress like a gangbanger, you'll get treated like one. Act and dress like a professional, and most (not all but most) people will treat you like a decent human being.