Bunifah's Unteachable Moment
As the daughter of Harvard Professor Henry “Bunifah Latifah” Gates, Elizabeth’s vapid blog about the “Beer Summit” devolved from pageant queen oratory into the swamp of revisionist history. Her final comments not only corroborate her father’s uninspired performance as an educator and parent, but also identifies herself among America's next generation of race-baiters:I asked my father what the President had said during their chat and as he slipped off his shoes and reclined his chair, he said: “The president and the vice president are great men, Liza. They did the right thing to invite us there to talk, but it's up to us now to extend this conversation. We have plans to meet in private and discuss things. You know, Crowley’s not a bad guy. He’s not a Joe the Plumber who wants to represent the Right. He would be horrified to be considered a racist.”
Unfortunately for America, Democrats have successfully used men like Gates to perpetuate the myth of American racism since the 1960s. As I wrote in 2006, race was largely considered a political problem since 1852, when anti-slavery Republicans pitted themselves against pro-slavery Democrats. Roughly 2.5 million white Republican men (including my great-grandfather and uncles) fought, bled or died to end the slavery that a million white Democrats fought to defend.
Discrimination is the single greatest wound in American history and could never be solved over a beer. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. There are more black men in prison than in college and literally thousands of black men are arrested across this country each day. And while I might agree with the president’s initial statement that the “Cambridge Police Department acted stupidly,” my father is not the first nor will he be the last black man to be arrested for no reason—in his own home or elsewhere—and Sergeant Crowley isn’t the first officer to fudge a police report. They are simply pawns in the rebirth of unfashionable intolerance in a world that likes to think our dashing brown-skinned 44th president has emerged to make nice with the past, present, and future. It’s an impossible task for the president and speaks more to our nation’s vulnerable value system than the unfortunately common situation my father and the Cambridge police found themselves embroiled in. As my father said on the plane yesterday morning on our way to the White House, “there are approximately 800,000 black men in prison and on July 16, 2009, I simply became one of them.”
When Republicans won the Civil War in 1865, it didn’t stop there. In spite of the 13th Amendment, Democrats continued to deny blacks their citizenship rights. In 1868, the 14th Amendment was passed, establishing citizenship for all in Federal law.
100% of Republicans voted for it.
100% of Democrats opposed it.
Despite passage of the 14th Amendment, Democrats continued to prevent blacks from voting. To overcome this, Congress passed the 15th Amendment, establishing the right to vote for all people regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
100% of Republicans voted for it.
100% of Democrats opposed it.
From 1866–1875, the Republican Congress passed 19 civil rights laws. Democrats oppose them all.
In 1866, Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan with the express purpose of preventing the election of Republicans in the South. In 1872, Democrats admitted during Congressional hearings that the Klan was a Democrat creation intended to restore Democrat control of the South. The Klan carried out this plan with a series of massacres.
In 1876, Democrats took control of the House and no more civil rights legislation was passed until 1964. In 1892, Democrats took control of the White House, the Senate, and the House. They immediately established Jim Crow laws and repealed all civil rights legislation passed by the Republicans. The laws or amendments they could not repeal were skirted by poll taxes and literacy tests.
Until 1935, all blacks elected to Congress were Republicans. In addition to those elected to federal office, hundreds of blacks (all Republican) were elected to state legislatures in the South. In the 1920s, Republicans proposed anti-lynching legislation. The legislation passed the house but was killed by the Democrat-controlled Senate. The legislation finally passed by a slim margin in 1939 despite the passionate opposition speech by Democrat Congressman Lyndon B. Johnson.
Two years after the passage of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Democrats expressed their opposition to the desegregation decision in the "Southern Manifesto." One hundred members of Congress, all Democrats, signed the manifesto.
In 1957, Republican President Eisenhower authored a Civil Rights Bill, hoping to repair the damage done to blacks and their civil rights by Democrats since 1892. Passage of the bill was blocked by Senate Democrats.
In 1959, Republican President Eisenhower authored a Voting Rights Bill in an effort to undo the disenfranchisement of blacks by Democrats through poll taxes, literacy tests, and threats of violence by the KKK. Once again, passage of the bill was blocked by Senate Democrats.
In 1960, Democrat presidential candidate John F. Kennedy recognizing his need for the black vote and employed the talents of Senator Harris Wofford to pursue that aim. Among many initiatives, Wofford encouraged Kennedy to make a comforting phone call to Coretta Scott King when her husband was in jail. This had a profound effect on Martin Luther King Jr.'s father, who had previously been a Republican and supported Nixon. King Sr. threw his support to Kennedy and brought "a suitcase full of votes" with him.
In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – the same law that was originally authored by Eisenhower in 1957. Democrats, including Klansman Senator Robert Byrd employed a filibuster of the bill. Once overcome, a larger percentage of Republicans voted for passage than did Democrats.
In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1964, which was originally authored by Eisenhower in 1959. A filibuster was prevented and passage of this bill also enjoyed support from a larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats. President Johnson supported the bill and Republican Barry Goldwater inexplicably opposed it. Since Goldwater used his own money twice to keep an Arizona chapter of the NAACP afloat, it cannot be argued that he opposed civil rights.
This occurred at a time when Democrats gained control of the media, Hollywood, academia, unions and public schools. This control gave Democrats the ability to spin Republican efforts like Nixon's Southern Strategy while Democrats like George Wallace stood in school doorways to prevent court-ordered integration.
This was also the period when Democrats turned American racism from a Democrat vs. Republican reality into a White vs. Black mythology, painting white and black Republicans as racists and Uncle Toms.
This is the political climate where men like Henry Gates and Barack Obama are regarded by men like Mr. Haley and Mr. Shelby as good, steady, sensible, pious fellows: Where such men are called intellectuals while Republicans and white policemen are assumed to be racists – especially when Bunifah throws a tantrum. Rather than holding Gates accountable for his stupid behavior or Obama for his prejudicial remarks, Americans are expected to avert their eyes and say nothing, like invited guests to the birthday party of an insolent child.
It’s one thing for Elizabeth to blame whitey for incarcerating the veterans of America’s disastrous Democrat-controlled welfare and public school experiments and another thing for Americans to buy it. Democrat-controlled cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans expose Elizabeth’s lie as self-evident. But as long as pious fellows like Bunifah are willing to blame whitey, America will continue to bear their insolence, mediocrity and tantrums.
This is the enlightened environment that Elizabeth Gates was born into, with all the privileges that come with being the daughter of an esteemed race-baiting Democrat Party revisionist. Sadly for Elizabeth and her father, there will be no teachable moments.
