Lisa Falkenberg is without peer in Texas print media when it comes to not getting it, and today's column is no exception...
Some see pride in Obama's win as wrong
...Some of my fellow whites apparently are feeling a bit confused, disturbed and even threatened by all the smiling, chest-puffing, Obama T-shirt-wearing black folks strutting around like they run the country or something.
Well, finally, for the first time in our nation's history, someone who looks like them will be running the country. Can we blame them for celebrating?
Yes, apparently, we can. Where some of us see pride, and share in it, others see divisiveness.
"Unfortunately, all these good black Americans see is the color of a man's skin," read one comment under my column last week featuring the perspectives of 1960s freedom fighters.
"I thought this election was not about race, but that's pretty much all I've heard since the result was declared final," wrote another, who went on to lament how Jesse Jackson wept openly, Condoleezza Rice "could barely contain herself" and a "usually composed Colin Powell was unabashedly happy that a black man was now our president."
Another reader e-mailed Viewpoints on Saturday, apparently in sarcastic response to the Houston Chronicle's promotion of a special section on Obama's historic win: "Is it still possible to get reprints of the special Sunday section highlighting George Bush when he was elected in 2000 or 2004?"
A white loss
All these people can't be oblivious to the historic moment our country has just witnessed: A man who would have been sent to the back of the bus in the 1950s will soon be riding on Air Force One.
Black schoolchildren learning about America's presidents will finally find among the row of white faces an image that resembles their own.
So why the sour grapes?
"It's a classic argument," says Eric McDaniel, a University of Texas assistant professor who specializes in racial and ethnic politics. "The victory of a black person is automatically seen as a loss for white people."
Oooh, logical fallacy alert! Namely, straw man argument. I have seen no one anywhere saying that the election of a black man to the presidency would be a loss for white people. And it would seem to me that Lisa Falkenberg and her ilk are placing the fact that this is a "historic" occasion above the fact that we just elected to the presidency a gun-grabbing Constitution-hating Marxist who couldn't pass a government background check for a defense contract with the government. It's worth asking, just exactly why the guns and ammunition have been flying off the shelves since Barack Bill Ayers Obama was elected. Considering his record, I find it difficult, nay, impossible to believe that all those munitions were just for target practice or hunting — especially considering it hasn't been the traditional bolt-action hunting guns whose demand has skyrocketed. I don't understand why the next step on the way to a completely non-racist society has to be the targets of past racism getting a pass on their own racism. And that's exactly what it is. If you vote FOR someone just because of their skin color, you're just as much of a racist as one who votes AGAINST someone for that reason. And it really is just that simple.
In yet another bitter irony, the clueless Falkenberg wrote last week about '60s freedom fighters supporting Barack No Guns For You Obama — ironic because of the fact that the President-elect deigns to bring back involuntary servitude via "mandatory volunteer service" for certain groups, although this time people of all colors will be under the lash if he gets his way. (How's THAT for equality?) Who is it once again that's distracting from the real issues?
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