By Peter Burrows elburropete@gmail.com - silvercityburro.com 1/8/20

Over 56 years ago, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and famously said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

If his children have grown up to be Democrats, I’m afraid they’re still dreaming. If anything, racism is stronger today than when MLK made that speech, but it’s not anti-black racism anymore, it’s anti-white racism.

Just look at the consternation building in the Democratic presidential primary race. Kamala Harris and Jullian Castro have dropped out, leaving Cory Booker and Deval Patrick as the only other ‘candidates of color’ and neither of them are polling well enough to qualify for the debates, leaving all the frontrunners white.

Former presidential candidate and ex-DNC chairman Howard Dean said, “If we have two old white guys at the top of this ticket, we will lose.” He was referring to Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Nothing about Bernie’s brain-dead socialism or Biden’s many senior moments. Oh, no. Their biggest negative is that they are a couple of WHITE guys. Old, too, although I doubt if ‘old’ would have been mentioned if Maxine Waters and Charlie Rangel were leading in the polls.

Howard Dean is hardly alone with his concerns. LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, recently took a look at the Democrat primary and said, “I’m over with white men running the country.” She seems to have forgotten Barrack Obama.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA, past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said of the nominating process, “Systemic racism permeates everything in this country—I don’t know if white Democrats are really stepping up and looking at how the system is biased and prevents others from coming through.” David Axelrod, former Obama adviser, said that the frontrunners being all white was “a bad look.”

White skin is a “bad look.” Oh, my. And “the content of their character?” Predetermined by the color of their skin, dummy!

This war on white people used to be directed only at Republicans. Obama’s remarks about whites “clinging to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” was about Republicans, as was Hillary’s comment about ‘deplorable’ Trump supporters who were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”

Republicans should not take too much comfort from the spread of this new racism to include white Democrats, because white Democrats, while they are imbued with racism just like all white people, recognize their racism, feel guilty about it, and will do anything to atone for it. Reparations? Yes! Yes!

White Democrats can be forgiven, but not white Republicans, who are simply bad people. You don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe Michael Moore, who said, “Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump. That means anytime you see three white guys walking down the street toward you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people—You should be afraid of them.”

Hmmmmm. It wasn’t too long ago that three BLACK guys walking down the street were people to be afraid of, something even Jesse Jackson admitted to. Here’s a little thought experiment. Imagine you’re walking down the street at night and three white guys are walking toward you, two wearing MAGA hats. Are you really going to be afraid of them?

How about three black guys wearing hoodies? Since you reject racial profiling -– unless the guys are white—you won’t be crossing the street, will you? Ha! Now, what if the three black guys were all wearing Black Lives Matter hats? Still on the other side of the street, aren’t you? Finally, what if the three black guys were all wearing MAGA hats?

Blacks who voted for Trump must be REALLY bad people, but would you be afraid of them? Of course not. People who wear MAGA hats almost never initiate conflict. In fact, both a Black Lives Matter hat and a MAGA hat give us a strong indication of the content of the character of those wearing the hats. One is probably a racist and one is probably not.

I bet Martin Luther King would vote for the MAGA hat guy.