LaShawn Barber offers her opinion of the Senate's debate on its failure to pass anti-lynching laws 60 to 100 years ago. In short, she thinks it's dumb:
In light of the serious problems we face in the world and our own country, I think this apology is one of the dumbest, emptiest, most politically correct pile of rubbish I've heard in a long time.
We've got fanatics trying to kill us all in the name of their god and hiding among us. We're being taxed to death taking care of deadbeats and criminals, while President Bush is sending even more of our money to brutal dictators in Africa. And the Senate apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago?
A hundred years from now, I hope politicians will apologize for the lynchings that took place in Los Angeles after a jury acquitted the white cops who subdued lifelong criminal Rodney King. They should also apologize for the lynching that goes on right here in the streets of D.C., as black and Hispanic gangbangers kill each other and innocents for the most ignorant reasons. Apologize for failing to deport Hispanic thugs who jumped the border to spread their thuggery into America's heartland. And the Senate apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago?
Perhaps Congress should apologize for decades of bloated socialist programs that caused the black family to disintegrate. Paying unmarried women to have babies is obscene, immoral, and the reason so many (too many) black children have no fathers to speak of. Treating blacks like dummies who require separate (LOWER) standards than every other race is offensive. I'm offended. Where is my apology?
Generations of blacks have been lulled into feeding from the government trough, and the damage it caused will reverberate for generations. And those numbskulls down the street are apologizing for failing to pass anti-lynching laws 100 years ago. Lord, give me strength.
I'm sick of politicians wasting time and money pandering to blacks, treating us like empty-headed children, spoon-feeding us putrid pabulum, and prostrating themselves for every perceived slight. Don't apologize to "Black People." Apologize to individual blacks who actually care about this mess.
Apologize for failing to protect Americans against foreign invaders. Apologize for taking our hard-earned money and giving it to people who don't want to earn it themselves. Apologize for constantly referring to me as "African American," implying that I'm a lesser American than everyone else. Apologize to all Americans for pushing racially divisive entitlements and preferences and insane "hate crime" laws. Thanks to your misguided paternalism, racial tension will always be front and center.
Freedom is more important than all the apologies, handouts, and excuses Congress could ever come up with. I'm living in the best country in the world, and I'd never be freer anywhere else. To blacks who grew up believing America was the most racist place on earth, if you no longer believe that and realize freedom, the right to be left alone, is the only apology you need, demand that from your senators.
Pretty eloquent stuff. Parenthetically, we should mention that many observers have noted that the reason such legislation failed in the past is because it was filibustered, mostly by southern Democrats. You would think that the party that employed the filibuster to block anti-lynching legislation would have been a bit ashamed to employ it to block a vote on a black nominee to the Federal bench. Such a thought, however, assumes a certain sensitivity to historical irony among Democrats that is apparently well-suppressed.
