Reading Julianne Malveaux’s guest editorial, On July 4, Hopes for a Better Nation, puts one in a time warp.  The Frederick Douglass 1852 speech to which she refers was an eloquent and impassioned cry to end slavery and stands as a crucial moment in American History.  At that time Douglass was right, the promise of America’s founders fell short and would not be fulfilled until every man could exercise the same liberties and rights as the Constitution intended.   In 1852, half America’s states permitted the sin of slavery, a practice inherited from its days as a British colony.   America’s founders, even those owning slaves, agreed that the promise of America would ring hollow until slavery was ended.  However, they also realized a fragile experiment that was the nascent American Republic could not come to fruition with the immediate eradication of slavery.  They knew eventually the practice must end for America to realize its moral status as the first true free nation in the world, and in less than seventy years later after a bloody civil war it did.  

Now, almost 150 years after the abolition of slavery, Ms. Malveaux appallingly attempts to convince us that black Americans live in the same desperate inequality that existed in 1852.  Unfortunately Ms. Malveaux confuses equality of opportunity with equality of outcome, insisting that because blacks don’t share the same education and economic outcomes, they were somehow denied the same educational and economic opportunities, an utter deception which the race peddlers of our nation continue to further.  The truth is that black Americans have more opportunities today than their white counterparts.  Contrary to Ms. Malveaux’s myth, more money is spent on inner city schools than in their wealthier suburbs, and affirmative action has turned the table of racism against white America.  Despite the existence of equality of opportunity, in America it is up to the free individual to exercise his freedom to take advantage of the opportunities afforded to achieve their own unique outcomes.  Like Ms. Malveaux, many black women who have had the opportunity to achieve status as a College or University President have attained it, but that doesn’t mean all black women, or any woman for that matter, should be elevated to that level of achievement unless they have earned it.

Ms. Malveaux went on to incredibly state that the opposition to President Obama has been racially motivated, another fallacy perpetrated by the American Left.  After being elected by large percentages of white Americans, Mr. Obama’s horrendous policies as president, not his racial characteristics, have evoked considerable criticism.  Moreover, it is Mr. Obama’s own policies that have been racist.  From the Cambridge Police Officer-Henry Gates affair in which the President knew nothing of the details but proceeded to state the Cambridge Police “acted stupidly” and engaged in “racial profiling”, to the dropping of charges against the New Black Panthers who engaged in the most egregious voter intimidation ever witnessed.  From deriding the Arizona immigration bill before he had even read it and lying about its contents and tendencies toward “racial profiling”, to recently directing the NASA Administrator to lie about scientific contributions of Islam to improve relations with the  Muslim world.  Maybe if Ms. Malveaux would ask herself if Obama was a white president like President Bush, would she still believe that such criticisms of a botched healthcare plan in which most of the President’s promises were broken, the president’s broken promises of transparency, a stimulus plan that didn’t stimulate but put future generations of Americans in economic slavery, a botched response to the gulf oil spill, alienation of our allies and appeasement of our enemies, the mishandling of two wars, and numerous other policy blunders were justified or racially motivated?

It is no surprise that Ms. Malveaux would bear the unfounded beliefs she holds, given the environment to which she was undoubtedly exposed during her formative years.    The racist ethnic studies programs that have been implemented in American High Schools and Universities have served as pseudo racial madrassas, engaging in history revisionism and preaching hatred of America, its founding principles and traditions.  The race peddlers have encouraged separatism with hyphenated group identity politics, unique dialects, undermining traditional holidays and inventing their own unique ones, along with creating functions based on unique racial qualifiers.  Although assimilation into one’s new culture is the fastest road to success, the race peddlers encourage separatism and clinging to cultural heritage in order to control their racial members and use them as political slaves as tools to their own political power.  Only in America do we find labels like “African-American” or “Hispanic-American”.  British and Dutch are responsible for establishing slavery in America and other countries, such as France, possessed several slave colonies, yet there are black citizens in their nations and the terms “African-Brit” or African-Frenchman” are not in the vocabulary.  There are no Miss Black France contests or newly invented Kwanza holidays, there are no NAACP organizations, no congressional black caucus or New Black Panthers, yet the opportunities in America are greater for blacks than in any other nation in the world.    

The only slavery still existing in America today is the enslavement of Black voters by the Democrat Party.  Election data show that a minimum of ninety percent of Black Americans vote Democrat.  In the 2008 national election, polling data suggest that number may be more like ninety five percent.  This is perhaps the greatest monolithic voting bloc in the history of American politics.  For this support, what have the Democrats delivered to Black community? 

The desperate inequality Ms. Malveaux refers to today may in fact be the result of the intricate system of social assistance pushed onto Black America by Democrats and race peddlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who seek to deliver votes in return for power and a seat at the political table.  This meager social assistance has become a generational way of life for so many Blacks who are told by the Left that they cannot achieve what their white counterparts can, due to the institutional racism that exists in America.  If a successful Black role model, such as Bill Cosby attempts to provide the blueprint for Black achievement (which, by the way, is the same blueprint for White achievement), he is vilified by the Left and the race peddlers for being an “Uncle Tom.”  Is there any wonder that successful Black entrepreneurs and executives are hesitant to attempt to become role models for the Black community?
 

Yes, slavery may still exist in America.  But not the slavery of pre-1860s, the slavery today is of the political kind, and Ms. Malveaux and her allies on the Left, including the President and his acolytes, are the modern-day slaveholders.