Occupy Wall Street was ‘absolutely’ racist and hypocritical, according to a black occupier and his girlfriend who first liked protesting at Zuccotti Park but now have moved to Occupy Newark. My interview with occupier Michael Morgan raised the same issues that came up in every discussion I had with black members of the Occupy Wall Street protest, who all felt that the movement was racist. These accusations are coming from men and women who support much of the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street but have seen the reality with their own eyes. So far, the cowardly elitist leaders of Occupy Wall Street have done nothing to answer these charges from within their own movement that they are racist against people of color.

Here’s my interview with Mr. Morgan:

Mr. Morgan was clearly bothered by the segregation at Zuccotti Park and that there was an area of Occupy known as ‘the ghetto.’ This segregation was brilliantly  exposed in one of the best pieces on mainstream media reporting on #Occupy from The Daily Show, which also shows the rift between the smug, privileged liberal elites who talk about the 99% but clearly wouldn’t want to be caught dead with them.

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People inside the Occupy movement — including one of the leaders of the Occupy Newark encampment — claim that Occupy Wall Street is racist against people of color. These new accusations of racism are based on people’s personal experiences with the increasingly secretive and “fascist” Occupy Wall Street leadership and the actions of OWS participants.

Imagine the amount of press the following story would get if it occurred at a Tea Party event; “If you ever want to see the biggest bunch of a**holes in the world, it’s Occupy Wall Street,” an unidentified man told me. We were in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, a location that Occupy Wall Street uses for meetings especially on evenings such as this past Friday when the weather outside was rainy and cold. The gentleman speaking to me was clearly upset, in his late 30s, neatly dressed and black. He eyed the tables of white Occupiers chowing down nearby. “I brought plates,” he said. “I brought plates free for everyone to eat on and what do they do? They asked me if I’d washed my hands. That’s how they treat us here.”

This man’s complaints about his own personal experience of antiblack racism at Occupy Wall Street were echoed by every black person I spoke to this past week in New York. Some people did not want to go on record, possibly fearing reprisals from people at Occupy Wall Street, but others freely admitted in video interviews that BigGovernment.com and Breitbart.TV will be releasing this week that they think the Occupy Wall Street movement is “clearly” and “absolutely” racist against people of color based on their own personal experience.

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If the Juan Williams race baiting debate attack on Newt Gingrich somehow leaves you with any doubt that there’s something about the South Carolina primaries that seems to bring out the worst in this sort of political behavior, you need look no further than the 2008 Democratic primary to see just how down and dirty things can get in the Palmetto State.

Four years ago, the Democratic primary was split with Sen. Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and Hillary Clinton pulling out a comeback victory in New Hampshire. The political tag team of Bill and Hillary Clinton felt secure about the South Carolina black vote because of President Clinton’s persistent high approval ratings among African-Americans, but they were about to get their first real taste of Sen. Obama’s Chicago-style political game. Sen. Obama and his team were able to take a couple of innocuous statements by the Clintons and twist them into a race related controversy.

It started when Hillary Clinton said to an interviewer on Fox News;

I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done.

That’s the complete quote but the New York Times ran no less than three separate stories that shortened it to;

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. “It took a president to get it done.”

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With members of the mainstream media now hurling charges of using racially coded language against GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, Big Government has uncovered a private memorandum written over three decades ago that offers a unique glimpse into Mr. Gingrich’s longstanding attitudes about race.

The private memo, dated July 1, 1980, was written by Mr. Gingrich on his official House of Representatives stationery and was sent to then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager, Bill Casey, who would later become President Reagan’s CIA Director.

In the memo, Mr. Gingrich urges Governor Reagan’s campaign to reconsider its decision not to speak to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Convention.

“This is a great opportunity to prove that a conservative Republican can speak to the hearts and pocketbooks of Black Americans,” Gingrich urged in the memo.

The memorandum goes on to explain that a decision not to speak at the NAACP convention would insult African American voters and be a “tragedy” for the nation:

Many middle class Black Americans who would vote for Reagan will be insulted by his non-attendance.  I urge you to schedule the speech and talk about Kemp’s Inner City Jobs Bill, which Kilpatrick and George Will have both endorsed as acceptably conservative.

Failure to attend the NAACP convention will be a tragedy for Gov. Reagan and the country.  Symbolic events are vital.  Thank you for considering this.

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In the late 1940s — when the Democrat party began shifting from denying equal rights to southern blacks to championing them — race became a central tenet of American politics. Although the Democrat party fought for slavery during the Civil War, formed the KKK during reconstruction, and used Jim Crow laws to keep blacks from enjoying their rights well into the 20th century, blacks seemed more than willing to look the other way in exchange for a few social programs that promised to bring them the equality they so sorely desired.

Eventually, these social promises (cemented in wealth redistribution programs like the “war on poverty” and racial quotas like affirmative action) came to define the Democrat’s relationship with black voters. Over time the focus on race became so integral to everything the Democrats did that blacks began to define themselves not as black Americans but as “African-Americans” (and soon “Mexican-Americans,” “Italian-Americans,” and every other conceivable people group followed suit). In effect, the language of race became paramount over all other language, and allegiance to race over all other allegiances.

We were reminded of these things in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected in part due to the color of his skin (and the promise of America’s first “African-American President” and a fulfillment of Martin Luther King Jr’s dream). Now just look what this focus on race got us: an inexperienced president whose solution for the ailing economy was to raise taxes, take over healthcare, nationalize certain automobile manufacturers, and regulate the financial sector to death (literally). And this is what makes Herman Cain’s announcement that he’s a black American rather than an African-American so refreshing: he’s turning back the dial on this race-above-all-else bunk.

Cain Said: “I do not try to use race to my advantage. I don’t even bring it up unless somebody asks me about it, and I have said repeatedly [that] this is not about color. This is about the content of your ideas, and your character.” Talk about the fulfillment of MLK’s dream! MLK said he dreamt of a day when people would not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character — which is exactly what Cain’s saying. And it’s 180 degrees from what Obama and the Democrat party are saying.

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Something amazing happened at the Occupy LA rally the other night.  Who knew a capitalist would confront the people at the Occupy LA Rally.

Also funny to see that so many of the Occupy LA crowd would support Herman Cain for president. The even chanted “9-9-9!” Looks like Cain has crossover appeal that the GOP establishment has overlooked.

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On BigHollywood I once shared my thoughts on the movie Glory and how Col. Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the 54^th Mass., was an example of a post-racial man in his day – indeed he went to his death for his belief in the rights of the free Black men under his command with whom he shared a common grave.

One of my favorite characters in this film was Sergeant-Major Rawlins, played by the esteemed actor Morgan Freeman.  Rawlins, a grave-digger before enlisting in the Union army, is presented as an older, wiser and honest man whom the others look up to…and Shaw himself leans on for counsel.  Perhaps the best scene in the film is the altercation between Rawlins and the embittered and recalcitrant Private Silas Tripp (Denzel Washington).  Rawlins berates Tripp harshly after Tripp derides his compliance with the chain of command, in which only Whites were allowed to be officers, as making him a “…n****r…nothing but the White man’s dog.”  Rawlins then bitch-slaps Tripp across the face and stings him with these words of wisdom and caution:

“And what are you? So full of hate you just want to go out and fight everybody.  Because you’ve  been whipped and chased by hounds.  Well that may not be living but it sure as hell ain’t dying.  And dying’s what these white boys been doing for going on three years now.  Dying by the thousands.  Dyin’ for you, fool!  I know ‘cause I dug the graves. And all the time I’m digging I’m asking myself when, oh Lord, when’s it gonna be our time?  Well our time’s comin’ when we gonna have to ante up.  Ante up and kick in like men…like men!  So you watch who you call a n****r.  If there’s any n****rs around here it’s you.  A smart mouth, stupid-ass, swamp-running n****r.  And if you ain’t careful that’s all you ever gonna be!”

What I like(d) about Morgan Freeman besides his acting is that, until recently, I felt this Rawlins mentality was not far from that of the actor who portrayed him.  Rawlins was a man who, though clearly the victim of racism himself, would not allow race to be an excuse for failure.  And thus I thought Freeman to be a post-racial man and disparaging of those who view the world through the prism of color.

Consider this excerpt from a 2005 interview with Mike Wallace when the actor exposes the hypocrisy of the 60 Minutes journalist for his condescending attitude towards Blacks that is so common among the white-guilt ridden liberal elite…even as they remain oblivious to their own racism that is just as pernicious if not more so than that of a klansman because of its very subtly.  Mike Wallace asked Freeman his thoughts on so-called Black History Month:

Freeman: “Ridiculous.”

Wallace: “Why?”

Freeman: “You’re gonna relegate my history to a month?”

Wallace: “Oh come on—”

Freeman: “What do you do with yours?  What month is ‘white history month’?”

Wallace: [Uncomfortable hemming and hawing.] “Well…”

Freeman: “No, come on.”

Wallace: [Uncomfortable noises. Waves away notion with sweep of hand] “I’m Jewish.”

Freeman: “Okay.  Which month is ‘Jewish history month’?”

Wallace: “There isn’t one.”

Freeman: “Oh…Oh…why not?  Do you want one?”

Wallace: [rather emphatic] “No, no, no I don’t—”

Freeman: “Alright.  I don’t either.  I don’t want a ‘Black history month.’  Black history is American history.”

Wallace: “How are we going to get rid of racism until—”

Freeman: “Stop talking about it.  I’m gonna stop calling you a ‘white man.’  And I’m gonna ask you to stop calling me a ‘black man.’  I know you as Mike Wallace and you know me as Morgan Freeman.  I’m not gonna say ‘I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ You know what I’m saying?”

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Gwen Ifill of PBS had a “panel of cultural and academic luminaries” at Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center last Wednesday. Their purpose was to have an “effective racial dialogue” with one another.

As is typically the case when there is a “racial dialogue,” the panel was filled with like-minded liberals endlessly agreeing with each other and solving nothing. The participants included, among others, Gwen Ifill, New York Times columnists Charles Blow, and Anita Hill–who is apparently a “legal commentator.” Absent was a single conservative. Maybe an insightful conversation could have occurred if there were actually diverse thoughts present.

Instead they had Tim Wise, a supposed “anti-racist” author and speaker. Wise is popular among college leftists for his style and bold remarks. Some of those remarks, however, are possibly the most angry, hateful remarks any public figure has recently uttered. For example, Wise recently attacked not only Andrew Breitbart, but his family as well:

“[Andrew Breitbart]…I want that bastard destroyed. Now. [...] when I say I want him destroyed I am not kidding. I want to see him penniless, homeless, begging on the street for money to buy food [...] he can die on the street so far as I’m concerned [...] let you and your rich ass Brentwood family suffer”

Wise also falsely and embarrassingly accused Breitbart of approving of a cross burning, which was in reality directed at Breitbart and his friend. Wise then reiterated:

“this Tulane grad [Tim Wise] is committed to [Andrew Breitbart's] utter destruction …I mean, the kind of destruction that involves the complete evisceration of his entire career. I want him destroyed. Penniless. Starving. I have never detested anyone this much…but for him, I will make an exception.”

Yes, penniless, starving, the evisceration of Breitbart’s career, we get it. Good luck with that, Tim. His recent racial slur of Herman Cain would, in a just world, disqualify him from being a prominent “anti-racist” and being invited to these events. But it doesn’t; instead, he has two new books coming out which will probably become required reading in college campuses across the country, like his previous books.

The question is, will Gwen Ifill, PBS, and CNN give this man a platform like they have in the past to spread his ideas on “effective racial dialogue” and “reconciliation?”

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Recently in downtown Los Angeles, NAACP President Ben Jealous held a press conference to kick off his group’s 102^nd annual convention. His remarks came just two days before our newly formed South Central L.A. Tea Party held a major rally to expose the lies and racism of the NAACP. During the press conference Jealous was asked about the black-led Tea Party group and about details of a recent closed-door meeting he and other liberal black leaders had with President Barack Obama.

What you will see in the following video and read from the partial transcript are blatant lies from the desperate leader of an outdated civil-rights group trying to stay relevant by scaring black Americans. In the video Jealous claims the rights of black voters are being threatened and that racial “discrimination 2.0” is holding them back. It’s a shameless attempt to keep black Americans focused on ‘racism’ in order to keep them angry and on Obama’s Democrat plantation.

The NAACP president began by stating:

“The rights of everybody are under attack everywhere all the time. The rights of workers to organize, a women’s right to choose, access to the ballot box itself. In this past year we’ve seen perhaps the greatest attempt to limit access to the ballot box since 1896….”

The NAACP leader compares the tough economic times and high unemployment for blacks to the Rodney King beating:

“…As a Californian it’s hard to forget that this year is the 20^th anniversary of the Rodney King tragedy. And this moment is too much like that. The underlying anxieties of chronic high unemployment are still there, the short-term stress and recession is with us again and our people are even more incarcerated than they were then….”

Jealous explains that the Obama administration is focused on ending what he calls “employment discrimination 2.0” to ensure that people with bad credit, those with prison records, and the long-term unemployed are not being discriminated against:

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Does affordable housing require rent control?  No.  Not even in Manhattan.  And in fact, it is no coincidence that the cities with the most rent control (NYC and San Francisco) also have the highest rent.  There is no incentive on the account of the landlords and tenants to build more housing or improve worn out units.

Does race account for differences in income?  Is the “fatherless family” amongst African Americans a legacy of slavery?  Is household income a good indicator of the state of our economy?  No, no, and no.

Uncommon Knowledge all-star Thomas Sowell returns to talk about his latest edition of Economic Facts and Fallacies, and continues his legacy as refreshingly straightforward and clear on economic issues.

To learn more about income equality, race and economics, and the reasons for Thomas Sowell’s persistent pessimism, watch the full interview below.

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In 1981, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare Patricia Harris wrote in the Washington Post that libertarian economists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are “middle class” so they “don’t know what it is to be poor.”

In fact, Williams grew up in a single-parent household in a poor section of Philadelphia. He was raised by his mother, who was a high school dropout. The family spent time on welfare, and eventually moved into the Richard Allen public housing project. (Sowell, whose father died before he was born, was the son of a maid.)

Drafted into the peacetime Army, Williams eventually earned a PhD from UCLA in the late 1960s and quickly became a sought-after researcher and public intellectual. His best known book, 1982’s The State Against Blacks, argues that a major cause of black unemployment is government intervention in the labor market.

Williams’ contrarian views have had wide exposure through documentaries, public appearances, and for the past 30 years, a syndicated weekly column. Since 1992, Williams has also been a frequent guest host of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Now a professor emeritus at George Mason University, Williams has taught at Temple University, California State University-Los Angeles, and other universities. (Go here for his personal web page.)

His new book, Up from the Projects: An Autobiography, is a fascinating look at his childhood, his half-century-long marriage to his recently departed wife, his unusual career path, and the genesis of his views on race, economics, and politics.

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This article first appeared at the Huffington Post.

The latest James O’Keefe success story against NPR has taken a predictable pattern — panicked press releases and firings, followed by denunciation of O’Keefe in a belated attempt to discredit him. Naturally, conservatives are crowing about it, but I wanted to give a little perspective to those Huffington Post readers–whatever your political stripe–who share my passion for free speech, honest debate, and fairness in the media.

Over the past year, the mainstream media has collaborated with the White House in an attempt to paint the Tea Party as racist. Remember the protests on Capitol Hill last March against ObamaCare, and the media’s lie that members of the Congressional Black Congress had awful racial slurs hurled at them by Tea Party members that weekend? Did you know that there’s video evidence that it isn’t true?

Not just one video, either. Four of them. Yes. Four. Of. Them. There’s not one shred of objective evidence that corroborates the “Tea Party N-Word” story. But the mainstream media has allowed the lie to live on as one of the central “proofs” of Tea Party racism. It’s been debunked, but it’s raised time and time again by those claiming “reality” as their mantle.

The mainstream media promotes the idea that the Tea Party is racist because they want to delegitimize an authentic, grassroots movement that stands up to big government. And the “Tea Party N-word” story ties all the other lies about the Tea Party together–that it’s violent, that it’s extreme, that it’s a “mob.” If you want to see what a violent, extreme mob looks like, go to Madison to see the crazed throngs the media refuses to scrutinize. (more…)

UPDATED***

The left is afraid of the election of Marco Rubio as Senator of Florida in the exact same way as they were afraid of Sarah Palin when she was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee by John McCain. It has been clear from the beginning that both are ascendant as potential game-changing political stars and need to be destroyed. So it’s no surprise that Arianna Huffington tweeted the following:
The reason why so few Senators are chosen as Presidential nominees is that the job is not an executive position; Governors tend to be preferable because they have executive experience. Rubio was just elected to to vote “yes” or “no” on things, which is why Arianna’s analogy of “dictator” is incomprehensible and utterly unrelated to his leadership position. There is nothing dictator-like about a Senator. So what exactly was the Queen of social news media’s tweet really about? (more…)

Another town hall meeting, another embarrassing gaffe by President Obama.  But this time, the President’s honesty revealed an arrogant defiance toward poor, mostly African-American parents trying to provide a better life for their children.

While President Obama was conducting a town hall meeting on MSNBC this morning with Matt Lauer, he was asked (by a parent in the crowd) if he thought his children could get the same education in a DC Public School vs. the elite private school he sends them to now.

His bombshell hypocritical answer caused no ripple and nary a peep from the national media. What a shock…

The following is an abbreviated transcript via the NBCWashington.com.

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Remarks of President Obama at Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Dinner, as prepared by the White House:

Hello CBC! It is wonderful to be back with all of you. I know you’ve spent a good deal of time talking about what the future holds for the African American community, and the United States of America as a whole. I’ve been spending time thinking about that, too. And at this time of great challenge, one source of inspiration is the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus.

I want us all to take a moment and remember what was happening forty years ago when 13 black members of Congress decided to come together and form this caucus. It was 1969. More than a decade had passed since the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education. It had been several years since Selma and Montgomery, since Dr. Martin Luther King told America of his dream, all culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

The founders of this caucus could look back and feel proud of the progress that had been made. They could feel confident that America was moving in the right direction. But they…. (more…)

From Prager’s column today:

The title of this column seems unbelievable, but it is in fact what happened in America this past week. And almost no one has noticed.

After 50 years of being inundated with stories of white racism, and being taught in college that in this white-dominated society, only a white can be a racist, the American public has been properly brainwashed into accepting the otherwise incredible: A black man murdered eight white people at his place of work because they were white, and the media story is about the murderer’s alleged experiences of racism.

Here’s the Associated Press Report from Aug. 7, four days after the murders. It was reprinted in The Washington Post and throughout America:

To those closest to him, Omar Thornton was caring, quiet and soft-spoken … But underneath, Thornton seethed with a sense of racial injustice for years that culminated in a shooting rampage Tuesday in which the Connecticut man killed eight and wounded two others at his job at Hartford Distributors in Manchester before killing himself.

‘I know what pushed him over the edge was all the racial stuff that was happening at work,’ said his girlfriend, Kristi Hannah.

‘He always felt like he was being discriminated (against) because he was black,’ said Jessica Anne Brocuglio, his former girlfriend. ‘Basically they wouldn’t give him pay raises. He never felt like they accepted him as a hard working person.’

‘Thornton changed jobs a few times because he was not getting raises, Brocuglio said.

The New York Times Aug. 3 headline read: “Troubles Preceded Connecticut Workplace Killing,” and in the second paragraph, the Times reported: (more…)

WASHINGTON (AP) – Black members of the tea party movement on Wednesday rejected charges that the group’s activists are racist, saying they oppose President Barack Obama because of his policies not his skin color.

The members gathered at a Washington news conference in the wake of allegations about its rank and file, heightened by the recent split with a Tea Party Express leader who had posted a letter on his blog written from “Colored People” to Abraham Lincoln. The post suggested that black people would choose slavery over having to do real work.

The black members said the racism that has been attributed to the tea party movement came from outsiders who infiltrated the groups to discredit their work and it should be rejected.

“These people do not oppose Barack Obama because of his skin color. They oppose him because of his policies,” said Lloyd Marcus, a spokesman for the group.

The NAACP last month approved a resolution condemning racism within the tea party movement and called on activists to “repudiate the racist element and activities” within the political movement. (more…)

Andrew Breitbart addressed the Uni-Tea event in Philadelphia at Independence Hall on July 31, 2010. Uni-Tea is an organization of Tea Party members focused on promoting the racial and ethnic diversity within the Tea Party ranks:

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One of the most talked about lines from the State of the Union came not from Obama but from a comment the MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews made after the President’s address: “He is post-racial by all appearances,” Matthews observed. “You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and passed so much history in just a year or two.”

I am prepared to take this comment seriously. No doubt Matthews meant it as a compliment. A cheerleader for the President, Matthews once famously remarked that he “felt this thrill going up my leg” following another Obama speech. But the observation of a “post-racial” President spells trouble for Obama. For one, judging by Matthews’s backtracking, the comment has inadvertently exposed the subject of Obama’s race to be a continuing taboo for any meaningful discussion. Why is it taboo? Because race remains the key issue through which one can unlock and understand the power that brought Obama to office, and Obama’s defenders do not want to give that key away. Harry Reid’s recently reported comments about Obama being a “light-skinned Negro” raised hackles for similar reasons.

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