OFFENDING THE OFFENDED

“You did not offend me with your Obama comment. I didn't vote for that lying piece of crap in the white house. I am not a racist. I am just not stupid. He got elected because he got the black vote. Typically in our country blacks are not educated and there is a lot of black on black crime. You can imagine they were jumping out of their skins to have the first black president, so they all came out and voted and that is how Obama got elected. I sure as hell didn't vote for him.”~ anonymous

The above quote was part of an email exchange between two third parties that found its way into my mailbox recently as part of a political chain letter that a Tea Party follower I know sent to everyone on his list serve. The racist content in the email was troubling enough, but it’s also disturbing that such bigotry has found a welcoming home among a large captive audience here in America. Judging by the number of similar emails that get sent to my inbox, a lot of folks think it is okay to distribute such garbage. It’s no wonder that mean and degrading stereotypes regarding people of color flourish in this country, and I want to go on record as saying “Shame on you!” to the writer of the above-referenced email. You are indeed a racist and stupid to boot!

Blacks did not elect President Obama. Women, educated people and a broad coalition of black, Hispanic, Asian and other non-white voters did. In the 2012 presidential election, Barak Obama received 64% of the vote from people who had some form of high school education; Romney received 35% of that vote. Obama received 49% to Romney’s 48% of the vote from people with some form of college education. Among voters with postgraduate education, Obama took 55% of the vote compared to Romney’s 42 percent. While Obama garnered 93% of the African-American vote, he also acquired a majority of votes in other minority groups – Hispanic (71%), Asian (73%) and other non-white voters (58%). Women of all racial categories chose Obama over Romney by a margin of 55 to 44 percent. While the black population’s vote certainly helped Obama win his election, it was women and educated voters that formed largest block of Obama’s winning coalition.

On the issue of black on black crime, let’s not ignore the similarly damning numbers for white on white crime. According to the 2012-2013 National Crime Victimization Survey released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 62.2 percent of violent crimes committed against black victims were committed by black assailants. During that same time period, 56.0 percent of violent crimes committed against white victims were committed by white assailants. If black on black crime numbers casts a shadow on America’s black population as a whole, then the same shadow sullies our white population, too.

Finally, there’s the state of black education in America to consider. The email writer’s claim that blacks in America are typically uneducated ignores the millions of African-Americans who graduate from high school and college every year and enter the workforce as valuable contributors to the betterment of our society. I could point out that America has a black President, a black Supreme Court justice and that close to 200 African-Americans have served in Congress over the years, but I doubt the email writer would see those as evidence of African-American educational accomplishment. No, what the email writer is really suggesting is that blacks are stupid by race, a belief originally perpetuated to justify the slave trade. Sadly, that belief has continued to find fertile ground among racists in America, even today. While it’s true that the achievements of African-Americans students as a whole trail their white counterparts, it’s also equally true that African-American students as a whole lack the same quality of educational opportunity that their white counterparts enjoy. It’s patently unfair to prevent a group of students from moving forward and them blame them when they fail to do so.

Now who’s the lying piece of crap?