SeanG Letter

Election of Bush Irks My Son’s Art Teacher

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is imported from my old blog [11-13-2006]

for inclusion in my .com’s posting (posted here February 2011)

(added some updates at the bottom)

INTRODUCTION

This paper is in response to a conversation about voting in my son’s VISUAL ARTS CLASS that climaxed with the teacher saying “that the only reason that President Bush won the 2000 election in Florida was that he had a brother as governor and that some votes were not counted.” (I am assuming that because the teacher mentioned the two together – that is, disenfranchisement and Governor Jeb Bush – that she believes in a conspiracy through all levels of the Florida government and Supreme Court to make sure that then Governor George W. Bush would win the election. This is the clear implication of what was said in the classroom.) The Military vote, point-in-fact, is the only provable vote that was withheld.

I wish to say here that any teacher has the right to own her or his opinion. We all have that right, you, me, anyone. However, one cannot own his or her own facts. And this is where the teacher may have crossed the line when she said (mind you I am going off what my son told me, as I was not there in the classroom at the time), “the only reason Bush won…”, you see, this goes beyond opinion within the realm of impressionable seventh-graders. Unchallenged in this environment, teachers in many classrooms in this valley and elsewhere get away with bringing a point of view that is unfounded by the facts of a reasonable investigation of “what did happen” in Florida. It isn’t nearly as infamous as the teacher put it.

I will use a partial excerpt from a paper I wrote to my son’s sixth-grade computer teacher (who was really a parent volunteer). Obviously this incomplete outlook on the election is widespread enough for me to respond to it almost every year since. I will explain some of the reasoning behind this apparent acceptance of something so easily explained away once the panorama of facts about the Florida recount are brought together rather than isolated, such as in Fahrenheit 911.

RECOUNT ~ THE SKINNY

Eight counties were recounting ballots in Florida. All eight counties were using different standards to determine which ballots were to be allocated to Gore and which were to be allocated to Bush. First and foremost, all eight counties were Democratic counties, they had Democrats who were in charge of that counties election, and democrats devised the ballots themselves years before. Republicans were in the minority in these districts. This is rarely addressed. This aside, what would have been the outcome if the counts were allowed to continue? I want to answer this with an example (used in a prior letter to a teacher) from a poli-sci class I took at C.O.C.:

… last week I went to visit the professor at C.O.C. to give him a paper I wrote for his amusement, when I walked in the classroom the students were discussing the fact that President Bush went before the 911 Commission with Dick Cheney, one girl asked if Cheney had to hold Bush’s hand – sarcastically of course. Another student mentioned that Bush was not under oath or in a public setting for his hearing. I asked to interject; the professor gave me the green light, so I mentioned that President Clinton was not under oath, nor was his hearing public, and that he took along Bruce Lindsey and Sandy Burger. I then turned to the girl and asked if Bruce had one hand while Sandy had the other – sarcastically of course. Laughs abounded again.

Another student blurted out that Bush stole the election in the Florida debacle – so called. I responded simply to him that the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and four Florida newspapers: the Orlando Sentinel, the Palm Beach Post, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the St. Petersburg Times all recounted the votes multiple times, and each time Bush came out the winner. (In fact, they recounted the votes for the entire state eight-times and Bush won all eight-times. They did it eight-times so they could try each of the different counting “techniques” that each of the eight counties were using in their recounting efforts due to Gore bringing the matter into our courts.)[1] This is not including the military vote that Gore successfully withheld a part of, which would have even widened Bush’s lead considerably. This student had never heard a good response to this objection that he had been blurting out for four years to conservative classmates, friends and family…

This answers one aspect of the problem in regards to what would have happened. However, I want to explain why Florida was so “close.” I have a documentary that shows the actual graphics displayed by ABC, NBC, etc, during the original counting of the Florida ballots, what did their numbers show? At no time during the entire period of ballot counting in Florida was Bush ever behind in actual hard votes cast! One vote tally showed a 100,000-vote lead, another showed 150,000 lead prior to its drop.

TIME ZONES

The real problem lies in Florida being in two time zones. So when the polls closed in the eastern side of the state, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and the like (except FOXNews), all said the polls had closed in Florida. Then CBS called Florida for Gore even though the hard tally count said otherwise, the other media moguls followed. The voters in the western part of Florida turned away from the polls in droves.

These voters who were told that Florida had already been called for Gore, and that the polls were closed, lived in a part of the state that is predominately Republican. Three groups did separate investigations into what type of voters decided not to go to the polls. All three came to the separate conclusion that anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 Republican votes over the “disparaged” total [which included voters from both parties] were lost to this miscall by the media. So, if one were to add the military vote kept out by Gore and the lost votes from the western part of Florida, the gap in Bush’s lead would have been beyond the state recount minimum.

In fact, no news organization put Florida back into Bush’s column until after the polls closed across the country. The media outlets up to this point all mentioned that without Florida, Bush would lose the election, even FOX. The amount of Republicans deciding it useless to go to the polls in other time zones has not been calculated. I believe, though, it would mirror the three separate organizations that tallied western Florida’s disparaged voters, but on a grander scale. In fact, I believe that the popular vote would also be in Bush’s hands in 2000 if the media had not so egregiously miscalled the state of Florida. (Keep in mind this is my “opinion” based on the voters reactions, both Democratic and Republican, tallied by scientific means from three organizations investigations in western Florida. You see, this is opinion based on logic and science, not un-founded paranoia and suppositions alluded to by my son’s teacher.)

Again, though, even with all the above put aside, Bush won all the recounts, and the New York Times simply states that if the recount was allowed to continue by the U. S. Supreme Court that Bush would have been the clear winner.

WHY THE BAD CALL?

Part of the miscall in the 2000 election can be tied directly to the early miscall in the 2004 election, in way of example. “Exit Polling” is the main culprit in this aspect of the problem. MSNBC and FOXNews had computer models of who was winning this time around that included the Exit Polling information. This skewed the election as going strongly to John Kerry. In fact, Kerry was gearing his thinking to a win. However, when MSNBC, FOXNews, ABC, CBS, and the like, dropped the Exit Polling info from their computer models half-way through the day, Bush surged about 5-percentage points.

These statistics were even worse during the 2000 election, allowing for the early and thus incorrect call for Florida. Let me state once again unequivocally, in the hard tallying of actual votes minus Exit Polling data, both in the 2004 election as a whole, and specifically in the 2000 debacle, Bush was never behind in the count.

5 TO 4, OR 7 TO 9

Some are under the impression that the U.S. Supreme Court was split on the final decision along party divisions that had the five “conservative” Judges voting along demagogic lines for Bush, and the four “liberal” Judges for Gore. This is in fact untrue. On the heart of the case (that is, equal protection for the voter as well as for Bush and Gore) the U.S. Supreme Court was almost unanimous. A seven/two split! The most liberal Supreme Court Judge agreeing that the eight differing standards in what is and is not acceptable for a Gore/Bush ballot allocation shouldn’t be allowed to continue.

These seven Judges took into consideration the Constitutional aspects of the problem, as well as the Florida Constitution’s limitations to time in regards to a recount. All seven agreed that there was insufficient time to bring a fair and homologous procedure to all these eight (and possibly more) counties.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

So why all the “hub bub, bub?” Partisan politics, period! I can speak from experience, using in fact, an example from my own past. When Clinton became president, there were documentaries released by the “right” that had all kinds of conspiracy theories as to all the “misdealings” within the history of the Clintons political road to the Whitehouse. The most popular of them being The Clinton Chronicles. This montage of clippings, newspaper headlines, testimonies, and video shown in this documentary is quite convincing at first glance. And I was convinced. However, as I am one to poke and prod (which is why my home library has ballooned to over 3,000 books and hundreds of video/DVD documentaries), the conspiracies revolving around the Clintons have been shown quite baseless. What are, if any, the equivalent to the Clinton based documentaries? Michael Moore!

FAHRENHEIT 911

While space here is limited to the subject at hand, that is, the Florida recount, I am open to discussion about any “fact” thought to be authoritative that was presented in any of Moore’s documentaries.[2]

Near the beginning of Fahrenheit 911 we are shown a newspaper headline that states Gore won one of the recounts in Florida. Yes, an actual photo of a newspaper headline, or so we are led to believe. What isn’t shown is the original article. In fact, this wasn’t an article at all!

What it was, was a letter to the editor from a reader of a newspaper who wrote in responding to the recounts all going Bush’s way. This person was a private citizen whose letter was placed in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the opinion part of the newspaper. What Moore did was take this column-and-a-half letter to the editor, expand and enlarge the headline to stretch across the entire top of the “page,” even going so far as changing the font, and then spreading out and enlarging the letter portion to more columns, thus making it look like a newspaper headline. In other words, Michael Moore used deception to tweak information to legitimize his view that Gore won the election. Which ALL investigations have shown to be false.

And I do mean all. For instance, all the examples of people being stopped from voting by force in Florida have proven vacuous. One example:

POLICE ROADBLOCKS

One story still mentioned by partisans today, and mentioned by Moore is that of a roadblock by police officers stopping black voters from making it to the polls. When a civil rights group went down to Florida and held hearings on this (and other) matter[s], they found that there was a robbery nearby, and the police were setting up a perimeter to catch the suspect.

In fact, the possible[3] irony of all this is that most likely, taking into consideration the racial population in the area where this crime was committed, and that a disproportionate number of crimes committed by said racial group that populates this area of Florida all point to the disenfranchisement of these minority voters by a fellow minority resident. Irony at its best… if proven true that is.

TO CONCLUDE

So the point of this long, drawn-out response to a statement made as a fact in my son’s seventh-grade Visual Arts class, is this:

When statements like these are made as de-facto-truth – de-facto because when the teacher is in a position of authority over these malleable young minds and are given the benefit of the doubt by the students thinking that these adults have researched what they state as fact within the realm of the classroom in a fashion deserving that of an adult mind – when in fact they are easily dismissed as “other-than,” then we as parents must not allow such misstatements to be made without challenge.

The matter of who won the Florida recount has been put to rest, almost four years ago. Partisan politics keeps it alive however. And to engender students to look upon their President, no matter what political affiliation that President finds himself or herself to be aligned with, with suspicion is a serious matter. This is not the place for a teacher to steer their students towards unfounded opinions based on unsupported suspicions that would cause or call into question the respect due a President in the classroom setting.

While a parent has the right to engender whatever they wish with their own children, the teacher must be diligent to keep such misgivings about such matters to themselves and their own children, teachers lounge, or wherever such opinions are relevant or warranted. I am not angered by such an opinion stated within the classroom, in fact, I have come to expect it. I only wish that the teacher[s] understand that when they speak on such matters, that they do so in a manner that engenders our sons and daughters understanding of government, rather than the political opinions of said teacher[s].

I hope to hear back from the school on this matter. I also invite those teachers on the Heart Team who enjoy political discussion as much as I do to feel free to open up lines of communication with me. I don’t bite. Sometimes within the limited time people have and the demographic they find themselves in, their opinions are passed unchallenged or without taking into consideration another point of view. I understand this.

“Thank You! ~ Much Thought, Sean G”

Thank you for you patience in reading this parent’s rebuttal and concern about something said in the classroom. I hope this letter will engender positive discussion among the teachers on my son’s team, and a greater understanding of an excitable topic.

Footnotes

[1] In fact, there is no newspaper headline in the entire United States that showed Gore ahead in any of the recounts. I will deal with the only headline produced that showed gore ahead, it can be found in Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 911.

[2] My e-mail address is at the top of the page. I will discuss these matters as I have here: in a calm, logical manner that takes the sociological extremisms (e.g., The Clinton Chronicles on one side versus Fahrenheit 911 on the other) from both sides into consideration. For instance: in a recent poll, 29% of Democrats polled believe Bush stole the 2004 election. No evidence of foul play, just paranoia that any sociologist could do a doctoral thesis on.

[3] I am only guessing here and do not know all the parameters of the case – more of a thought experiment.

UPDATES

This first addendum comes from NEWSBUSTERS: (May 2008)

….The lead of an April 4, 2001 USA Today story headlined, “Newspapers’ recount shows Bush prevailed,” by reporter Dennis Cauchon:

George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes, a USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study shows. The study is the first comprehensive review of the 61,195 “undervote” ballots that were at the center of Florida’s disputed presidential election….

That look was followed in November by an analysis by a consortium of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN and AP. It determined that George W. Bush still would have won under either legally possible recount scenario which could have occurred: The Florida Supreme Court ordered recount of undervotes statewide or Gore’s request for a recount in certain counties. The New York Times led its November 12, 2001 front page article, “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote,” by reporters Ford Fessenden and John M. Broder:

A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year’s presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations….

This from PBS NEWS HOUR (April 2001):

In the first full study of Florida’s ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled “undervotes” — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted.

The study, conducted by the accounting firm of BDO Seidman, counted over 60,000 votes in Florida’s 67 counties, tabulating separate vote totals in several standards categories.

While the USA Today report focused on what would have happened had the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount not been halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Herald pointed to one scenario under which Gore could have scored a narrow victory — a fresh recount in all counties using the most generous standards.

In their reports, the newspapers assumed counts already completed when the court-ordered recount was stopped would have been included in any official count. Thus, they allowed numbers from seven counties — Palm Beach, Volusia, Broward, Hamilton, Manatee, Escambia and Madison — to stand, but applied the most inclusive standards to votes in the rest of the state. If those numbers did not stand, the Herald reported, a more generous hypothetical revisited recount would have scored the White House for Gore — but with only a 393-vote margin.

Under most other scenarios, the papers reported, Bush would have retained his lead…..

HEH, here is a VERY recent update via PJ-MEDIA (August 2017):

Al Gore told Bill Maher on his HBO “Real Time” show that he thinks he carried Florida in the 2000 election.

Gore also believes that rising temperatures will doom mankind to extinction unless we revert economically to the Middle Ages. Which ignorant belief is dumber?

[…..]

Anyone not named Al Gore (or apparently, Bill Maher) knows that two independent studies by media organizations proved that Bush won the 2000 race in Florida and hence, the election.

The most comprehensive review was done by a consortium of media companies, including:

  • The [New York]Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Tribune Company, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, The St. Petersburg Times, The Palm Beach Post and CNN. The group hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in January to examine the ballots.

The consortium examined the 43,000 ballots that remained to be counted when the Supreme Court stopped the process. They determined:

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.

Another media group headed up by USA Today and the Miami Herald also conducted an extensive study and came to the same conclusion:

A USA Today/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder study after the election concluded in May 2001 that Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots, called “hanging chads,” if a standard advocated by Gore had been used.

“Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes,” the study concluded.

But liberals hate it if they’re not being seen as suffering under the yoke of oppression. The election was stolen! Gore should have been president!

We’re seeing the exact same effort to delegitimize Trump. Hillary didn’t lose the election. Trump colluded with the Russians and stole it! Outrage! Call for a special counsel. Start the impeachment!

Democrats never change…..

“Racism” Invoked in the Classroom

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is the viewable or downloadable version of the letter replicated below in PDF FORM

This is a quick intro [in the green box] of this long letter I sent to both the principle and the teacher. (Other letters went to students in sealed envelopes to give to their parents.)

This is in response to a Saugus teacher verbally announcing that a position taken by my son, or by multiple people in the classroom (which included my son), was racist. This is my response.

A quick note from a concerned parent,

During conversation on hot topic issues, which I do not mind in the least, the conversation of immigration came up in the classroom. I wish to address this particular point of the interaction between my son and the teacher, not to bemoan the teacher — although this is worthy of it — but to inspire more fruitful response in the future and better class management.

Firstly, before the “operation” (often which are painful), I wish to administer some anesthesia.

I realize first and foremost that the teacher (in the broad sense) is only human, and may have some days that are not “on the mark” and others where they have had a day “gone perfectly.” Life in and outside the classroom can be demanding. Mistakes will be made and there should be understanding in regards to this. I expect missteps from the people that work for me, and I expect I will misstep in my duties at my job. The challenge is — of course — to learn from them.

Likewise, when a seventeen-year-old talks about immigration, it is a subject they most likely know little about, and in-between homework, XBOX, and eating/sleeping, and friendships as well as family events, this 17-year old may pick up bits and pieces of his older brother and I talking about these macro issues. And in his adolescent mind latch onto (wrongly or rightly) a portion and “run with it,” mischaracterizing the issue. It happens with 17-year olds. (I do wish to note that I realize my son can be strongly argumentative, and taking a position strongly with the barest of knowledge. I acknowledge this and only wish the best for the teachers that encounter this aspect of my son. I tell him often he should become a lawyer.)

So when his brother and I discuss, say, that Hispanic/Latino groups who themselves stand against illegal immigration and write about the deleterious effects on their pay rate and the lowered standard of living they face by illegal immigration by standing in line and following all the rules in order to get into this great nation to better their lives and their families lives. My youngest son may have heard his brother and I talk about past immigrants (an older generation) who tell stories about how they or their parents came to the country not being able to speak a lick of English but teaching themselves quickly in order to succeed in the country. They speak of not being able to read in their native tongue and so “forced” to enculturate[1] themselves into the American culture, which is summed up on our coins, ” E Pluribus Unum.” Roughly,” out of many, one.”

Now, I am sure my youngest son would agree with the above positions. But I have a feeling he latched onto the part about listening to immigrants themselves talk about this generation of immigrants talking about how by learning the English language and all the interactions it took to do so, they were enculturated. You know, maybe we should take a break here and I will share my interpretation a bit about that word, “encuturate,” by me sharing some definitions offered in my seminary classes, taken from a paper or two I wrote. Bear with me a bit… I only write this much for clarity’s sake.

a. – Cultural Anthropology in “missionology” is very important to understand. One author hints at a definition when he says it is “attention to systems of ideas and symbols”,[2] it helps the missionary to “understand the purposes of and differences in the various cultures of the world”[3] in assisting the missionary in understand what the process of cultural differences is about. This process or study of culture is what is called “cultural anthropology.”[4]  A refusal to implement this cross-cultural study can cause a failure in the Gospel being communicated successfully by trying to impose one’s own culture on another culture.[5]

[….]

Enculturation “is the process whereby an established culture teaches an individual by repetition its accepted norms and values, so that the individual can become an accepted member of the society and find his or her suitable role. Most importantly, it establishes a context of boundaries and correctness that dictates what is and is not permissible within that society’s framework.”  This is the best definition I have found yet.[6]

[….]

Acculturation is key for the missionary to approach a different culture “as a child”[7] in order to learn (become accultured) become accepted by the culture the missionary has gone to.

[….]

In the West not self-disclosing parts of your inner-self seems unhealthy.  But some cultures do not view self-disclosure as all that healthy.  The missionary needs to be able to respond to these differences and understand them.  Also, self-disclosure is usually precipitated by friendship, not weekly meetings.

self-disclosure n. the act of revealing information about one’s self, especially one’s PRIVATE SELF, to other people. In psychotherapy, the revelation and expression by the client of personal, innermost feelings, fantasies, experiences, and aspirations is believed by many to be a requisite for therapeutic change and personal growth. In addition, pertinent revelation by the therapist of his or her personal details to the client can—if used with discretion—be a valuable tool to increase rapport and earn the trust of the client.[8]

[….]

“A bicultural approach simply extends the range of potential situations that can serve as behavior settings for the target skills being taught.”[9]  The idea of the “bridge” is the ability of the missionary to somewhat leave his first culture to be able to communicate well in the second culture.  It is a “set of relationships between people from two culture[s]… [making in a sense] a new culture.”[10]  Mainly it is setting up a community through relationships where the mature missionary can connect on a cultural level.

So you can see, for conversation sake, that I know a bit more about cultural differences and similarities and how to merge the two into a working society than many parents (maybe) from Saugus. This is not to toot my horn, but as we transition to the tougher topics, I wanted you both (or whomever is reading this) to understand a bit of where I come from.

Okay, “they were enculturated,” picking back up where we left off. These same people with personal stories from their parents or themselves, talked about how they were forced into our culture. Nowadays, with emphasis on “from many, many” (“E pluribus, pluribus,” celebrating every cultural difference and teaching a distorted view of multi-culturalism [I have taken some accelerated courses for a master’s in education for a friend, I know that which I speak]) we find Classrooms geared towards the native tongue, ballots and signs and other ways of communicating in the native languages of the peoples homeland that slow this enculturation process down. You have now, for instance, a whole generation that both a) cannot speak in our cultures tongue, or b) they do not feel the need to. This is sad. This is a “value” of Europe,” and not ours, historically speaking. Ballots, road signs, and more were always in English, and in order to vote well one had to learn the language which also thrust the new voter into the culture of America. He took that or another topic and in a small sound-bite in a classroom environment probably did not express what he believed well.

Or discussions in our home of the very provable impact on the health system from this very large population that raises health costs and options on legal immigrants and their families.

Now, as I discuss these issues with my boys, I realize that they will take away from these brief interactions aspects that they either misunderstood, miss-emphasized, and the like. Even though I may have clearly annunciated my viewpoint, these are still young minds I am dealing with. Whatever the conversation in the classroom is that stems from the home environment, know that a young person will probably not explain it as well as I would or the teacher might, or the student wished he had.

Which brings me to my main issue. As a teacher, after having such a conversation where kids may have not presented what they thought or have learned from home well (again: XBOX, eating, sleeping homework, friends, and the like), they should not hear from their teacher that these positions are racist. Even in jest. BECAUSE, being that a classroom is full of these “muddled” minds, some may take this as a queue from their teacher that someone in the classroom IS racist or holds to racist positions. Again, because of our recent political election and how the word is thrown around in common vernacular, let us look into what this word means. And it is interesting because I just received a review copy of the book from North Carolina University Press, Chapill Hill, the book, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This book, among the many others I have read over the years, goes to great lengths to properly define racism. A word too often thrown around.

  • Webster’s says this: a. belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

So we see that Webster’s main definition (and the one’s that follow) are based on a belief in a genetic superiority of one ethnicity (falsely called race) over another. A more in-depth definition comes from Safire’s Political Dictionary, and reads (in-part):

racism Originally, an assumption that an individual’s abilities and potential were determined by his biological race, and that some races were inherently superior to oth­ers; now, a political-diplomatic accusation of harboring or practicing such theories.

“This word [racism],” wrote Harvard Pro­fessor J. Anton De Haas in November 1938, “has come into use the last six months, both in Europe and this country… Since so much has been said about conflicting isms, it is only natural that a form was chosen which sug­gested some kind of undesirable character.” In fact, racism came into use two years ear­lier, in his 1936 book The Coming American Fascism, Lawrence Dennis wrote, “If … it be assumed that one of our values should be a type of racism which excludes certain races from citizenship, then the plan of execution should provide for the annihilation, deporta­tion, or sterilization of the excluded races.”

Racism, a shortening of racialism, was at first directed against Jews. In the nine­teenth century, anti-Semites who foresaw a secular age in which religion might not be such a popular rallying force against Jews put forward the idea of Jewishness being less a religion than a race. Adolf Hitler, with his “master race” ideology, turned theory into savage practice….

Note also that the above started to get into what Hitler thought. Evolutionary thinking at the time was that mankind evolved in three separate groups, in differing local on our planet. The Caucasoid, the Negroid, and the Mongoloid “races.” This teaching (espoused from higher learning to high-schools) went a long way in fortifying this thinking:

“The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature.  Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law [natural selection] did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all….  If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.”[11]

I think a better word to use (but I do not even think this word applicable to the conversation), since very few today are racists — i.e., believe in the genetic superiority of one race over another — would be “prejudice.”

  • which Webster’s defines as:  an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.

Now, my son has heard the mainstream meaning and response to our immigration issue from me, from immigrants, and from conservative leaders like Marco Rubio. But these are only in passing. So, while he may even have seemed prejudiced in his repeating of what he latched onto (rightly or wrongly), he was merely being a teenager. As such, should get the grace and understanding that is involved in being such. Maybe even a verbal reinforcement that they may not be addressing the issue as well as they would wish, leading to good in class management.

[SIDE-NOTE: even if presented with a truly racist event in the classroom, much like certain t-shirts not being allowed on campus do to the inflammatory nature that can cause young people to react to it emotionally… so to is it the teachers responsibility to diffuse the situation so that outside the classroom there is less of a chance that issues will be dealt with by young, emotionally driven persons versus reasoning adults. In this case I think the opposite happened.]

Being a person of faith, I will share my personal beliefs and history to make clear my position before going further. I was born and raised in Detroit. the neighborhood I grew up in was almost all black. I was the proverbial “white friend.” All my friends and buddies were black. I have a black grandmother and (obviously then) cousins and the like. So my background is full of people I love from a differing ethnicity.

Also, my theology informs me as well.

In Numbers, chapter 12, we read about Moses marrying a “Cushite” woman (Cushite’s were the early tribal members that founded Ethiopia). So a Hebrew was marrying an Ethiopian. Miriam, Moses sister, spoke out against this interracial marriage and she was struck with a form of disease that turned her skin “ashen.” God only took that curse away till she repented of her sin and recognized what God had already blessed.

I would also be called a “fundamentalist,” in that my personal belief is of a young age of the earth. Now, you may not agree with this position, that is more than understandable. But holding to a position one agrees with or disagrees with does not say anything about whether or not such a position has in it positive or negative societal aspects. So, for instance, what is not often realized about “young earthers” by those who do not study worldviews is that we hold to an aspect of mankind that is the least racial. In other words, the Bible says in Acts 17:26 states: “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” We view Genesis and the Hebrew word for “clay” that God used to make man from to mean “red earth” (literally, “red clay” in the Hebrew), which supports the many creations stories from all over the world that mentions the first man and woman being “red” in color. And that much like the genetics in eye-color, the genes turning on and off our cells that produce color/melatonin give us our small differences. Fundamentalists believe that over time culture and familiarity caused people to seek after “like minded” [culture] or “looking” [familiarity] persons. And that as we [mankind] traveled this globe, environment dictated places where one could survive and others not (darker ethnicities by the equator, lighter away from).

So, while I am sure some scoff at the “fundamentalist” ideals I hold to, and talk over with my kids, You can see that from my history and faith I would be the least racial (as well as my kids) in a situation that required a teacher to say “that is enough of the racist comments” in class, after my son struggled to make his point.

Now we enter into an example of a modern day racist to make the point (a non-important point really, but one I feel needs to be hashed out). This is from a recent conversation challenging the use of the word “racist” in dialogue with friends and family in this very political environment. This was in response to a friend saying Karl Rove was racist. And while he [Rove] is not part of the conversation, my response is… because if the teacher is a Democrat that has very liberal biases and see’s her classroom as a place to express these views, then she needs to answer me about the following…

… and let me say something. I have lived a full life, from a drop-out from Bowman Nights at Saugus, to a three-time felon, to a father and husband to a degreed “theologian.” I have accumulated over 5,000 books in my home library, have written a book, and have passions in regards to comparative religious views and philosophies (current and past). I study history, science, philosophy, economics, current affairs, political science, theology, education, world religions, cults and the occult, and more.

I hate racism, and talk to people a lot about changing their life from this muddled thinking to one that is on a firm foundation. What is below should scare the normal individual who would surely be the harbinger of such warnings if a Republican held to these beliefs (as would I). But if one dismisses the following, then that merely speaks to his or her dogmatic views viewed through their rose colored lenses.

[…..]

… our current President went to a church for twenty years that sold anti-Semitic/racist sermons in their bookstore by Louise Farrakhan during the entire time he attended. Farrakhan believes in the genetic superiority of the black race over others. They put him [Farrakhan] on the cover of the church’s magazine (that is mailed to about 20,000 people’s homes) three times and invited him INTO church to award him a “lifetime achievement award.” A man who teaches that the white man was created 6,600 years ago on the Island of Cyprus, thus bringing all evil into the world (via the white man).

Side-Note: They also put on the cover once Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam… who said:

 “…they are a prey in the hands of the white race, the world’s archdeceivers (the real devils in person). You are made to believe that you worship the true God, but you do not! God is unknown to you in that which the white race teaches you (a mystery God). The great archdeceivers (the white race) were taught by their father, Yakub, 6,000 years ago, how to teach that God is a spirit (spook) and not a man. In the grafting of his people (the white race), Mr. Yakub taught his people to contend with us over the reality of God by asking us of the whereabouts of that first One (God) who created the heavens and the earth, and that, Yakub said, we cannot do.”

Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman In America, p. 9

In that same bookstore books like this were sold for the entirety of Obama’s membership. This author in another book wrote this:

  • “White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality.” quoted from James Cone’s book, A Black Theology of Liberation, page 64.

This is eerily similar to Hitlers own writing:

  • “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” ~ Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf

This author was regularly pushed by Reverend Wright (who himself was a former Nation of Islam minister) on TV appearances, like this one: YOUTUBE (link set to start at main-point)

Pictures of Michelle Obama hanging out with Farrakhan’s wife, also a racist anti-Semite.

Not to mention that recently “A former top deputy to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan tells Newsmax that Barack Obama’s ties to the black nationalist movement in Chicago run deep, and that for many years the two men have had “an open line between them” to discuss policy and strategy, either directly or through intermediaries.”

Yet you feel it necessary to forgo the righteous indignation of these facts and say that (out of the blue) Rove is racist? Why is he? Did he attend a racist church for twenty years? If Bush attended a church like that (with roles reversed, inviting in “David Dukes” for awards and the like — Christian Identity teaches that the Jew was created when Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden… having sexual relations with the serpent [the Devil] and birthing out the “evil” Jews… not too dissimilar to Obama’s buddy), heck, I would lock arms with you on getting this guy out of office, assuming the media would even allow him into office in the first place.

Apply to your side what you would expect others to apply to theirs.

Thank you for your time and patience, SeanG

FOOTNOTES

[1] A definition for conversational clarity is coming up.

[2] Paul G. Hierbert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1985), 21.

[3] Ray Arnold, The Missionary In Culture (Tacoma, WA: Faith Seminary Publishing House, 1995), 2.

[4] Idid.

[5] Ralph D. Winter & Steven C. Hawthorn, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader (Pasedena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981) 517.

[6] WIKIPEDIA (last accessed 7-18-08), cf., enculturation.

[7] Ray Arnold, The Missionary In Culture (Tacoma, WA: Faith Seminary Publishing House, 1995), 6.

[8] Gary R. VandenBos, ed., APA Dictionary of Psychology (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007), cf. self-disclosure, 829.

[9] Adrian Furnham & Stephen Bochner, Culture Shock: Psychological Reactions to Unfamiliar Environments (New York, NY: Methuen & Co., 1986), 240-241.

[10] Ralph D. Winter & Steven C. Hawthorn, eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader (Pasedena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981) 381.

[11] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, translator/annotator, James Murphy [New York: Hurst and Blackett, 1942], pp. 161-162.

BONUS MATERIALS

An important documentary about this in higher education can be found here on this very same topic:

IndoctrinateU (makes a great present):