"Osama bin-Laden is an Uncle Tom"
By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER
Recently on a San Diego radio station calypso singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, attacked President Bush comparing him to a slave master doing what slave masters do on the plantation. More importantly, he accused Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of being a "house slave" and as Belafonte said it went back in the day, "You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him. Colin Powell's committed to come into the house of the master. When Colin Powell dares to suggest something other than what the master wants to hear, he will be turned back out to pasture."
Just exactly what he was referring to no one knows. In interviews since then, Belafonte has danced around the issue and inevitably launches into a speech about civil rights and the immoral and decadent Bush Administration. He said "we're still living out the slave code," and said the great conference on racism in South Africa by the ever caring U.N. was an example of how the master deals with the slaves of this country.
Many dictator lovers, such as Jesse Jackson, criticized Bush for not attending this valueless event. I am sure the president had time to put aside the War on Terror, America's economic ills, and election year politics to sit for four days as leaders of some of the worst tyrannical regimes ever spoke about the evils of racism. I would guess that the Left just missed the fact that America's secretary of state was present at the conferences, but Powell was shouted at throughout his entire speech, meaning somebody got the word.
Here we had a black man representin' the most powerful nation on earth at a conference on racism and he was shouted down. The protesters did not care that Powell was announcing an increase of billions of dollars in international programs. In fact, I am not sure what they were protesting. Maybe, they were using Belafonte's logic and thought he was a run away slave. That moment of despicable behavior went largely unnoticed in the States, and probably was just as well.
Belafonte, I fear, has lost control of his senses. What sane man would see Bush as the "massa" to 33 million black people in the US, who, by the way, are still slaves serving on the Great Plantation of the United States?
If Powell ever ran for president, I believe his biggest critics would be the blacks on the Left who see him as a threat to their power. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) cares little about advancing all people of color. They only care about advancing liberal colored people and liberal political ideology. If the U.S. Congress was 100% white and 100% liberal, I trust the NAACP and Belafonte would consider it a victory.
In the presidential election of 2000 the NAACP ran ads showing chains clinking behind a truck and with a voice over by the daughter of James Byrd, who was dragged to his death in Texas by two white supremacists who are now on Death Row. The ad was hinting Bush was somehow culpable for the death.
Byrd's daughter stated that when Governor Bush refused to support a new hate crimes law it was like her father died all over again. Texas already had a hate crimes law, which was twice appealed to the Texas Supreme Court for being too broad. The all knowing political pundits laughed off Bush's comments in the debates when he said just that.
Since the media is hesitant to condemn those of color, those of color are free to say what ever thought or charge that comes to mind and avoid any questioning by the press. In 1998, political ads were run on black TV and radio stations saying, "When you don't vote, you let another church explode. When you don't vote, you allow another cross to burn. When you don't vote, you let another assault wound a brother or sister. When you don't vote, you let the Republicans continue to cut school lunches and Head Start."
Despite the fact that it indirectly links the Republican Party to church bombings, cross burnings, and felonious assaults one would think the fact that it directly links the Republican Party to starving kids and throwing them in the streets should have been enough to bring protests in the media over these ads. Only one network mentioned them before the elections were over, and not surprisingly it was Fox News.
The sad part of race in America is that most of those of color live under one party rule. A place were choice in an election is perceived to be between a Democrat and a RepubliKLAN. For the past 30 years the Republicans have given up on minority votes. In the areas where a major Republican effort is absent Democrats are free to portray Republicans as a hate filled, cocaine running party all in favor of renewed segregation.
Even with the fact that the Republican Party is nearly all white, some of the most important intellectual leaders of the conservative movement in America are of color. Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Ken Hamblin, David Almasi, Ward Connerly, and Dinesh D'Souza are all non-white leaders who are loved by the Right and despised by the Left. NAACP chairman Julian Bond has referred to black conservatives as "ventriloquist dummies" being bought off by the Republican Party. That is where Belafonte comes in.
According to Belafonte, Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condeleeza Rice are just short of race traitors; known to white American's as conservatives. When Rice was asked about Belafonte's comments she directly said, "I don't need Harry Belafonte to tell me what it means to be black." Touché.
On a recent Saturday Night Live skit, Tracy Morgan, portraying Harry Belafonte, took Belafonte's thinking a little further and articulated such quotes as, "Osama bin-Laden is an Uncle Tom," "Winston Churchill was a house slave," "Poodles are the black man of the dog world," and the soon to be classic: "Pokemon is a slave trader and Pikachu is a slave master."
If only Harry Belafonte himself had actually said these things people would not be scratching their heads and saying Uh? To most Americans, Bin-Laden being an Uncle Tom makes more sense than Powell being a house slave.
© The Michigan Times 2002
