In his marvelous new book, A Promised Land, Barack Obama wrote these words about running for President in 2008: “I knew…I needed to embrace white people as allies rather than impediments to change, and to couch the African American struggle in terms of a broader struggle for a fair, just and generous society.”
Obama understood that dividing Americans by race and ethnicity, and pitting them against one another, was neither a path toward reaching that goal, nor a winning one for a presidential aspirant. He realized “that too much focus on civil rights, police misconduct, or other issues considered specific to Black people risked triggering suspicion, if not a backlash, from the broader electorate.” This was a large part of why White Americans, including me, voted in such overwhelming numbers for Obama. We saw no demagoguery in him, just a fine man who “could transcend the old logic, that we could rally a working majority around a progressive agenda.”
How different things have become today. We have individuals such as Cat Brooks turning off vast numbers of well-meaning White voters by incessantly trying to create racial animosity between groups, and by harping on—yes--alleged “police misconduct.” We have news outlets, such as the San Francisco Chronicle and their race columnist, Justin Phillips, who insult White readers every time they capitalize the word “Black” but refuse to do so with the word “white.” They constantly allege that White people are racists and “white supremacists.” We see the natural backlash these ignorant voices foment. White people who don’t have a racist bone in their bodies are turned off by these smears. And we yearn for a politician like Barack Obama, who can unite us with sweet reason.
Imagine a Black activist embracing “White people as allies”! But instead, the far left gives us Ms. Brooks (and her proteges, like Phillips and Carroll Fife), with their endless grievances and accusations against White people. “White privilege” is one of Brooks’ poisonous spears. Everything wrong with America, she alleges, is because of “White supremacy”and “White violence against our bodies…”. And “Marginalized communities…are under attack by white supremacy.” She speaks of “This idea of preserving the master race through violence has always been a part of America.” Not a word about who is really committing all this violence against Black people, or who is really attacking marginalized communities: Black men.
What crap. Can you imagine Obama saying such inflammatory, paranoid and divisive things? That’s why Barack Obama was elected twice to the Presidency while Cat Brooks has lost every political contest she ever entered. Even for the leftwing voters of Oakland, Brooks is wack.
For Brooks, White people are an impediment to change—in fact, we’re the impediment. Why shouldn’t White people be concerned that, if Brooks and her cohorts were to take power, our lives would suffer? With the hatred she routinely stirs up among unbalanced people who are already prone to anger, she is the “progressive” equivalent of the White nationalists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. She can’t see that, because she’s so blinded by her own anger and blinkered ideology. But the rest of us see it clearly: Cat Brooks is the MAGA of the Left.
Obama, too, sees this clearly. He made national headlines the other day with his “buzzkill” tweet, in which he slammed wokeness and the stunted political correctness that the far Left routinely demands of Americans. When you think about it, Justin Phillips and Cat Brooks are precisely the kind of propagandists who are “triggering suspicion, if not a backlash, from the broader electorate” with their strident complaints about police misconduct, civil rights and the sins of White people. Americans are ready to move on from the race wars—only some people who are making a lot of money by stirring up racial resentment won’t go quietly.
Steve Heimoff