The girl just can’t help it. Carroll Fife is so filled with hatred for White people, she plays the race card like a floozy working the floor of a Vegas strip joint. Tell her that a Black man did something wrong, and her reaction is swift, predictable and disgusting: “You’re a racist!”
This time, as you may have heard, it’s about that schmuck, Matthew Bernard, a Black man, who cut down 38 trees on his hilly property without obtaining permission from the city, as required by law. The City Council wanted to fine him, but Fife joined one or two others in preventing it from happening. Why? Does Fife hate trees as much as she hates White people? “I’m extremely confused,” she explained, “why a Black man should be the first to experience consequences for a thing White people have been doing for decades. The fact is, the hills was [sic] built up for White people, which nobody else had access to.”
Now, imagine that the tree killer was a White man. Imagine, further, that the tree killer was a White Jewish Republican man who flew the MAGA flag in his yard. Would Fife be defending him? You better believe Fife would be all over him with racist fury. She’d be leading the pitchfork crowd to tar and feather him and drive him out of town.
But no, Fife can never, ever criticize anyone Black for anything they do. Black murderers? They’re just misunderstood babies who were harmed by structural racism. Ditto Black muggers, robbers, thieves, rapists, gangbangers. Black homeless addicts? Deliberately shut out of the system by a racist, capitalist system. Black people who don’t pay their rent and get evicted? Victims of a brutal, for-profit real estate industry controlled by—yes--Whites. Black kids who get thrown out of school for unruly behavior? They’re picked on by racist teachers because of their skin color.
And on and on and on.
I think we all know what’s going on. Fife’s racism is a modern-day equivalent of the infamous Red Scare of the early Cold War, when hysterics like Joe McCarthy discovered Communists under every bed. McCarthy’s paranoia, coupled with his power as a U.S. Senator, put America through a very dark time, until he was exposed and drank himself to death.
In the same way, Fife spreads a White Fear: White people are dangerous threats to the Black Way of Life. White people cannot be trusted. White people plot and conspire constantly to keep Black people down. Anything that Black people do that is illegal must be interpreted empathically as them fighting back against 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow. If a Black person breaks the law, they must be excused because they are the victim, not the person they stole from or whose skull they broke in a mugging. Indeed, when Fife herself flagrantly broke the law by squatting in a house owned by someone else, she portrayed herself as a courageous heroine rising up against a vicious system of entrenched racism.
If paranoia was all Fife had, nobody would care: she would be just another ranting lunatic, probably homeless, drug-addicted and bipping cars at night. But sadly, Fife isn’t just another crackpot. She’s on the City Council, which gives her power. And while most of the rest of the City Council veers toward the moderate center—Zac Unger is a good example—Fife doubles down on her delusion, playing race cards, preventing much-needed change in Oakland, and allowing her district—where I live—to fall into a crime-ridden slum of homeless tents, shuttered shops and fentanyl freaks.
And speaking of tent slums, congratulations to the City Council members who passed Ken Houston’s new Encampment Abatement Policy. Long overdue, the policy was blocked for months by a few members like Fife, who considered it, yes, racist. “Fife…raised equity concerns, warning the policy could disproportionately impact communities of color…‘I can’t support legislation that is going to perpetuate racist policies that impact my people more than anybody,’” East Bay Insiders reported as saying.
Well, if Fife really wants to be known as the spokesperson for homeless addicts, that’s her problem. This is a woman who told me she never meets with White people, after I invited her out for tea. Someone might one day explain to Fife that she was elected to represent not “my people” but ALL people. But she’ll never learn, never moderate, never change. Stubborn as a mule, she’ll go to her Hereafter hating on White people.
I can never fathom why my neighbors in District 3 tolerate her. Are they stupid? Do they not perceive what she and her fellow wokes have done and are doing to us? Are they, like her, infected with the disease of racism, of hatred for White people, even though most of them are themselves White? Or are they simply dumb-ass examples of “liberals” who are anti-cop until they’re mugged or robbed? If that’s the case, then I hope every person who voted for Carroll Fife gets mugged or robbed soon. Sometimes it takes being clobbered to knock people into reality.
That’s it for this week! Have a wonderful, relaxed and peaceful weekend.
Steve Heimoff