Karl D. writes:

Back in 1977 when I was a boy, I remember my family and I watched the mini-series “Roots” based on Alex Haley’s book. I recall liking it very much and being quite moved by the story and its characters. It appears that it is now being re-made for an early 21st-century audience, which makes me think it will be extra brutal and make whites by extension look extra sadistic. Obviously the Hollywood crowd couldn’t know about Baltimore or Ferguson (well, maybe Ferguson) before putting this in the works. But it really makes me wonder if they are really trying to kick off a race war.

Since Obama has been in office there seems to be one film after the other about the cruelty of whites and the perpetual victimhood of blacks. Off the top of my head I can name several. The Help, Django (which was more a black revenge film), 12 Years a Slave, Mandela, Selma. I won’t even get into television shows which do the same thing. Yes, some of these films are based on historical events. But it is the endless beating of the breast and shoving this stuff down the public’s throat that is unnerving. I really do wonder if these are being made out of liberal white guilt or to whip up trouble and violence? If one didn’t know better you would think this was being done by the propaganda arm of a foreign hostile power!

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Pete F. writes:

Re: “Since Obama has been in office there seems to be one film after the other about the cruelty of whites and the perpetual victimhood of blacks. Off the top of my head I can name several. The Help, Django (which was more a black revenge film), 12 Years a Slave, Mandela, Selma. I won’t even get into television shows which do the same thing. Yes, some of these films are based on historical events. But it is the endless beating of the breast and shoving this stuff down the public’s throat that is unnerving.”

“Unnerving”? It is intended to be. Have you ever asked yourself why do we (as a nation and culture) devote an entire month to black history? What is the real purpose of “Black History Month”? Apologists for the cultural left (Republicans and Democrats alike) would have us believe that its purpose is entirely-benign – i.e., education, inclusion, diversity of thought, the elevation of a people whose history has in the past been neglected, etc. – the standard rationale offered up by the left for so many of its initiatives and programs. The real purpose of “Black History Month” isn’t racial healing or education; instead, it is to keep the grievances and resentments of black people (and their supporters, whatever their race) simmering and ready at a moment’s notice to come to a boil in places like Ferguson and Baltimore.

There is a vast and profitable racket based upon the narrative that black folks are victims of white oppression – and the continued success/profitability of the racial grievance industry depends on keeping blacks not only angry, but feeling alienated from mainstream culture to the extent possible. Booker T. Washington, himself a black man, foresaw this over a century ago when he said,

“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well.”

Films like “Django Unchained,” “12 Years a Slave,” and similar efforts serve the same cultural/political agenda as “Black History Month” – they serve to keep black folks resentful and also to keep white liberals feeling guilty and therefore more compliant to race-based political and monetary demands made upon them.

Of course, one of the most-interesting  and disturbing aspects of the whole phenomenon is that present-day blacks are angry about injustices committed not against them, but acts which may (or may not) have been committed against their ancestors. Whites and others who aren’t black are expected to feel guilt for acts they did not even commit. Inherited anger and/or guilt for acts in which one did not even participate is obviously a logical fallacy, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the race-hustlers and their enablers. Over the last half-century, the nation has spent billions in taxpayer funds on redressing racial grievances and blacks – as a demographic cohort – have been the beneficiaries of a vast menu of privileges and special programs available to no one else. None of this seems to have mattered – race-relations are at an very low ebb, and militant blacks are angrier than ever.

Those black people who have exploited their opportunities and worked hard to built lives of worth and substance – enjoy a level of privilege, freedom and wealth that their forbearers could not imagine. Even “disadvantaged” inhabitants of the ghetto have automobiles, big-screen TVs, cell phones and many of the other appurtenances of modern life. This success – albeit one which does not include all people – explains why the left and the racial grievance industry are constantly searching for and/or inventing new forms of racial transgressions and sins – and why many of these “crimes” seem more and more ridiculous. Blacks already enjoy full civil rights under the law – which is why the leftists need an ever-more-powerful microscope to uncover the imperfections.

Re: “I really do wonder if these are being made out of liberal white guilt or to whip up trouble and violence? If one didn’t know better you would think this was being done by the propaganda arm of a foreign hostile power!”

Although he has U.S. citizenship, there is virtually nothing about Barack Obama which is authentically American in the traditional sense of the word. In other words, we can state that, de jure, Obama is an American – but de facto, he is not. The carefully-sculpted public relations narrative and political propaganda which propelled him into office mentioned neither Obama’s radical roots nor those of his associates – but they are unquestionably there, as figures such as Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky and Frank Marshall Davis prove. In the same vein, the tactics of the administration – i.e., using racial grievances as a weapon of mass destruction – are straight out of the playbook of communist agitation and propaganda.

Mr. Obama and his associates were sold to the public as the racial healers who would finally and at long-last, end racial animosity in this country between black and white. That narrative is almost diametrically opposite to the truth, which is that Obama and his associates are revolutionaries in every sense of the term.

As for Karl’s statement about “the propaganda arm of a foreign power,” that role is now being filled by the mainstream media and the other organs of the leftist status quo – who are now little different from the old “Tass” new agency and “Pravda” newspaper in the Soviet Union. They are no longer interested in uncovering or reporting the truth, but in defending the status quo. Since Obama has moved in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the leftist media establishment has abandoned all pretense of objectivity and journalistic professionalism… in other words, they have become propagandists for the present political regime.

The great philosopher and writer Eric Hoffer once observed that “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Nowhere has that insight proven to be more-true than in the case of the black “civil rights” establishment.

A. Kern writes:

I urge everyone who is interested to read Thomas Sowell’s “take” on Roots. Especially the part that starts as follows below — and please go on to the rest — “crucially false pictures” etc.

“Moreover, the past that people are looking back at in “Roots” is not a  wholly real past. When challenged by professional historians, Alex Haley called his work “faction” — part fact and part fiction.”

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