Should the African-American community let Ron Paul off the hook for the racist newsletters bearing his name that went out in the 1980s and '90s? National Public Radio commentator Aaron Freeman certainly thinks so. According to Freeman, what Paul said or didn't say (Paul denies writing the newsletters) decades ago doesn't matter.
"Even if Ron Paul had written racist stuff in the 80s, it'd be easy to forgive it now because we can see that when it come to racism, everything is getting better," Freeman stated on the Huffington Post website Friday. "Why be mad at somebody today when you know that in a few years they'll probably be your comrade in celebrating the next leap forward for civil rights?"
But the problem, of course, is that I have no idea if Paul--the libertarian congressman from Texas who's running for president--will be an ally in the struggle for civil rights. It not just that the newsletters stereotyped black men as criminals and implied that African Americans are animals perpetually on welfare, it's that Paul has issued a non-apology for these deeply offensive characterizations. Paul has simply said that he himself didn't write the newsletters. The newsletters did bear his name, however.
One series of newsletters was called the Ron Paul Political Report and another, the Ron Paul Survival Report. Given this, Paul needs to take responsibility for the sentiments contained in the newsletters, regardless of whether he personally penned them or one of his associates did. If the racist messages in the newsletters truly upset Paul, wouldn't this be his course of action? But Paul has done little more than shrug his shoulders at the racial controversy that has made headlines (and likely cost him voters) over the past week or so.
It's also difficult to swallow the idea that Paul will morph into a civil rights advocate. As recently as May 2011, he remarked on MSNBC that he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended racial segregation in the South. Why? He essentially said that the act infringed on the rights of property owners by forbidding them to discriminate against blacks. And Paul, or whoever the mystery man is who penned his newsletters, harbors only ill will for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A December 1990 newsletter described King as a pedophile and questioned why the nation celebrates his birthday.
The vile comments about blacks expressed in the Ron Paul newsletters certainly makes the call to forgive the libertarian a tall order. But even those who can manage to overlook Paul's past certainly aren't obliged to mark his name on their ballots.
Comments
Ron Paul???? Who he??? what is his relevance to my life and the lives of so many of us Black people living in America. He is yet another in the long line of Rep-ugh-blican miscreants, incompetants, and racists who have reared their ugly heads to try to challenge the only real President this country has had in decades: Barack Obama. So he is a mere distraction that, if we are not careful, may cause to lose focus on the real issue – re-electing Obama to the presidency for four more years. Libertarian? what the heck is that – some sort of hybrid that tries to go under the guise of being “liberal” while at the same time turning the thumbscrews and the knives in our backs?
Forgive him – no – make him eat the words and the inuendos? Yes. My ernstwhile brother on NPR is dreaming – but it is a good dream – so I don’t put him down for the aspiration. Would actually be interesting – sort of like George Wallace suddenly finding out how much he appreciated Black people after he found himself confined to a whee chair for the rest of his life, and therefore forced to deal with the role his own racist acts played in putting him in that position.
Paul is afraid to recant those words, probably because some of his biggest backers are people who are backing him because they agree with everything he said in those newsletters. So there will probably be no apology from him without their consent – tacit or otherwise.
Let him bite the dust and go the way of the dodo bird as have Herman Cain, and others.
As for the rest of us, we have way more important things to focus on than his garbage.
OBAMA and the PEOPLE of AMERICA overcome the Ron Pauls of the world.
The letters in question are twenty years old and were not penned by Ron Paul. Congressman Paul has repeatedly explained the whole incident and I’m not sure what else folks expect.
Gloria seems gloriously ignorant. Ron Paul is no more a racist than President Obama is a Kenyan national. Both allegations are just smears with no susbstance.
The Civil Rights Act position that Mr. Paul takes has been very controversial, but if you read into what he actually said, and his reasoning for his position, you will find that it is not a racial issue. Some people look to the government to fix all their problems, and libertarians tend to find that excessive government itself is the problem. I’m not saying one opinion is better; just explaining the politcal platforms. Of course the media took the Civil Rights Act statement and spun it into an inflammatory issue, but that’s what they do with everything during election season.
In a word, uh “no.” Racism isn’t a political agenda. Racism is born in the heart. It is a mental disposition. You can supress it, even hide it but it colors your way of viewing other people. You make exceptions of course, “the nice black man that brings your car around,” “the wonderful black lady that serves you coffee,” etc.. but when you view the race as a whole you still have these stereotypical ideas that internally you believe are true. So no, I don’t care if he didn’t actually write the newsletter, he endorsed it. He obviously didn’t have a problem with the statements being made or else he would have spoken up and said, I won’t have my name attached to that. However, when you are running for President and you need minority voters, of course you back pedal and say, “that was in the past.” In the past, to make such comments might not have provoked the backlash it does today, but a different time period doesn’t change the fact that you felt that way. Now, as to the some of his perceptions. When 65% of the crime in DC is committed by black people one can only make a casual observation that “black people commit a lot of crime.” At least that’s what the bias media would have us believe. Because when the crime is committed by a black person, you will see their black face all over the news, however, when the crime is committed by someone else, unless it’s a closeted homosexual or man whore, who the powers that be want to push out of office, you will not see their faces plastered all over the evening news.