It may well have a black face, as in this scene from a recent Detroit City Council meeting.

A pitiful Teamster official who practically crawled to the table on his knees expressing profuse respect for this disrespectful body was battered by both the crowd and the council.

When he dared suggest that an improved Cobo Center would create more good-paying jobs for union workers, [Council President Monica] Conyers reminded him, "Those workers look like you; they don't look like me."

Desperate, he invoked President Barack Obama's message of unity and was angrily warned, "Don't you say his name here."

Got that, white boy -- Barack Obama isn't the president for white Americans, only for blacks. Invoking his call for a post-racial America is only acceptable to bludgeon whites with, not to demand that all Americans be treated with respect.

By the way, the Kluxer sound-alike be-yotch running the Detroit City Council, Monica Conyers, is the wife of US Congressman John Conyers (D-Detroit). Could you imagine the outcry if a family member of a white Republican congressman (or governor, or dog catcher) were to publicly make such statements?

Or, as the author of the commentary piece from which I quoted above, Nolan Finley of the Detroit News, notes:

Juxtapose the place and the faces and imagine a white Livonia City Council treating a black union representative with such overt racial hostility. The Justice Department would swoop down like a hawk, and the Rev. Al Sharpton would clog Five Mile Road with protesters.

But in Detroit, dealing with the council's bigotry is part of the cost of doing business.

Here's a test for Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Let's have that courageous discussion of race and racism that Holder talked about recently. Let's have a little bit of that post-racial America. Turn the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice loose on the city of Detroit. Deal with the naked racism present in the scene above by going after the black Democrat head of the city council, the wife of a senior black Democrat congressman who was an early supporter of Barack Obama's candidacy for president.

In other words, let's get a little equal protection of the laws for all Americans.

Or admit that the rhetoric of the campaign was all a sham.

Posted by: Greg at 09:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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