Being a Racist Is Easy Today
Walter E. Williams
Posted: Jul 31, 2019 12:01 AM
Years ago, it was hard to be a racist. You had to be fitted for and spend money on a white gown and don a pointy hat. You celebrated racism by getting some burlap, wrapping it around a cross, setting it ablaze and dancing around it carrying torches. Sometimes, as did Lester Maddox, you had to buy axe handles for yourself and your supporters to wield to forcibly turn away black customers from your restaurant. Or, as in the case of Theophilus "Bull" Connor, you had to learn to direct fire hoses and vicious police attack dogs against civil rights demonstrators.
Younger racists, along with their parents, had to memorize poems for whenever a black student showed up for admission to their high school or college. For example, "Two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate!" Of course, there were a host of racial slurs and epithets that could be hurled, with impunity, at any black person in your presence. In earlier times, you didn't have to be sophisticated, but it took a bit of work, to be a racist.
Today, all that has changed. To be a racist today takes little effort. For example, one can sit back in his easy chair and declare that he's for across-the-board tax cuts. That makes you a racist. If you don't believe me, think back to 1994 when the Republican-led Congress pushed for a tax-cut measure. Former U.S. House of Representatives member Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., denouncing the Republicans' plan before a Manhattan audience as a form of modern-day racism said: "It's not 'spic' or 'n-----' anymore. (Instead,) they say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" A few months later, he compared the GOP's "Contract with America" to measures in Nazi Germany saying, "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things."
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https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/07/31/being-a-racist-is-easy-today-n2550780
