Race Relations Haven’t Gotten Any Better and There’s No Real Debate Over It

January 14, 2013 1

Mandevilla, LA – Exclusive Transcript – We’re making it far too difficult to have conversations. There was a great post, and I’m trying to recall who it was that wrote it. It was posted at The American Conservative Magazine website. It was about how we cannot have real debate any long because we can’t have certain things on the table. They’re not even allowed to be on the table. You would not be able to say certain things to women or to certain minorities for fear that it might offend them. If that’s the case, are you really having a debate or are you just trying to escape the conversation without economic or social ruin? That’s what it amounts to. Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike: I want to talk to Will in Wyoming. How you doing?

Caller Will: Not bad, how about you today, Mr. Church?

Mike: Good. I’m fine, sir, thank you.

Caller Will: I just wanted to say, in Sarah Palin’s defense, not that she needs me to defend her, I don’t believe nowadays that we are taught where these slangs come from. If you use them in terms of speaking about a subject or an action and not a group of people, in this politically-correct environment that the media has portrayed, somehow you’re a racist even though you weren’t even speaking about a particular group of people but speaking about an action that was being taken. I believe that’s what that angry caller a couple calls ago was trying to relay, but he was not getting it out correctly because he’s so angry about it.

Mike: People are telling me that in a 2008 press conference, Andrew Cuomo said of President Obama, that you can’t shuck and jive at a press conference. I suppose that is when Governor Cuomo was supporting Mrs. Clinton in her run for the White House. You may remember that one of Mrs. Clinton’s top advisors, Andrew, ultimately had to resign from the campaign — I’m speaking of the late Geraldine Ferraro, because she had brought up President Obama’s résumé and said: What has this man done? Where is his track record of accomplishment? People took that to be racially insensitive. There’s something else in the verbiage that Ferraro used. She ultimately went on television and apologized, but it was enough so she had to quit.

AG: I think what Will just said is correct in the sense that I don’t think Governor Palin is racist, but I do think she didn’t realize the backstory to using comments like this when negatively talking about a black guy. That’s just kind of how it is. There’s the discussion of her response to the comments. She could have said: I apologize for using a term like this. I didn’t realize the racial history of this term when it was used back in the times of slavery. If she had said that, I think there would have been no discussion about this. Instead she was like: Oh, I use this term with my daughter when she’s not doing her homework. If you want it to blow over, just say you didn’t realize the racial history and undertones that go along with using this term in a negative discussion of a black man. That’s just kind of how it is. If we want to have a discussion over whether terms like this should have such an impact socially, we can have that discussion, but for the time being, I apologize for using that term. There are better ways to go about explaining your word choice.

Once again, I go back to the main point being that there’s a lot of talk, especially after this last election, that the Republicans don’t do a good job of inviting different minority groups under the big tent. It’s something that Randy in Pennsylvania said: you don’t want to appeal to specific groups and play that game. I agree with that. At the same time, you don’t want to alienate certain groups by using these racially-coated terms, that maybe they shouldn’t be racially coated in a negative connotation but they are now. We can’t have that conversation over the impact of these terms when we’re still using them to negatively describe someone we disagree with. We can have the bigger conversation, but we also have to be respectful of the history of these terms and know that if we want to evolve as a society, we need to understand all this going into the discussion to begin with.

Mike: I think we need to devolve as a society. We’re making it far too difficult to have conversations. There was a great post, and I’m trying to recall who it was that wrote it. It was posted at The American Conservative Magazine website. It was about how we cannot have real debate any long because we can’t have certain things on the table. They’re not even allowed to be on the table. You would not be able to say certain things to women or to certain minorities for fear that it might offend them. If that’s the case, are you really having a debate or are you just trying to escape the conversation without economic or social ruin? That’s what it amounts to. It is an economically perilous thing to engage in these kinds of conversations, as far too many people can attest over the course of the last 20 years or so. I dislike the idea that we’re not evolved enough already as a people that anything, especially in the dire straits that we find ourselves in, fiscally and morally speaking, that anything ought to be on the table.

People don’t seem to have a problem going on television and advocating that women become impregnated at government expense and use government funds to murder the baby in that woman’s womb. This is an act of murder. This is an act of death, life and death. Life is taken. It has ended. That’s okay. We can have Sandra Fluke flucking her way across the country and demanding government dollars to do so and then standing up before the alleged almighty supreme right of women to determine whether or not their babies get to survive, but we can’t have a conversation where a word or slang from a poem from the 1880s is repeated? Really? Seriously? At some level, there has to be a more robust, honest conversation. If that involves terms that offend some people, then that’s too bad. You know what offends me? Dead children offend me. You know what offends me? Knowing that I am raising a generation of children that, despite all my mighty efforts, using the mighty power of the voice and intellect that Jesus and the Father have seen fit to bless me with, that I cannot seem to alter that course. That bothers me. That is offensive to me. I should be offensive to my own children.

These other things, I think they’re petty distractions. For General Powell to bring this up after the election of a black man to the highest office of the planet, to me, is dubious at best. Look at General Powell. His race doesn’t seem to have been an impediment to his ascendency to the highest ranks that a uniformed officer can attain in the United States, does it? He’s a great example of progress that has been made. If you want to say there are certain individuals, maybe they should have had Governor Palin on. Maybe her choice of words was not so eloquent, but I don’t think she meant — I see your point about how it’s not going to develop the party, but then again, why do we do everything we do for the sake of political victory? People have been claiming political victories since Lincoln’s election. What has it resulted in? Has it resulted in the net happiness of the people of these United States, or has it resulted in our mutual torment? We remain tormented. There’s something wrong there.

End Mike Church Show Transcript