Racism according to Kareem

It turns out that since his basketball career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become a contributor to Time Magazine.  Who knew?  He comments on how to tell if you are a racist.  If you've ever said that you don't care if someone is white, black, yellow, or purple, he suggests that's a hint you may be racist.  He says that the issue may be how we define racism.  Then, in the rest of the article, he fails to define racism.  Awesome.  However, he does list things that he thinks are racist.  Topping his list is that you deny there is racism.  Well, there's a straw man.  No one denies there is racism.  Racism was codified into the legal system prior to the Civil Rights Movement.  That was structural, wide-spread racism that needed to be stamped out.  Today, we have buffoons like Donald Sterling.  The magnitude of that change is profound but Kareem isn't having it.  See, the Supreme Court overturned part of the Voting Rights Act.  Racism!  The Supreme Court has weakened Affirmative Action.  Racism!  Bill O'Rielly says that discrimination is in the past.  Racism!  He offers a 2006 poll (couldn't come up with something more recent?) that showed 49% of minorities think racism is a big problem versus only 18% of whites.  Racism!

Racism today is a pale shadow to what it once was.  How else to explain that a black man is president, that a black woman was Secretary of State under a Republican president, that Oprah Winfrey spent decades as the most popular television personality?  Why is it that immigrant blacks do amazingly well within a generation while native ones struggle?  I would posit that the immigrants haven't spent a lifetime being marinated in talk of racism from people like Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, Spike Lee, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Stop telling blacks that they are victims of racism and slavery and The Man.  Instead, tell them that they can be President, Attorney General, Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, Supreme Court Justice, or whatever else.  Will there be hurdles?  Of course!  It certainly doesn't help that anyone who opposes the president's policies is automatically a racist.  If that is how you define racism, then you will find a lot of racists.  Worse still, any black person who opposes the president is an Uncle Tom or a Race Traitor.

 

To a hammer, everything is a nail.  To someone like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, everything is racism.