It’s been a big week for racism. In the last seven days, it’s been made clear that Tea Party members are racist, state’s rights advocates are racist, Republicans are racist, and Black Panthers who want to kill white babies are, somehow, not all that racist. Perhaps the biggest news in racism, however, came after bombs tore through a Ugandan World Cup celebration. The blast killed 64 people. Fearlessly, President Obama leapt into action condemning the organization’s obvious bigotry.
“They do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself,” the President said. “They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains.”
Conservative bloggers pounced on the comments, suggesting that, in killing people of color in a country that the president actually cared about, al Qaeda might have finally gone too far. After all, Bin Laden has managed to kill plenty of black people on U.S. soil, with no charges of racism, so what made this attack different? Did the president really see racism as a central theme in al Qaeda’s existence? The White House was asked to clarify their stance.
“U.S. intelligence has indicated that al Qaeda leadership specifically targets and recruits black Africans to become suicide bombers because they believe that poor economic and social conditions make them more susceptible to recruitment than Arabs,” an administration official said.
“Al Qaeda recruits have said that al Qaeda is racist against black members from West Africa because they are only used in lower level operations.”
As if desperate to confirm the bloggers suspicions, the White House is actually claiming that al Qaeda is racist because, if you’re a minority, they will only use you as a suicide bomber. Never mind that they killed members of every imaginable race and religion in the World Trade Center attacks – that’s not the point. In the president’s mind the organization’s real bigotry lies not in murder, but in its human resources department. Al Qaeda boasts no room for advancement, no terrorist affirmative action, and the world’s most brutal glass ceiling.
“In short,” the White House said, “al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life.”
Ummm…don’t they treat us ALL like cannon fodder? Isn’t their disregard for ALL human life the entire point behind their attacks? Does the president really believe that being racist holds some kind of moral equivalence with being a global gang of indiscriminate murderers?
Al Qaeda has, for decades, been blowing up people of all creeds and colors. When they attacked a plane on Christmas Eve, the president didn’t speak about it for days. When one of their operatives tried to blow up Times Square, Obama fell silent while we were told the perpetrator was probably some deranged Tea Partier, angry about health care. Now, when they kill Ugandans, Obama can’t wait to get out in front of the cameras.
That Obama’s quickest condemnation of al Qaeda is a complaint about the racism he sees in a foreign attack? Stunning.
At the end of the day, who in the world cares if al Qaeda is racist? It’s a petty, myopic, distraction from the horror these thugs have wrought worldwide. In the face of constant violence and murder, isn’t it sad that the first “post-racial president” seems only to be moved by skin color?
Robert Laurie is a Michigan-based conservative columnist and freelance writer. He also runs a daily political commentary blog at RobertLaurie.net.