http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3890
By Tom Bethell
Ever since Barack Obama delivered his much praised but inadequate race speech on Tuesday, the editorialists have been telling us how much we need a national http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3893 on the subject.
Right. It’s high time. So here’s my contribution:
Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s remarks about America were the worst things said about my adopted country since I came here from England in 1962. Louis Farrakhan and Malcolm X are not in the same league as this champion of race hatred from http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2838." That is baloney — reflecting the gross double standard that has prevailed for decades on the subject of race. The underlying problem is that the liberals who still control so much of the debate quietly agree with much of what Wright said.
Here’s my background on this. I came to America in the first place because I was enamored of New Orleans jazz. The best of the pioneers were almost all black. I wanted to meet these men, some of whom were still living when I first went to New Orleans. I wrote a book about a jazz clarinetist named George Lewis. He was not just black but dark black. There was no http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3407 or grandmother in his background.
One of the things he told me that I never forgot was that the worst discrimination he ever encountered in the city was from the light skinned “Creoles,” or mulattoes, who considered themselves superior to their darker-skinned brethren. If George played at their clubs and wanted a drink of water he was denied a regular glass but was told to drink out of a jam jar. Years later, in about 1995, I mentioned this little discussed aspect of race relations to Supreme Court Justice http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1381. He gave me a look of recognition, smiled and said he knew exactly what George Lewis was talking about.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12934