Republicans to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “here’s your hood, what’s your hurry”? That variant of the old saying “here’s your hat, what’s your hurry” used to indicate you are pushing someone out the door came to mind late last week as a statement he made about Barack Obama’s skin tone and speech patterns in 2009 surfaced in a book just released.
Reid made a series of phone calls of apology to the black community starting with the President who immediately announced it would be a dead issue henceforth. Since the President is not yet in charge of what we may and may not say, the issue was hotly debated over the weekend no more hotly than on FOX in an exchange between Geraldo guests Rev Al Sharpton and Author and Columnist Ann Coulter[thanks to friend and colleague Lisa at lisaintx.wordpress.com for this video].
So here we are in this country still dealing with the fallout of slavery and the slave trade, a sad chapter in this nation’s history. The contribution to the financial stability of the US in its early years has not always been properly ascribed to the work of the slaves themselves perhaps due to attitudes like Reid’s.
But believe it or not, slavery is more widespread and larger in 2010. A feature story in Time magazine has reported on it. The focus of the article was sex trade in South Africa. Theft of children for that and for service to fight in tribal warfare are rampant:
Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence. While most are held in debt bondage in the poorest regions of South Asia, some are trafficked in the midst of thriving development [such as in South Africa]. [Time]
Although drug lords and others are bringing sex and domestic worker slaves into the US, there seems little done about it. For this reason alone, it is critical for us to have the national discussion about what we say about and how we treat one another in the national media each time one of us regards another of us as being either different from or beneath the status of another. We are all human; we are all Americans. This is what makes the US, no matter how poor or weak, the moral standard for the planet.
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VotingFemale Speaks! – Racist Bill Clinton: Obama ’step-n-fetcher’ made good
HotAir – Video: Coulter, Sharpton square off over Reid remarks
January 11th, 2010 → 11:49 am
[...] accepts apology, praises Reid on “social justice” On My Watch — The Writings of SamHenry: Reid: Slave Trade Larger Today than at any Time. Watch it. Politico: Republicans charge Lott-Reid double standard Patterico’s Pontifications: L.A. Times [...]
January 11th, 2010 → 3:01 pm
[...] accepts apology, praises Reid on “social justice” On My Watch — The Writings of SamHenry: Reid: Slave Trade Larger Today than at any Time. Watch it. Mcnorman’s Weblog: POTUS, The Hypocrite Politico: Republicans charge Lott-Reid double [...]
January 11th, 2010 → 4:17 pm
[...] Cut h.s. science labs for “diversity’s” sake On My Watch — The Writings of SamHenry: Reid: Slave Trade Larger Today than at any Time. Watch it. Politico: Republicans charge Lott-Reid double [...]
January 11th, 2010 → 6:36 pm
[...] My Watch — The Writings of SamHenry: Reid: Slave Trade Larger Today than at any Time. Watch it. Track-A-’Crat: Barack “Coffee Boy” Obama Politico: Republicans charge Lott-Reid double [...]