Thursday, April 24, 2014
Cliven Bundy Racist or Rancher With Dead Aim?
Before the weekend starts you'll have read or heard these words spoken by Cliven Bundy and reported by the New York Times, that have sparked cries of racism a hundred times:
“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do.
They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do. “And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.
And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
Well Cliven Bundy isn't the most eloquent speaker and on face value he sure does sound like a racist.
But what Mr. Bundy says is not only dead on, he raises the most interesting observation, about abortion and prison. What Bundy should have said is that since the 1960's and the civil right movement, African Americans have sought justice, but all our federal government gave them was a subsidy.