This was written in response to an article by John Perazzo at the web site Frontpagemag.com (link below) which talked about the racial hypocracy of Al Sharpton and other black leaders. Al Sharpton according to Mr. Perazzo has had a particularly egregious history including but not limited to his involvement in Tawana Brawley case in New York City as well as the case of an inadvertent killing of a black child by a Hassidic Jew.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27826


Mr. Perazzo your article on Rev. Sharpton was riveting. Much of it I knew. If you will pardon the pun nothing is simply black or white. I try to be a fair person but it is ever so hard to know which side the angels will reside. The events you relate are indeed horrifically shameful. Being Jewish those events make my blood boil. Still, in this instance at this time, Imus did utter a simply awful comment. Should he be pilloried like he has been? I do not know. Part of me does feel bad for him to some degree. Sharpton perhaps would do well to review some New Testament which talks about turning another cheek or casting the first stone. Sometimes though, although I am not a believer, I think in Biblical fashion the more appropriate edict says one does reap what one sows.

The history of this country with respect to the African American all 500 years of it has been abominable. The black southern experience is an embarrassment. Why did our Founders, whom I think were more than brilliant, not foresee that someday, if the country survived, slavery would come back to haunt their descendants? How they missed that sagacity I do not understand except that slavery was big business. We have been paying for its occurrence ever since.

When one's people have been rendered powerless for hundreds of years one gets angry. Imus is part and parcel of that anger as was the O.J. Simpson verdict and perhaps also were the events that you have mentioned in your article. This is not an excuse it is merely an observation. It is simply too bad that our country from the very beginning did not see the hypocrisy of slavery. The fact that we had a civil war about it and shed blood over it was only the beginning. Alas I fear we have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind

Bad Black Rap: The media has been saturating the airwaves regarding the issue of finding a remedy for what I now call the Imus phenomenon. Some say the big purveyors of black racist comments are black rap music and ghetto slang itself which gives a permission slip to everyone saying it is okay to use that type of language. To some degree, perhaps, this is correct but I believe, too, it is the black person's right to say about his own group what he wants. I believe when a black person uses derogatory characterizations it is often a way for him to render powerless the hateful speech that whites have used to subjugate, demean and sometimes crush him. If the black man uses those words it weakens those words and I think it says to the culture those words, horrible as they are, have no power over him anymore. I believe, though, when a white person uses those words the old threat that whites posed historically to blacks reemerges. I believe the so- called conservative shock jocks often use the very hateful, mean, vituperative, and profane words they claim to oppose. There is a mean-spiritedness and a cruelty which exists in much of the media perhaps reflecting a large part of the country. I think everyone everywhere needs to reexamine their hearts. Perhaps, the Imus volcanic eruption will lead to a kinder gentler nation. I am not sure that it will but at least I can hope that it does.