-By Warner Todd Huston
There is always one guy in a bar spoiling for a fight and will take any movement or glance, any sound, any word as his excuse at bellicosity. In the race mongering biz the equivalent would be people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both men who take immediate umbrage at the un-umbragable, just so that they can use the excuse to extort money out of businesses or get their mugs splashed across the papers and TV. In Dallas County the loudmouth looking for a fight is Commissioner John Wiley Price who foolishly decided that the scientific term “black hole” was a racial epithet and verbally attacked another commissioner for using it.
Here is the whole, stupid, story:
During a special meeting about Dallas County traffic tickets the discussion turned to the central collections office that is tasked with processing ticket payments and other paperwork. This discussion prompted Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, a white man, to say that central collections had become a “black hole” of paperwork as often times paperwork simply disappears there.
And now the stupidity:
Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud “Excuse me!” He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a “white hole.”
That prompted Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.
Commissioner Price and Judge Jones seem to be very stupid men.
For his part, Mayfield told them to lump it because not only is the term “black hole” a perfectly common idiom for what he meant, it is a scientific term for a collapsed star into which all matter is sucked, unable to escape. And nowhere, anywhere has anyone ever used the term “black hole” as a racial epithet. Any fourth grader or sci fi TV fan understands what a black hole is and none of them would peg the term to race.
I’d say that if this is the sort of stupidity that comes from a race monger like Price and Judge Jones, then we have arrived at a post racial period in America. If THIS is all they have to worry about for being “racist language” then we have, indeed, effectively eliminated racism in America.
Commissioner Price and Judge Jones should be ashamed of themselves.
____________
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
These two men are responsible for their own ignorance; they have programmed themselves to react everytime they hear the word, ‘black’ no matter the context especially if a White American uses it. Don’t let them hide behind the lie of defending ‘black sensabilities’ – there are Black American CHILDREN who know what a Black Hole is. Yes, I am a Black American and I’m 70 years old – and I know about Black Holes and Quazars and even Quarks.
I heard about this earlier and at the risk of sounding Buffoonish, don’t children do the same thing? Test their limits?
I have an Army friend who is a black guy and he used to always points out (he’s deployed now, I’m not) the little ways you could turn most anything around to make it racist.
Now he did it because we were/are close enough to know how damned stupid racial sensitivities are when used this way.
Its like being feverish, you know when you are and when you aren’t. Being racist that is.
Great writing WTH!