In the late 1980s while working as a corporate relo consultant I was coordinating a real estate transaction in Clanton AL.
The buyer of a very nice house belonging to my transferee was a Colonel in the US Army. He decided to back out of the transaction without having any contractual grounds to do so, and I had to find out what was going on.
Answer: In the process of serving his country he spent a lot of time away from his home. He was worried because one of the neighbors of the home he was about to close on had called a meeting of “concerned citizens” to discuss the “problem” of having this family buy in their neighborhood.
The Colonel was black. Apparently not their favorite color. He was, justifiably, worried about the safety of his wife and kids.
Even then that seemed like an antiquated thing to see, as if someone had just driven a Conestoga wagon into our parking garage. The civil rights movement had taken place when I was a child. I now had children of my own. What the heck, people?
Contractual grounds or not… I refunded his earnest money that day. I also apologized on behalf of the knuckle-dragging backward-ass morons in that town, thanked him for his service, and thanked God the guy discovered this before closing instead of after.
So yeah, despite strides of epic proportion, our nation will likely always have some racists. That said, since that time we’ve seen the invention of the cell phone. The internet has gone public. Many things have changed.
When I see Col Allen West I think about that Colonel, whose name I’ve long since forgotten but whose situation I’ll always remember. A respected man, accomplished, a guy who lacks guile and says what he thinks regardless of convention. Anything but the epitome of the culture of victimhood currently pressed on blacks by race pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, or dare I add… Obama and Holder.
The article below is by Allen West’s wife, Angela, whom he credits with being the brains of their operation. [That’d have to be a big brain.] It’s about the damage done by those who teach black children they are powerless victims unable to change the course of their own lives without the magnanimous helping hand of political “progressives“. Good read.
See: The Fairytale of the Victimhood
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/the_fairytale_of_the_victimhood.html
Of course there’s some racism. It’s a human failing, unlikely to be totally wiped out. That said… selling young black men on the idea they are born into victimhood is as dumb as assuming girls were born to be whores.
We are the product of our choices. Don’t teach kids to be victims, teach them to choose wisely.
