I & I Editorial BoardThe blasé response to the revelation that Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse belonged to a private “whites only” club and even owned a stake in it, should come as no surprise. In the Democrats’ race-obsessed world, only Republicans are racist.
Whitehouse confused the issue last week when asked about his membership in Bailey’s Beach Club and its alleged all-white membership, saying: “I think the people who are running the place are still working on that and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet.”
Well, it turns out, his family is among the “people who are running the place.”
As GoLocalProvidence online TV, which broke the story, noted:
“Both Whitehouse and his wife Sandra as well as their families have been members of the club for decades. Whitehouse did transfer his (ownership) shares in the club to his wife years ago, and she is now one of the largest shareholders in the all-white club. The club’s membership is a who’s who Newport, Palm Beach, and New York wealth.”
And on Monday, Whitehouse appeared to defend his membership, calling such clubs “a long tradition in Rhode Island.”
However, after those remarks raised even more questions, Whitehouse denied that the beach club was whites-only, and said that he “was assured that … the assertion was wrong, there is diversity in the membership and there are non-white club members.”
An honest mistake then? Nope. Whitehouse had been asked about his membership in the club dating back to 2006. But, as a Democrat, he could conveniently count on the media not letting such inconvenient facts intrude on his political career, and on his colleagues saying nothing.
Moreover, the club itself issued a statement saying that it had “people of many racial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds” as members, but refused to elaborate.
But Whitehouse did clarify that he belongs to a yacht club that, by his own admission, has only white members.
So, to ask the by-now-cliched question, if Whitehouse were a Republican would he get a pass from the Democrats? Of course not.
The reason is simple. Whitehouse, like so many Democrats, portrays himself as a staunch anti-racist, as he did recently during a Senate “moment of silence” to commemorate the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor: “We can and must do better to root out systemic racism in its many forms and meet America’s full promise of justice for all.”
Republicans in Congress are routinely accused of being racists, with evidence of their guilt never being offered. They get called racist simply for opposing Democratic proposals, even ones that have nothing to do with race. Or for telling the truth about our nation’s violent, troubled inner-cities. Or for defending America’s symbols of freedom, such as the American flag. Or for supporting Donald Trump.
But Democrats belonging to racially exclusive clubs, real racism? Pass.
That no one in his party seems to care much and Whitehouse appears secure in his position tells you a lot about the Democratic Party. Contrary to its image as a champion of downtrodden minorities, the Democratic Party is in fact racist at its core. And always has been.
Hard to believe?
Columnist Mona Charen accurately summed it up back in 2015:
The Democrats were the party of slavery, black codes, Jim Crow, and that miserable terrorist excrescence, the Ku Klux Klan. Republicans were the party of Lincoln, Reconstruction, anti-lynching laws, and the civil rights acts of 1875, 1957, 1960, and 1964. Were all Republicans models of rectitude on racial matters? Hardly. Were they a heck of a lot better than the Democrats? Without question.
Democrats argue this is “ancient history.” Not true. Former Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd, dubbed by colleagues “the Conscience of the Senate,” was a former exalted cyclops of his local Ku Klux Klan. He tried, along with President Bill Clinton’s mentor J. William Fulbright and former Vice President Al Gore Jr.’s father, to filibuster the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Still in office, Byrd died in 2010, a much-revered figure in his party.
Granted, today’s racism of the Democratic Party is of a different kind. Gone are the white sheets of the Klan, and the ugly American apartheid of racially separate bathrooms, hotels, schools, drinking fountains and the like.
In their place is the pseudointellectual creed of Critical Race Theory, a branch of Marxist thought that adds race to class conflict and insists that all white people are racist. It’s a new religion.”Systemic racism” is original sin, and only the “Woke” are redeemable.
CRT has been extensively debunked by historians on both the left and right. That anyone gives it any credence underscores the utter debasement of reasoned debate, especially in our so-called institutions of higher learning. And to the extent that the Democratic Party embraces CRT, it inescapably becomes an avowedly Marxist party.
Do Democrats care? As they have through history, Democrats today work assiduously to drive wedges between people based on race and income; undermine the egalitarian ideals of our nation’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution; and expand government power over individual citizens’ lives, liberties and livelihoods.
Given all this, maybe it’s understandable that Democrats and the leftist media would give Sheldon Whitehouse a pass. After all, in the context of the Democratic Party’s profound racist history, Whitehouse is really not the worst sinner. Not by a long shot.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Bob Maistros
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
At the heart of the USA Marxist party (dba Dems) is the quest for absolute power. With the KKK and southern segregation, when the Dems were busy keeping down the colored population of the South, it was at its core about the same thing, power. The Dems are flexible in that regard, as they will seize on any issue or means to consolidate their power and impose their will on others. Instead of maintaining power by suppressing the black vote in the South with literacy tests and poll taxes (1880s-1960s), the Dems of 2021 want the national voting system to resemble Pennsylvania, which counted 200,000 more votes than there were voters. To do otherwise is called “voter suppression” by a mainstream (lamestream) media echo chamber that functions like the Ministry of Propaganda for the party. Freedom is not part of their credo. They only believe in freedom for themselves, and seek to deny it to others (e.g. cancel culture). That is the communist way, the fascist way, the totalitarian way. What the Dems call freedom is really at its core hard-core intolerance, no discussion allowed.
As a former Diversity Officer, I find CRT so frightening and distasteful. It is the antithesis of our Civil Rights Laws and MLK’s teachings. It is race essentialism at its core, defining people solely by skin color and assigning horrible characteristics to all people based solely on ethnicity—exactly what hate groups do to people they hate. CRT is one side of the race essentialism coin, with the teachings of the KKK on the other side. I condemn them both. To paint all people of color as oppressed is to deny them the freedom and agency that is theirs for them to seize, embrace and enjoy the American Dream. CRT defines all people of color in a hopeless and helpless position, enslaved by the thinking of this ideology. On the other hand whites are forever labeled racist and there is no redemption. To proclaim that all whites are oppressors, even innocent babies and toddlers, simply because of skin color, based on no evidence is blatantly unfair. To proclaim that non-whites cannot make it in America because of systemic racism is to deny reality as Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Americans of Nigerian descent, Indian Americans, and many other ethnicities have higher academic and economic levels of achievement than whites. Does America need to do more work in embracing and providing fair and equal treatment to all? Of course, we do, but pitting the races against each other is not the way. America has the lofty goal to be the most culturally diverse nation in the world. Indeed, the USA has welcomed more people from more countries, races, ethnicities, religions than any other nation. We must embrace this wonderful diversity by honoring the uniqueness of every individual through a humanistic approach, demanding that every American is treated with respect and judged by their character and not skin color, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, sex, etc. CRT denies this individual respect to everyone.
The Democrats are crying wolf on this issue. They are scapegoating Republicans for their legacy of slavery, racism, segregation, discrimination, lynch mobs, and violent militants like the KKK.
No good will come of this. In fact, Black Americans are likely to suffer the worst due to the violence of leftist militants and the destruction of urban areas. The Democratic party is openly race baiting using false pretenses and propaganda.
Democrats say all white people 68% of our country) are racist because of the color of their skin. That is the definition of racist.
Showing what true racists they really are, and have always been, Democrats are trying hard to resegregate America by race. Democrats are the party of slavery, secession, Jim Crow, the KKK and, as Gov. George Wallace (D., AL) famously said, “segregation forever.” Democrats invented voter suppression, using poll taxes and bogus literacy tests to prevent blacks from registering to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 put a stop to it.
Now Democrats want everything to be allocated on the basis of skin color. This is the antithesis of Dr. Martin Luther King’s goal, that people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Quotas by race are also illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Critical Racist, oops I mean Race, Theory says all whites are born racist and stay that way, no matter what they do. It judges all whites by the color of their skin. That’s racist prejudice, and the people who support CRT are racists. It’s time to stop being polite and call them out on it.
RE: Sen. Robert Byrd Exalted Cyclops of the Klu Klux Klan
From my first day in the Senate I sought out his guidance, and he was always generous with his time and wisdom. And as Secretary of State I continued to rely on his advice and counsel.
~HRC 2008
If we don’t criticize the idea that those of us born with white skin are congenitally unable to comprehend the indelible harm of historic slavery and contemporary anti-Black bias because we are structurally racist is preposterous, racist itself and the mother of all guilt trips imposed by an ignorant virtue-signaling progressive Biden administration, then African Americans will find us wanting in the long term. To accept this lie is to debase thoughtful African Americans as incapable of living in our country without a permanent scaffold of white self-debasement. It is nothing less than the bigotry of low expectations.
Where did all the Dixiecrats like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond who fought like hell to keep segregation flee to? The Republican Party. How many racists and racists organizations endorsed Democratic candidates? None. How many supported Trump and other Republicans, dozens. Which party is racist?
joelg5 hits on a very important point regarding the Democrat Party history. From the Trail of Tears to the defense and spread of slavery, from 19th century Jim Crow to 20th century opposition to the Civil Rights Act, from 60’s anti-American revolutionaries and the Welfare State to today’s Antifa/BLM and CRT, that party has been a constant engine of destruction.
I don’t think it is overstating the case to say that most of America’s worst tendencies, failures, and tragedies can be laid primarily at the feet of the Democrat Party; we’d be a much greater nation had they never existed.
Defund the Police in large Democratic-run cities has resulted in a disparate adverse impact on Africans Americans. Murder rates of Blacks jumped from 30-90% higher in cities where police budgets were slashed and in places where officials demoralized and failed to support law enforcement. More Blacks have been killed in these cities this year than all the Blacks killed by the heinous, abhorrent KKK. It’s heartbreaking the impact Defund the People has had on the Black Community. My heart aches for the families of these murder victims. No wonder the Democratic Party and Press Secretary Jen Psaki are now trying to gaslight Americans by blaming the Defund the Police movement on the GOP. No party should use a racial minority to consolidate political power.