Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: The biggest bigot
By Spencer Thomas
Daily Utah Chronicle (U. Utah)
05/14/2007

(U-WIRE) SALT LAKE CITY — The other morning I was minding my own business while reading through articles in The Washington Post when I saw Al Sharpton in the news again. "What cause is he getting behind this time?" I asked myself.

I am sad to say I was not surprised to find Sharpton making a bigoted comment about Mitt Romney and his "constitutionally"-protected right to worship.

"As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation," Sharpton said.

He is right and has been right when he has declared that racism and intolerance still exist in the United States today. What he fails to recognize is that much of it is coming from his own camp.

Sharpton adamantly denies he was trying to offend, and insists that the Romney campaign is trying to create a scandal for publicity by taking the quote out of context.

Whether or not the "good reverend" truly meant what he said, he of all people on the face of this earth should know better than to say what he did.

Does the fact that he is black exempt him from the same standards to which he holds other people? It sure seems that way.

There has been very little outrage over Sharpton's comments, which were as ignorant and bigoted (if not more so) as Don Imus' comments on the Rutgers women's basketball team.

Let's also not forget that it was Sharpton who called the former mayor of New York a "n*****" and a "whore." It was also Sharpton who exclaimed, "white men lived in caves while blacks were building the pyramids." He also compared former New York Attorney General Robert Abrams, who is Jewish, to Adolf Hitler.

Sharpton was the leading voice in calling for the firing of Don Imus, and while I agree that what Imus said is totally unacceptable, Sharpton has put himself on the same level in the same situation several times and should face the same repercussions that Imus did — but it will not happen.

Is this man of the cloth permitted to say and do things he openly condemns others for?

We, as a society, have become too afraid to stand up to Sharpton and his attention-groveling shenanigans. We are afraid that if we do, we will be labeled as racist, and this fear has given Sharpton incredible power.

Sharpton and others like him (such as Jesse Jackson) do not want the black population to rise up because without an oppressed population these men have no job. They go out of their way to keep blacks down — it is their main objective — and if anyone is guilty of bigotry, it is Sharpton against his own "people."

Sharpton, Jackson and others like them are making enormous fortunes off the "plight of the black man." Their sole mission is to keep segregation alive and prosperous in America through exaggeration.

I recognize that real bigotry is alive and well today, but Sharpton immerses himself in a form of self-excusable bigotry that won't ever go away as long as we continue to give him the attention he has been getting.

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