It was Oberlin all over again…another Black history Month racist hate speech hoax. As Professor Jacobson reports, the racist message written on a whiteboard in front of a black Grand Valley State University (in Michigan) student’s door last month at was written by the student himself. This was not discovered, however, until the incident was used to justify the usual condemnations of American society as a hotbed of racial hate and prejudice against non-whites.
–—-Law professor/blogger Ann Althouse on the recent Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck passenger, progressive environmental activist Michele Renee. Renee attended a George Zimmerman support rally in Texas and held a sign reading “We’re Racist & Proud!” to falsely tar the group as racist
Althouse also writes of Renee,
“It’s a harsh consequence to become — for all time, on the web — Renee “Racist and Proud” Vaughan. She’s apologized — sorry she got busted. You know how apologies are. But I doubt that she’d be sorry if her trick had worked and amplified the legend of the racism of Zimmerman and his defenders.”
Michele Renee has written two extravagant apologies, but Althouse is right: they are unbelievable. This is signature significance: no honest, fair, decent and ethical person sets out to brand others as racist with a false flag stunt, not one, not as a mistake, not ever, because ethical people don’t have horrible ideas like that, or if they do, they certainly don’t act on them. Am I unfair to guess that her MSNBC-cheering colleagues and friends are giving her high fives and telling her “nice try”? I don’t think so. Althouse is correct: Renee’s actions smack of evil, and she arises out of an increasingly hateful and divisive culture on the left that seeks to demonize innocent people for the crime of not seeing the world their way.
Having said that, I find the whole idea of pro-Zimmerman rallies disturbing, offensive, and misguided. Rally for the jury system; rally against race-baiting; rally against the calculated and cynical racial politics of Obama and Holder. But Zimmerman, though he does not deserve to be a hunted man and the face of racial profiling, also doesn’t deserve any rallies. His reckless conduct got a young man killed. What is there to support?
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Sources: Althouse, Gateway Pundit (and Graphic)
Ethics Alarms 