Thoughts from the ammo line

[Valin]

Power Line:

Scott Johnson

August 12 2016

 

Ammo Grrrll dares to ask: SO, EXACTLY WHO IS BIGOTED? She writes:

 

We’ve been lectured and hectored to believe that only white people can actually be “racist.” Which is nonsense on the face of it, but set that aside. Can everybody be at least bigoted?

 

In 1976 I was a typesetter. It was the year that Alex Haley’s Roots was published. Word went around in the typesetting profession that in the typeshop in New York where the book was published (Harcourt), that you could tell where it was in production – typesetting, layout, proofreading – by which groups of people were sobbing. I do not know the Census Bureau breakdown by race of those people at Harcourt in 1976, but a good guess would be that the overwhelming majority was white.

 

(Snip)

 

And that is what happened with Roots. Millions of white people identified with, sympathized with, FELT for Kunta Kinte and the generations of his family, not out of guilt for something we didn’t do, but out of common humanity. When his daughter, Kizzy, was sold away from him, our hearts were broken. The story continued through her. In vain did I look ahead for what happened to Kunta Kinte. We never hear a single word of Kizzy’s parents again, because she didn’t.

 

Now fast forward nearly 20 years to Oakland, California. On Martin Luther King Day 1994, a science teacher took a group of about 70 students, mostly black, to see Schindler’s List. In an early scene, when a Jewish woman is murdered by the Nazis, a group of about 10 youths laughed it up. The projectionist actually turned off the film and made them leave. And, oh my, what a tsunami of crap rolled forth, not apologies but apologists.

 

(Snip)

 

Oh, and, of course, since Hollywood is out of ideas, Roots is being re-filmed. This time, I read, with NO kind or positive white people in it. That should help “Unity.” Think I’ll pass.