Learning To Read (All Over Again)

Some things you just take for granted. You just figure this is how it is and that is it.

Well, that is what I thought about learning to read. I learned my alphabet, vocabulary, and finally sentence structure. Look ma I'm reading. Well, lo and behold, that is appanrently not enough any longer. I am afraid we all need to learn to read in a whole new way in these times.Last week, I caught a great short piece on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal website, http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110006790 informing us that the Senate had proposed and would pass a resolution apologizing for failing to pass anti-lynching legislation in the tragic period of our nation's history between the end of the Civil War & the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There were more that 200 congressional resolutions brought up that would have dealt with the hideous practice, but Senate fillibusters kept that from happening and over 4500 people were murdered by lynching.

Having studied a bit on the history of Senate action in this regard, or should I say inaction, I knew just who was responsible for this. It was Southern Democrats, who used lynching initially, and most often, as an incentive to keep people from voting Republican. Between 1882 and 1964, 4743 people were lynched of which 3446 were black. Why were most of them black? As per Republican Rep. John R. Lynch, "More colored than white men are thus persecuted simply because they constitute in larger numbers the opposition to the Democratic Party." Godwin Woodson, Negro Orators and Their Orations, p. 276- Rep. John R. Lynch from his speech in the case of his contested election; Russel' & Russell,1969 (1)

This week, after the Senate voted to pass the new resolution, here is how it was reported on the Fox News ticker. " Senate by voice vote, apologizes for failing to enact over 200 bills banning lynchings. The Congress passed several resolutions, but the Senate with southern conservatives, used the fillubuster to overrided the passage of the resolutions." Did you catch what happened here? The word conservative was used to replace Democrats. But it was not southern conservatives, it was Southern Democrats, that blocked the passage of these bills.

Why is this so important you ask? After I sent out an email informing people of the word switch, several people told me that they had not even noticed this themselves, but that the next day every paper or report that they saw, which did report the resolution used the word conservatives instead of Democrats. Then today a friend told me that he had shown his wife the article without mentioning anything about the choice of terms. His wife read it and in reading the word Southern conservatives exclaimed, "those Damn Republicans." Yes, that is the point, the Democratic Party has managed to successfully implant negative word associations into the minds of Blacks and many poor whites. The words conservative, and right wing Christian, are all interchangeable with Republican in the minds of many Americans. Unfortunately the words have a negative connotation and thus work in the Democrats favor when used in the right context.

So, here in this situation, the very Party guilty of the crimes, is able to shift the blame for these crimes, in the minds of the victims, to the very people who worked to fight the crimes; many of them giving their own lives in the process.

No, simply reading is no longer sufficient. There is a sinister plot that has been carried out against the common man. We must now learn to read in a new way. To read beneath and around the words, and to teach others to do the same. As conservatives our very existence depends upon it.

(1) For an in depth, historical look at the Democratic Party's attack upon Republicans in the South go to: www.wallbuilders.org Black History Issue 2003