Thread: Charging 'racism' easier than facing issues

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Charging 'racism' easier than facing issues

By: JIM TRAGESER - Staff Writer

It's an easy charge to hurl, and yet it causes serious damage ---- kind of like calling someone a "communist" in the 1950s. Puts them on the defensive, having to prove that the charge is false. Hurts their reputation; has their friends, family and co-workers wondering if they're really who they say they are.

This modern missile is the accusation of "racism" ---- a hurtful, vicious charge, inexcusably so if misused. And as often as it's being tossed around these days, especially in the debate over illegal immigration, you gotta figure the collateral damage is immense.

The only saving grace of the current proliferation of charges of racism in our community is that the charge is being made so often and so emptily that it's losing its impact.

Still, it does seem of late as if anyone who so much as opines that perhaps illegal immigration is, well, illegal finds himself accused of being a racist.

In a way, you can't really blame those who choose to defend illegal immigration for playing the racism card. What other ammunition do they have in their arsenal?

There aren't any logical, sensible arguments in favor of simply opening our borders. Not even the most vehement supporters of illegal immigration will make that argument straight-out.

So pro-illegal immigration activists don't argue for an open border. Instead, they criticize Border Patrol sweeps, assail efforts to deny benefits to those who break the law to get here, ridicule those who would watch the border voluntarily. And when they are called on the emptiness of their arguments, when they are asked why immigration law shouldn't be enforced in a logical, even-handed manner, they resort to a burned-ground campaign of character assassination against anyone who openly advocates in favor of fuller enforcement of our immigration laws.

Who cares if it's true or not? The purpose of calling someone a racist isn't to change his mind or heart, not to convince others of the veracity of your position. The point is to distract. To intimidate.

To silence.

There is no possible logical, intellectual or even moral pretense for supporting illegal immigration ---- a point made clear when Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico declared a state of emergency along his state's border with Mexico last month.

Richardson was spared ---- at least so far ---- the usual accusations of racism because he is Latino on his mother's side. And his action provided cover for Arizona's Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano to also declare a state of emergency along her state's border with Mexico without being branded a racist.

Perhaps this momentary lapse can provide us the chance to conduct a sober, serious public debate about illegal immigration ---- about how to humanely treat people who arrive here in violation of the law, about whether to increase the number of legal immigrants allowed in, about whether to bring back a bracero program.

Important issues all, and utterly impossible to address over a mindless chant of "racism."

I love how liberals are all for free speech as long as you agree with them. If you don't agree, they will silence you in a heart beat.