MANSFIELD: Phillip Morris’ False Equivalency

While Plain Dealer columnist Phillip Morris did kinda, sorta, write that it was indeed time for the “racist” (my word, not his) Chief Wahoo to be relegated to the dustbin of history, he then went a bridge too far by suggesting that Native Americans can now turn their focus on something more serious, such as the deplorable conditions on the reservations they have been forced to live on for over 100 years. That’s a false equivalency of almost contemptible magnitude.

This is a sly way to blame the conditions on reservations on Native Americans, who, after all, would have solved these monumental problems if only they had not spent their time frivolously protesting Wahoo, right? Wrong.

Government policies — the same unfair governmental policy that has wreaked havoc on disadvantaged black populations — is to blame for the deplorable conditions on Indian reservations, not Native American inattention.

The abominable conditions on Native American reservations and using a caricature to pretend to honor a race of people that have been marginalized in an unimaginable manner have absolutely nothing to do with each other, except for the fact that both emanate from the contempt whites historically have held for all non-whites in this country. This kind of reasoning is akin to the silliness that blacks have heard since the beginning of the Civil Rights Era: If we simply quit complaining about racism it would soon disappear, which is akin to saying that we keep bigotry alive with our protests.

Bullshit.

We tried the silent route for decades and all that did was cause us to be treated worse. The same situation applies to Native Americans. The protests that led to the Indians benching Chief Wahoo forever were hated by insensitive Americans, the kind that simply want to enjoy a baseball game while celebrating their culture of racism — because they are, at heart, lying hypocrites.

From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.

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