I touched on Cliven Bundy’s racist remarks in my last column. Here’s the text of his comments.
“I want to tell you one more thing about the Negro.”
Bundy recalled driving past a public housing project in North Las Vegas, “And in front of the government house the door was usually open and the older people and kids — and there is always at least half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for the young girls to do.”
“And basically they are on Government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “ They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”
We should have zero tolerance for this kind of blatant racism.
Less freedom! He’s out of his mind! This is without question among the most racist and dumbest statements I’ve ever heard. It’s shocking. He watched too many 1940 movies, most of which totally misrepresented slavery down on the Suwannee River.
Slaves were told with whom they would bear children. Children were only allowed to be fathered by the strongest slaves, or by the masters themselves. Relationships, such as a family, hardly existed. Children were often sold, and separated from their mother. Abortion per-capita was probably greater among slaves than it is among women today. Owners often had pregnancies aborted if they weren’t planed by him. He might sell or even kill the mother.
Of course many slaves aborted children simply because they didn’t want to bring a child into a life of slavery; A life where they would be lynched for even attempting to learn to read; A life where they were beaten regularly; A life where very young girls were forced to have children; A life of hard labor and no pay; And a life where they might be sold any day to the highest bidder. That’s the family life Bundy flatly says allows more freedom than living off a government subsidy. You would think he would know better; He lives off the government.
Bundy’s comment about jailing their young men, because they never learned to pick cotton is even more offensive because it doesn’t take half a brain to pick cotton, just a strong back. It’s kind of like falling off a log. Slavery is the same as being jailed, it’s involuntary incarceration for life.
To compare a life of slavery to receiving government assistance is nuts. But I hear that from Tea Party people all the time. They assume living on government subsidies is always a choice made by the recipient and ignore the fact that unemployment or a low minimum wage can be underlying factors. They also imply that slavery is a better alternative lifestyle choice. That would make sense to Bundy, since he doesn’t recognize the Federal Government and therefore must not recognize the Constitution, under which he claims protection, or the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery.
Bundy has taken the government for $1.2 million, about $60,000.00 a year. If that’s not living off the government, I don’t know what is. He’s a taker by choice. A thief by definition.
Bundy’s political friends are jumping ship because they can’t defend his racism. Even Greta Van Susteren of Fox rebuked him. The Tea Party militia, and I suspect Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, along with others who believe their employees are nothing but slaves, agree with Bundy.
I acknowledge that some people of all races, having little or no education, and after years of not finding a decent paying job, just give up.
A person sitting on his or her front porch and living in subsidized housing isn’t necessarily totally dependent on the government. Bundy assumed because they were “Negros” and apparently not doing anything at the time, they must be living off the government. That’s another racist assumption.
It’s billionaires who hide their money off-shore and pay no taxes, and a cattle rancher in Nevada who refuses to pay grazing fees, who are the real takers. They count on the government doing nothing while they rob the treasury. They do quite nicely living off the Government. It’s as easy as picking cotton. For the poor, living on government subsidies isn’t much of a living, but it’s a billion times better than slavery.
Glen McAdoo, a Fallon resident, can be contacted at glynn@phonewave.net.