Racial identity politics has long been the domain of the Democratic Party, where the hegemony of the liberal-left has taken root. This situation has eroded the moral underpinnings of the civil rights agenda, making identity politics the currency of choice in the calculus of social justice.
Racial scandals committed by individuals associated with the Republican Party often spark moral outrage and trigger wall-to-wall media coverage. By contrast, racial scandals perpetrated by those affiliated with, or who consider themselves members of the Democratic Party, no matter how vitriolic, are ignored.
The hypocrisy manifests itself more prominently at the highest echelon of the Democratic Party. “Game Change,” a book about the 2008 U.S. presidential election, brought to light that former President Bill Clinton confided to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, “A few years ago, this guy [Obama] would be getting us coffee.”
When his wife lost the South Carolina primary to Obama by a wide margin (55.4 percent to 26.5 percent), the former president called Congressman Jim Clyburn at 2 a.m. with utter disdain. In his memoir “Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black,” Clyburn quoted Clinton as saying: “If you bastards want a fight, you damn well will get one.” The “bastards” are, of course, Blacks.
For years, civil rights leaders grumbled in a low voice that Clinton’s sins against the Black community are more egregious than his racist whispers to Kennedy and his utter disdain for Black “bastards” would suggest.
Michelle Alexander heralded the murmur loud at the national stage in her 2010 book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” She argued, rattling a cascade of economic and social statistics, that Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, which was actively supported by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, was a disaster for the African-American community. It codified the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack cocaine (used mostly by Blacks) versus powder cocaine (used mostly by whites), which institutionalized racial bias in the criminal justice system.
Ironically, the most vocal civil rights leaders continue to praise the Clintons in public, while decrying their legacy behind closed doors. The moral righteousness, political impartiality and courage to speak truth to power that was the defining elements of the Civil Rights Movement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s era have all but dissipated. Today’s civil rights leaders routinely sacrifice the interests of Black people on the altars of the Democratic Party demigods.
Anecdotal evidence provides an illustrative example:
I have been closely following an ongoing racial discrimination case since I covered the story on my radio show June 29, 2016. I was shocked by the role the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s African-American associates played in denying the victim the security of justice.
The case involved an Ethiopian national, Yonas Biru, who was the deputy global manager of a high-profile international program at the World Bank. The injustice he endured has been condemned widely, both in the U.S. and internationally.
A report by Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen noted, “Dr. Biru was told by the World Bank he could not be promoted to global manager position because ‘Europeans are not used to seeing a Black man in a position of power.’” Can you imagine that absurdity?
The senator’s report further noted that “to justify the denied promotion,” the World Bank “retrospectively downgraded” Biru’s performance record, deleting his title and management roles from World Bank website and replacing them with “defamatory” remarks. The report provided copies of Biru’s record before and after his management accomplishments were redacted.
Currently, the bank’s human resources VP and its general counsel (a senior VP) maintain contradictory positions on Biru’s official record. The bank’s HR executive affirms Biru’s stellar management record as official and valid. Contrastingly, the general counsel insists that Biru’s record is “hagiographic”—too good to be true—and the World Bank will not use the actual record of his performance to correct the retrospectively degraded record on its website. To date, the president of the World Bank has sided with the general counsel.
The senator’s report provided evidence that Biru was denied due process because the World Bank Administrative Tribunal has “different judicial standards for Black and white complainants.” Biru cannot sue the World Bank because it is immune from U.S. laws and courts.
In 2010, when the case first came to the attention of the Obama administration, the president of the World Bank was President Bush’s appointee, Robert Zoellick. The Obama administration took swift action, demanding resolution “outside of the bank’s internal judicial process through an external arbitration.” Zoellick rejected the Obama administration’s demands.
As Breitbart News noted, “The case prompted Congress to pass a law stating that the World Bank must introduce external arbitration of disputes to continue to get federal funding.”
Unfortunately, by the time the law was enacted, the president was Jim Yong Kim, an Obama appointee and a close friend of Hillary Clinton. The Obama administration’s and Hillary Clinton’s African-
American campaign surrogates circled their wagons around Kim. They pressured the D.C. Civil Rights Coalition and the Congressional Black Caucus to stop rallying behind Biru’s case.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was leading the Civil Rights Coalition, succumbed and dutifully dropped the case. Twenty-four members of the CBC withdrew their signatures from a petition that demanded judicial accountability.
In October 2016, Van Hollen appealed to the Obama administration for justice, but met with no success. His office sent Biru a regretful note stating, “The senator alone does not have the ability to compel” the Obama administration or the World Bank to redress the injustice. The senator’s staff told Biru that the senator cannot push his case any further because it would not help to “aggravate” the Obama administration.
As it stands, Biru was denied promotion and ultimately terminated from his position because of his race. Even worse, he has been disenfranchised of his hard-earned professional credentials because the World Bank deems his record too good to be true for a Black man.
In what way are the World Bank’s actions different from what white supremacists espouse? How can one square the Obama administration’s coverup of this injustice with former President Obama’s recent high-minded tweets about the Charlottesville incidents? As Alan Dershowitz rightly said, “Hypocrisy is not a way of getting back to the moral high ground.”
Mr. Williams is manager/sole owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year. Listen to Mr. Williams on Sirius XM126 Urban View nightly, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., EST. Follow him on Twitter @arightside.