Lies about My Grandmother

Steve Sailer quotes the section in Barack Obama’s 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, in which Obama describes the incident involving his grandmother’s encounter with a black man. It turns out that what Obama said in his speech yesterday is a total distortion of his detailed account in his book. This is must reading, though it will make you sick. Barack’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was genuinely frightened of a panhandler who had accosted her at a bus stop and wouldn’t stop, and so she didn’t want to ride the bus to work any more. It was Barack’s grandfather, a knee-jerk liberal, who was bullying his wife because she had told him the man was black and he said it was wrong to be frightened of a black man, even if he was bothering her. When the grandfather told Barack that the man whom his grandmother was frightened by was black, “The words were like a fist in my stomach, and I wobbled to regain my composure.”

This is the incident which Obama in his speech yesterday translated into his grandmother uttering “racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe,” and which he morally equated with anti-American anti-white rantings of Jeremiah Wright. In fact, in the actual incident (as recounted by Sailer from the book, I’m assuming Sailer is not leaving anything out), Obama’s grandmother doesn’t say anything in his presence about the man’s blackness, and all that she did say (out of Barack’s hearing, to his grandfather) was that the man was black.

Obama is not just a demagogue, not just a liar, not just a man who pretends to be nice while secretly and now openly agreeing with black racist America-haters. He is a monster, who, in Sailer’s words, “throws his own 85-year-old grandmother under the wheels of the BS Express.” He’s certainly worse than the career rogue Jesse Jackson. Jackson at least has admitted to experiencing a fear of young black men on the street. But in the elevated mental universe of Barack Obama, if a middle-aged white woman is accosted by a black man on a bus and she feels afraid, THAT makes her a racist, and THAT shows that America is racist, and THAT shows that America is responsible for all the ills of blacks, and THAT justifies Jeremiah Wright’s demonization of America and whites.

It all comes down to what I’ve called the First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society: the worse blacks behave (e.g., a black man persistently accosts a white woman at a bus stop demanding money from her), the worse whites are made to appear for having a normal human response to that bad behavior. The only moral, non-racist response by white people to black misbehavior or violence is for the whites to pretend not to see it and to sacrifice themselves.

Obama does not represent some progress to a higher black and liberal consciousness. Underneath his shining, smiling, benevolent exterior, he represents a regression to the worst in black America, and the worst in liberalism.

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James M2 writes:

Obama obviously knows his chances of being questioned about this contradiction by the MSM are slim to none, but he’s still left himself an out. He will simply state that the two accounts are not of the same incident. Grandma was racist multiple times.

LA replies:

I haven’t read the book. But consider the life-changing impact this one incident had on him: When his grandfather tells him that his grandmother had said that the man bothering her was black, Barack felt as though he had been punched in the stomach, and this was immediately followed by his black Communist mentor telling him that his grandmother is right to feel afraid of blacks, because blacks do have a fury at whites, and this fury is justified, and from this moment Barack feels alone. So this clearly was a turning point in his development. And the only “wrong” Madelyn Dunham had done in this incident was to tell her husband that the man who had bothered her was black. If the man had not been black, or if she had not said he was black, there would have been no incident. So, by Obama’s own account, the thing that changed his life and convinced him of the reality of white racism and of his own separation from white America was nothing more than the simple fact that it was a black man who accosted his grandmother, and that she said it was a black man who had accosted her.

So nothing more was needed, no other “bigoted” incidents in which his mother vented racial stereotypes were needed.

Mark K. writes:

LA writes:

“It all comes down to what I’ve called the First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society: the worse blacks behave (e.g., a black man persistently accosts a white woman on a bus demanding money from her), the worse whites are made to appear for having a normal human response to that bad behavior.”

Obama’s minister, after having read Obama’s book (if he had read it), should have counseled Obama (as a spiritual mentor) that the one to blame in this act was the man who had accosted the woman! That it is not Obama’s grandmother that sinned but the thug. Instead Obama, through his church and to justofy his spiritual mentor, cast aspersions on the one who responsibly brought him up. What a church! What a minister! What a Christian!

Shrewsbury writes:

I recently unearthed part of a letter from 1980 which the young Shrewsbury, then a resident of Boston, had written to his brother, concerning the now-forgotten Miami riot of that year. This was an explosion of savagery almost unparalleled in U.S. history, which has since been thrust entirely down the Memory Hole, so much so that one never sees it referenced even at nationalist sites.

Anyway, here is what the young Shrewsbury wrote. I send it along because I found it interesting in light of so much that has transpired since, and particularly your statement of the First Law of Majority/Minority Relations under the pathological regime of Liberalism—that which demands us to regard with horror the “racism” of a middle-aged white lady who is afraid of an aggressive, threatening panhandler [N.B.: I have made no changes to the (consciously, bitterly) unacceptable language of the original … but that’s only because Shrewsbury couldn’t care less]:

“The negroes in Miami were outraged because four hardworking policemen were found innocent by a jury. At 9:30 p.m. on the first night of the riot, three whites, Charles Barreca, 15, Robert Owens, 15, and Benny Higdon, 21, were dragged from their car and beaten to death by a mob of negroes (New York Times). “Nearly three hours later, a body believed to be a Hispanic man was found on a street in the riot area, mutilated beyond identification.” (New York Times) “Around 3 o’clock yesterday morning, Emilio Munoz, a 66-year-old butcher returning home from his nighttime job, was burned to death by blacks who stopped his car and set it ablaze.” (New York Times) “The violence in Miami has its special horrors. The race riots of a decade ago familiarized us with the basics—arson, looting, sniping and killing. But Miami had atrocities, the kind of savagery that occurred in the Congo when the blacks fell on their colonial oppressors. The body of a white man, one of two who had been beaten unconscious, was run over by a car, three times, while onlookers cheered” (column by Mary McGrory, lobotomized liberal).

“So the Attorney General, Benjamin Civilleti, went to Miami to announce that he shared the “black community’s” grievances, and that the white policemen would be retried under federal law. One of the policemen tried to commit suicide. All over television and the newspapers liberal propagandists were speaking of how disturbing it was that racism still existed in Florida and that the negroes had been driven to such an expression of moral outrage. Ms. McGrory cited the above incident to give emphasis to her cries of how necessary it is for the federal government to go in and start helping these poor oppressed people, especially with job programs now that scores of local factories and warehouses have been burned down in anger over high black unemployment. Black leaders around the country have called for a general amnesty of all those arrested during the riot, while the Mayor of Miami suspended five policemen for using excessive force on looters. Meanwhile in Boston there has long existed a pressure group to give aid and assistance to negroes accused of crimes, which last year won the release of two definitely guilty accessories to a stabbing murder of a Harvard student in the Combat Zone, and a probably guilty negro charged with eleven rapes. Surprising as it may seem, however, the vicious white racists of Boston, infamous for throwing rocks at schoolbuses after the federal government had taken their children away from them, did not, after these trials, burn anyone alive.

“So there it is—our civilization is dead. There’s nothing left. The hell with it. Let’s launch the nukes and start over.”

Thus the young Shrewsbury; who also witnessed the vacuum called Bryant Gumble reporting on the riot and looking real serious and affronted … about what? You know what—the “racism” of white people in Florida which had provoked the riot.

David B. writes:

We must remember that we can’t take anything Obama says at 100 percent face value. This includes the story about his grandmother, which he has told in different versions. The incident on the bus sounds very believable. The constant is that Obama had to include an account in his book, and another in his biggest speech. Also, he portrays himself as the Noble, Aggrieved Black Man forever battling against Evil White Racism. However it happened, Obama tries to dress it up to make himself look as good as possible in his own light.

Each election cycle, the candidates seem to become more repulsive. In 2004, it was Bush and Kerry. Does the word repulsive begin to describe Barack Hussein Obama and John McCain? This is my two cents.

Glynn Custred writes:

Thanks for this piece. It deserves wide distribution.

I was wrong when I said that this incident would go no farther than the talk shows, then disappear. I was right that the “mainstream press” suppressed it. I was wrong in that I thought they could get by with it. The question is, will anyone remember it by November? I won’t take any bets.

Obama had the golden opportunity to stand up against the past and reject the lingering racism and hate of blacks; to acknowledge the advancement of many black Americans, to praise those whites who have worked towards this goal and to praise the country in which this has happened, and argue that he is the man, a son of both races, to lead us even farther.

He did indeed say that Wright’s statements are outmoded. But then he reverted to a tactic so old that it even has a Latin name: tu quoque, “you’re one too,” the assertion of equivalence to cover for your own weakness. In this equivalence he sets Wright’s vileness alongside HIS OWN GRANDMOTHER who he makes the emblem of the white racism that balances, and excuses black racism.

That is betrayal of the most sordid kind. Sacrificing your own family, a woman in his words that loves him and sacrificed for him, to defend black solidarity and the black bigots who lead it.

And what was the grandmother’s racial sin? Being afraid of a black stalker. Jesse Jackson is famously quoted as saying he is relieved when he hears footsteps behind him and finds that they are not made by young black men. So why can Jesse Jackson say that and get by with it while Obama’s grandmother, who loves and has sacrificed for him and who legitimately feared the man who was threatening her, is the emblem for Obama’s assertion of equivalence?

The answer is painfully clear. Obama has not advanced enough to lead anybody out of our racial past. He is still too mired in it himself.

Richard O. writes:

Obama’s reaction is an example of the tactic of forcing whites to walk on eggshells. Obama’s grandmother made one and only one comment (under the circumstances and with the justification you and Sailer describe). That one comment was enough to wipe the slate completely clean for Obama and force the accounting deeply into deficit territory.

His grandmother had taken him in and she and her husband were apparently spending considerable money on his education. I’ve not read anywhere that Obama found her personally cold, rejecting, or hateful to him. Nowhere has he stated that she indirectly or directly insulted him because of his mixed racial background at any time. But let her make one descriptive obsrvation (to her husband, not to Barack) about a bum on street who was aggressively pestering and frightening her, and it was enough to cause the buzzer to sound and send Obama reeling down the road.

It was like the classic scene in the movie Top Secret where the pursuing jeep slides to a halt and the fender just barely kisses the fender of the car pursued. A touch like a glove hand on a crystal vase, and, KRUMP, the cars disappear in a fireball. Obama simply ignores any kind of a balance sheet with pluses and minuses. The outrage of America is defined always and entirely by the trivial or entirely bogus event of the most recent two minutes.

Upwards of $4 trillion spend on Great Society programs if memory serves me and it means zilch. Some white schlub looked at Wright on the street the wrong way, and shazam! The cancer of irremediable white racism infects America always and eternally!

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 19, 2008 06:26 PM | Send