The ultimate in condescension

Ken Concannon
Published: March 20, 2008

There’s a scene in the 2004 movie “The Alamo” where Davy Crockett (played by Billy Bob Thornton), is on his knees with his hands tied behind his back, surrounded by General Santa Anna and about a zillion Mexican soldiers with bayonets pointed at him. Crockett/Thornton is asked if he has any last words, whereupon the soon-to-be-deceased offers the Mexicans an opportunity to surrender. Addressing Santa Anna’s interpreter, Crockett/Thornton says:

“You tell the general I’m willing to discuss the terms of surrender.  You tell him; if he’ll order his men to put down their weapons and line up, I’ll take them to Sam Houston and I’ll try my best to save most of them. That said; Sam’s a mite twitchy, so no promises.”

Where I come from, that’s called “chutzpah.” Of course, chutzpah can mean different things to different people. Take for example, Mara Liasson, national correspondent for National Public Radio, and a regular talking head for Fox News “Special Report.”

She described the Clintons’ recent suggestion that Barack Obama (who currently leads Hillary Clinton in delegates and voters) should be Hillary’s Vice Presidential candidate on a Hillary/Obama ticket as “political chutzpah.”

Columnist Charles Krauthammer, another regular on “Special Report,” described the suggestion differently. 

He called it the “ultimate in condescension.”  I’m inclined to agree with him.

Merriam-Webster defines the word “condescension” as a “patronizing attitude or behavior” — which is what Democratic Party-sponsored slavery and segregation has become in the long, checkered relationship between blacks and white Democrats. Founded by slave-owners some two hundred years ago, the Democratic Party’s answer to race relations has been consistently wrong-headed throughout its entire history, unless, of course, you’re inclined to think that slavery, segregation, and condescension is a good way to deal with people.

In his now famous “race speech” given in Philadelphia a few days ago, Barack Obama had this to say about the history of race relations in this country:

“Understanding this reality [the complexities of race] requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”

What Obama neglected to remind his audience was the role his party has played in the “history of racial injustice in this country.” 
In the years leading up to the Civil War the Democratic Party had become the political mechanism of southern slave-owners who were systematically consolidating political power in Washington. The goal of these slave-owners, the “Slaveocracy,” was to protect current slave-holding interests and expand their “peculiar institution” to the Western territories. In the mid-1850s the Republican Party was formed primarily to counter the Democratic Party’s attempts to nationalize slavery.

The election in 1860 of Republican Abraham Lincoln broke the national political power of the Slaveocracy. Unaccustomed to such setbacks, the South decided to take its marbles and go home.  Eleven
Southern states seceded from the Union, causing in turn, the Civil War, the abolition of slavery, and Reconstruction (during which Republican carpetbaggers and ex-slaves found themselves in charge of
Southern state and local governments.)

Reconstruction ended in 1877, and white Democrats soon found themselves back in power, and more than a little vindictive toward the people they once enslaved. 

The “Solid South” became a one-party (Democrat) region, and white Southern Democrats enacted a series of “Jim Crow” laws designed to keep blacks segregated, disenfranchised, impoverished, and “in their place.” The Jim Crow South lasted for almost 90 years, until 1964. To his everlasting credit Democrat President Lyndon Johnson, continuing the work of martyred President John Kennedy, worked with a coalition of Republican Senators and Northern Democrats — who were appalled by the situation in the South — to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which effectively outlawed Jim Crow legislation by the states.

This, however, did not end black oppression. It just required it to be more subtle. Realizing that they needed an ill-informed black constituency to keep themselves in power, liberal Democrats have used government programs, professional black victim mongers, hideously ineffective public schools and misinformation to keep blacks “in their place.” 

All of this has worked amazingly well for the white Democrat establishment, until the anomaly, Barack Obama — an articulate, charismatic black politician with appeal to both black and white voters.
Aside from condescending, they haven’t figured out yet what to do about him.

Ken Concannon is a resident of Prince William County. E-mail him at .