The R-Word

When speaking with Bruce Springsteen on their podcast this past week, Barack Obama made an observation about Bruce’s longtime saxophone player Clarence Clemons who happened to be black. He said, “most of your audiences were primarily white. And they can love Clarence when he’s on stage but if they ran into him in a bar…Suddenly the N-word comes out.”

“Yeah,” Springsteen nodded in agreement, not having the courage to defend his loyal fans.

As a fan of Bruce and Clarence growing up, and spending my summers on the Jersey shore where both musicians would show up at local bars unannounced, and perform for free, I know from experience that Springsteen fans loved Clarence Clemons both on and off the stage; they would not think of calling Clarence the N-word.

The N-word is a despicable word, so horrific that I could barely even bring myself to type its abbreviation for this article. I do not want to be associated with that word in any way, shape or form. It is such a bad word because it is the height of prejudice. It dehumanizes the people it’s directed at. It reduces them to an evil stereotype. It judges them based solely on their skin color. It represents everything that I am against, and here former President Obama is claiming that I would use that word simply because I was white and a Springsteen fan. And it is unconscionable that Springsteen would sit there and agree that his fan base was a bunch of white racist without a shred of evidence. He should have stood up for us instead of stabbing in the back the very people who gave him a career.

Where does Obama get off making such an accusation, anyway? He has zero knowledge of the people or the environment that he is talking about. He didn’t grow up on the Jersey Shore driving from bar to bar on Friday and Saturday nights in the 70’s and 80’s chasing rumors of Clarence Clemons sightings. He’s never been to the Stone Pony or McLoone’s where Bruce and Clarence would play for us for free. Has Obama spent much time with, or even met the working-class Springsteen fans that Bruce used to care about before he became a far-left propagandist?

In the 1970’s and 80’s, Obama was splitting his time between Hawaii and Indonesia, the opposite side of the world from the Jersey Shore, and Springsteen’s roots and fans. Yet, he believes he has the right to judge all of these people as racist without any evidence, without first-hand knowledge, not because of what they did, or what they said, but based solely on the color of their skin, and his internal biases.

Obama falsely calling a group a people “racists” because of their skin color is as racist as the racism he is accusing the people of being. A false accusation of racism does the same thing that calling someone the N-word does. It judges them based on their skin color; it strips them of their humanity, and reduces them to an evil stereotype. It does the exact opposite of what we should be doing. We should not be judging each other; we should be uplifting each other. We should be colorblind, looking beyond race to view each other as individuals, as full human beings. We should embrace and encourage the full expanse of each other’s humanity, and unify based on our common humanity. Obama’s racism divides, destroys, diminishes and dehumanizes people who do not look or think exactly like him.

But this type of racism is what is being taught to our children. Critical Race Theory which is being propagated in our schools, teaches that all white people are inherently and irrevocably racist. Recently, a Virginia mother testified in front of the Loudoun County school board, relaying the story of her six-year-old daughter asking her if she was born evil because she was white. This 6-year-old girl was made to believe she was “evil”, not because of anything she did or said, but because of her skin color. As a father of three daughters, I know for a fact that 6-year-old girls are not evil. They are the sweetest, kindest, most loving people on the planet. And any teacher who tries to convince them they are evil, are themselves evil, and should be fired and never allowed to teach again.

And if this 6-year-girl has been taught that she is evil based on her skin color, what do you think the children of color in her class believe about her? They learned the same lesson that this little girl learned, that she is evil because she is white. They may also believe that all white people are evil because they are white. Does any of this bring people of different races together, or does it divide them further by race? This is not the children’s fault. They are being taught evil, ignorant things by evil, ignorant people. It is staggering that there are teachers, or people like Obama for that matter who are so ideological that they are completely blind to their own hypocrisy.

These false accusations are everywhere, though. Earlier this week, the far-left Lincoln Project sent five people with tiki torches to stand in front of GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin’s campaign bus in an attempt to falsely paint all of Youngkin’s supporters as racist. And many Democrats quickly jumped to exploit this false flag. Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) use this race hoax to label all Republicans as racist by tweeting, “birds of a feather”, MSNBC contributor Glenn Kirschner called it “blatant display of racism, hatred and intolerance,” and the Democrat candidate, Terry McAuliffe’s staffers tweeted that the hoax was “disgusting and disqualifying” for Youngkin, and “this is who Glenn Youngkin’s supporters are.” It is very clear that a false accusation of racism is as evil as the racism that is being accused. It not only hurts the accused, but can destroy his livelihood, and his life.

Barack Obama’s false accusation about white Springsteen fans is as bad a calling someone the N-word. It showed that Obama is infinitely more racist than the little white 6-year-old girl who the Loudoun county school system is teaching is racist, or any of Springsteen’s fans for that matter. Our country is embracing and teaching this form of racism under the guise of “anti-racism”. Certain people actually believe they are fighting racism by accusing people of being racist simply because they are white. That would be like using hemlock as an antidote to poison. All of this racialization of America is making the country more racist, not less, more divided, not less, more hate-filled, not less. We are regressing as a society in our blind pursuit of phony progressivism. And people like Barack Obama are leading the charge.

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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.