Democrats face a conundrum of hypocrisy when it comes to race

Racial identity politics has long been the domain of the Democratic party, where the hegemony of the left has taken root. This 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. In contrast, racial scandals perpetrated by those affiliated with 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 Sen. Ted Kennedy, “A few years ago, this guy (Obama) would be getting us coffee.”

{mosads}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 2:00 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 implication was that the “bastards” were, of course, blacks.

For years, civil rights leaders grumbled in a low voice that Clinton’s sins against the black community were more egregious than his whispers to Kennedy and disdain for black “bastards” would suggest.

Michelle Alexander heralded the murmur aloud on the national stage in her 2010 book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.” She argued that Clinton’s 1994 crime bill, which then-First Lady Hillary Clinton supported, was a disaster for the African-American community. It codified the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crack cocaine (used mostly by blacks) vs. 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 altar of the Democratic Party’s demigods. 

Anecdotal evidence provides an illustrative example.

I have been closely following an ongoing racial discrimination case since I first covered it on my radio show on 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 US and internationally. 

According to Biru, he was told by the World Bank that he could not be promoted to global manager because “Europeans are not used to seeing a black man in a position of power.’” Can you imagine that absurdity?

A report issued by Sen. Chris Van Hollen further noted that “to justify the denied promotion,” the World Bank “retrospectively downgraded” Biru’s performance record by 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 managements accomplishments were redacted. 

Currently, the bank’s VP of human resources 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. In contrast, 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 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 to 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 in order to continue to get federal funding.” 

Unfortunately, by the time the law was enacted, the president was Jim Young 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 DC Civil Rights Coalition and the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to stop rallying behind Biru’s case.

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. Van Hollen’s staff told Biru that the senator could not push his case any further because it would “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 cover-up of this injustice with 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.”

Armstrong Williams (@ARightSide) is author of the brand new book, “Reawakening Virtues.” He served as an adviser and spokesman for Dr. Ben Carson‘s 2016 presidential campaign, and is on Sirius XM126 Urban View nightly from 6:00-8:00 p.m. Eastern.

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