Take Heed Excuse Makers!

This week former President Jimmy Carter and comedian/scholar Bill Cosby decided to express their ignorance and profess that people who disagree with President Obama's agenda are race motivated. I refer them to possibly the greatest statement on that subject reprinted below. The speaker is one of the most intelligent people of our time, and proves it with these words. (Please note race nor gender were used to describe this scholar)

I feel certain that we have taught you to call prejudice and bigotry by name and to challenge it in our institutional structures... But have we equipped you to deal with bigotry in your daily lives? Do you understand that prejudice is not an impenetrable force field that cannot be overcome? The will to succeed may be your most potent weapon against the prejudice that is still deeply ingrained in the fabric of our country and world.

Prejudice and bigotry are brought down...by the sheer force of determination of individuals to succeed and the refusal of a human being to let prejudice define the parameters of the possible.

If your first reaction to failure is, prejudice is to blame- if your first thought when you or another minority succeed is that race or gender or a physical disability must have been the patron-if when someone disagrees with you or stands in your way, you immediately suspect that person to be a bigot...bigotry and prejudice are winning because their mere existence has begun to define your success, your failures, and your relationships to others. You have become part of the pernicious dismissal of individual will. You are sanctioning the belittlement of the efforts of generations of nameless minorities- woman who have scrubbed floors to send children to college, men who were spat upon but kept their dignity- people who suffered and sacrificed so that step by step, victory by victory,the walls of prejudice would be brought down, and one and then two and then many minorities could pass through and achieve.

Condoleezza Rice

Powerful words from an intelligent powerful person. Take a hint purveyors of the racial excuse. My prayer is this will be memorized and a code to live by.

God Bless
Capt. Bill