Linda Brown died Monday at the age of 76. Her parents’ desire for her to attend the school closest to their home precipitated the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision in May of 1954, which said prohibiting someone from attending a public school simply because of one’s race was an unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment. The closest school to Linda Brown was an all-white school, but Brown was a black child, which prohibited the school from enrolling her.
Noting Brown’s passing, Vice President Mike Pence took to Twitter to say a few kind words about her. The day following her death, Pence tweeted that Brown would “be remembered as a towering figure in the fight for equality & equal treatment under the law. Her role in challenging school segregation helped make our Nation a better place & her legacy will live on for decades. May she rest in peace.”
It is hard to imagine how such a comment could be controversial, but the Huffington Post found some angry twitter responses to Pence’s kind words from some liberals, and opted to make a story out of it.
Huff Po, of course, is a popular progressive website that puts a liberal spin on the stories of the day.
The tweets cited by the Huffington Post made it crystal clear that anyone associated with President Trump will be smeared as a racist, even after making a non-political tweet praising a central figure in the desegregation of public schools. Several tweets attacked Pence for leaving a professional football game “because of football players peacefully protesting inequality.”
A different tweet cited another reason the players were “peacefully protesting” — “police brutality” — but shared the same viewpoint that Pence was somehow a hypocrite for praising an old woman at the time of her death. “This from the guy who attended a football game so he could walk out when the players peacefully protested police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem,” one tweet read.
Actually, the initial excuse for the protests was clearly stated by protest originator Colin Kaepernick: “I am not going to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people.” It would seem that the former second-string pro player’s beef is with the country he lives in. He also clearly expressed that he did not like the police. “Cops are getting paid leave for killing people,” Kaepernick insisted in explaining his dislike of America’s police officers.
This puts in proper context Pence’s decision to leave an NFL game in October of last year between the Indianapolis Colts and the San Francisco 49ers immediately after several 49ers players opted to take a knee during the playing of the National Anthem.
Are these tweeters and Huff Post saying that Pence’s own “peaceful protest” of leaving a football stadium because some highly-paid professional athletes are disrespecting the flag of the country in which he serves as vice president is an act of racism by Pence? It would appear so.
One person even tweeted a criticism of Pence for his supposed lack of a “track record” of creating laws for equal treatment of the LGBTQ community and women, all because Pence took time to remember the passing of a black woman who was at the center of an important event in the history of the civil rights movement.
This “race card” has been in the liberal playbook for decades now. Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has been smeared as a racist. Those Republicans who think a different Republican president than Trump would not be smeared as a racist need only remember this history, along with the present condemnation by Huff Post of Vice President Pence. The reality is that conservative African-Americans such as Clarence Thomas and Herman Cain come in for especially vitriolic attacks by those on the Left. Yet these attacks are said not to be motivated by racism by those on the Left who launch them.
One tweet was of particular interest: “You forfeited your right to pretend you care about racial justice when you walked out of that football game.” One must wonder: Do those on the Left possess a “right to pretend” that they care, a “right” that is not shared by Republican politicians? It would appear that this tweet reveals more than was intended, i.e., many on the Left simply pretend to care, in order to advance their left-wing agenda.
Photo: AP Images
