Air Force Academy head
takes PC-racist stance

It is time to state firmly and clearly that there are two kinds of racism on the loose in North America: ugly (violent hatred by street slobs) and polite (patronizing emasculation by the Politically Correct).

A century ago, the ugly variety predominated. Now the polite version is all the rage. We need to get rid of both, but it isn't going to happen until people realize that both exist.

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Author James Baldwin ("Go Tell It on the Mountain," "The Fire Next Time") once described how he could detect the presence of polite, hidden racism:

Whenever I go to a white writers' congress, I have a method for figuring out whether my colleagues are racist. It consists of saying stupid things and supporting absurd theories. If they listen to me respectfully and then burst out in applause, there's no doubt about it: a group of racist pigs.

That's the patronizing sort of racism that descended last week upon the U.S. Air Force Academy here in Colorado Springs. While ostensibly elevating the image of blacks and other races, this politically correct racism actually stuffs them into a semantic box and prohibits criticism – or even normal, balanced discussions about them. (For their own good, of course!)

The eventual outcome of this high-handed kind of patronizing can be seen on almost any Indian reservation: poverty, despair and crushed self-esteem. When you start by making the assumption that a certain group is too stupid or too weak to take care of itself, when you appoint yourself and your fellow elitists as the virtuous guardians of these downtrodden sheep, and when you angrily suppress debate or even discussion of your cockeyed theories, then you are actually broadcasting a message that you think your flock is inherently inferior.

So what happened to bring about this sort of spirit on the lovely campus of the U.S.A.F. Falcons?

First, the Falcons' beloved football coach Fisher DeBerry paid a compliment to black athletes everywhere. Within earshot of the press, he grumbled briefly about how he wished he had more black athletes on his team. After losing to TCU 48-10, he observed that, "Their defense had 11 Afro-American kids on their team, and they were a very, very good defensive football team ... [T]hey ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well." He also groused that "you don't see many minority athletes in our program." By the bye, DeBerry's 22-year AFA record is 161-95-1 with 12 bowl game wins.

Now if DeBerry had slammed blacks as being slower, that would have been an insult. But as Mychal Thompson, a black former Laker commented on XTRA, "It's a compliment ... People should lighten up."

James Tucker, a local black activist, concurred: "[H]e is right ... Mr. DeBerry is a real man, and he's saying what most people think." Indeed, how could people think otherwise? In a nation with 12 percent blacks, our NFL is 69 percent black. Frankly, the only white sports teams I can think of that dazzle me with their speed is some Indy 500 pit crews.

The next thing was, Lt. General John Regni took command of the Academy on Oct. 24. My sources tell me that at a welcoming dinner, the folksy, down-home DeBerry was intending to offer Regni a friendly greeting and handshake, but before that could happen Regni pulled DeBerry aside and gave him a two-minute tongue-lashing for disgracing the institution.

I don't think Regni was posturing. From all reports, he's a genuinely nice guy. Probably doesn't have a bone in his body that resonates with the old, ugly racism. But the fervent, patronizing politically correct racism he brings to his office may cast yet another pall over a fine campus that is struggling to get past the effects of two recent media flaps.

One of those flaps is a politically correct-based drive against Christians. Already, I know of at least one group of cadets who are practicing their bailing-out skills by leaving the campus once a week, just to escape the somewhat poisoned atmosphere and spend a few hours discussing their lives and values in a warm, happy setting over lunch. That tells me there's a morale problem that Regni needs to correct, not exacerbate.

My advice for the general: Lighten up, sir. You're oversteering. The U.S. Air Force is a serious business that needs to be run on realistic, old-fashioned American values, not nouveau-politically correct nonsense.

Next week: Why political correctness is evil.