Author’s Corner: Erik Rush

Erik Rush is a columnist and author, and has worked as a club, stage and studio musician. He was the first to break the story about controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s connection to President Obama in February 2007. He writes columns for WorldNetdaily.com, and has appeared on Fox News, CNN and countless radio shows. His previous books include “Annexing Mexico: Solving the Border Problem Through Annexation and Assimilation.” His latest book is “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession.” He is himself African-American.

Do you feel the Tea Party movement has been miscast as racist by the left?
Yes, I do. I believe that there are a lot of people who have a political imperative in keeping the perception going that America is an institutionally racist nation. I believe that they saw the Tea Party as another vehicle for advancing that perception.

How exactly are the Obama Administration and its supporters racist?  
I believe that there are some among them who have a racist ideology. I think that there are some among them who are inordinately mistrustful of whites due to the propaganda that they were indoctrinated with, and misinterpretations, perhaps, of some experiences that they’ve had. I think that some of the people in the Obama Administration and his supporters are motivated by different things. In his colleagues’ case, it’s a matter of power. Other people, like certain career civil rights activists, have a financial imperative or are motivated by ideology. That is sometimes based on their honest, misguided, beliefs.

What is Negrophilia and how has it been a part of the Obama Administration?
Well, Negrophilia, as I describe it, is the twofold tactic of deceiving and misrepresenting black Americans while demonizing white Americans and portraying the United States as still being an institutionalized racist nation. I see it as being something by which the far left has kept misguided black Americans in a state of “sprawl-dom” and used that to maintain political control over them, by way of propaganda, entitlement, and dependency, and has kept white Americans in check through guilt, shame over the past, and an ongoing campaign of leveling charges of racism quite often when they are not valid.

How is Negrophilia detrimental to America and to blacks in particular?
In addition to fostering an erroneous perception of whites by black and blacks by whites, it’s also expanded into less than healthy and constructive relationships between blacks and whites and other ethnic groups, some of which have also employed the same sort of the playing of the race card. Playing of the race card is one aspect of Negrophilia that has grown out of it. I see it as sort of standard fare by the hard left, that is when they don’t want to argue, they throw invective at you. I think it’s hurt America in that when you have that many citizens of the population dealing antipathy and mistrust and suspicion, it makes for a very poor interaction. It makes for the kind of things we’ve been seeing in the press lately, over the summer, with the sorts of things that are going on with race tensions having increased.

In particular, it has by design ensured them substandard education, dependency on the government, feelings of entitlement, all of the psychological damage that comes with being dependent on the government, feeling hopeless, and not really thinking that there are opportunities for them, or a way out of the situation they perceive themselves to be in.

Obviously, the economic disadvantages, in that a far greater percentage of the black population could be where the black middle class are, for want of education and sound policies. A lot of poorer, inner city blacks have remained where they were in the mid-1960s, when it’s not necessary. They could have moved out of that.

What do you think are the roots of Negrophilia?
Some of it had to do with Segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, who sought to maintain control over black Americans when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. After the elements of the far left insinuated themselves into government, into the Democratic Party, into various administrative areas and activist areas, that’s when it became a political imperative for them to advance the idea that things were not changing, that whites were still inherently racist, and that America was still institutionally racist. They’ve been pretty much doing the sorts of things that we see progressive politicians and career civil rights activists doing now for the last forty years.

I’ve been writing on the topic of race for a long time. Negrophilia was one of those things that’s been in the back of my mind for a long time. Obviously, being black, or of mixed race, and having grown up during the Civil Rights Era, in New York, with a lot of things going on there, I had a lot of first hand experience, and observations. There was just some research that I had to do, with statistics to reinforce the sort of things that I’m saying in my book.

Do you think true racism still exists in America?
Oh, absolutely. There are still good old bigots and white separatist and supremacist types. Some of them are living in enclaves. Some of them are living among us. But my point is that an institutionally racist nation is one in which the ethnic minority in question has no redress. Black Americans have a great deal of redress. The generations that have grown up over the last forty years have been clearly dissuaded from those sorts of views. For the America that I see, race is not the concern that it was fifty years ago. But there definitely are still more traditional racists out there.