On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher expressed concern that the “gotcha guardians” are creating an environment that “will make people afraid to mingle and push us toward further segregation, where instead of just seeing a person, and not a color, now we are only seeing the color. “
Maher said: “Blacks have to demand that whites stop culturally appropriating how angry they are at racism. It’s great that Caucasians have finally joined the fight for racial justice in an unprecedented number, but do they hate racism more? You can’t steal that.
After discussing the Oakland incident, where ropes on exercise trees placed by a black man were mistaken for ropes and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (D) promised to investigate the ropes as a hate crime, Maher commented: “Why? This white woman is seeing racism where a black man is not? The mayor also said:[I]intentions don’t matter. But they do matter. And whites should stop trying to cancel other whites whose hearts are in the right place, but they don’t do it exactly right on the first try. “
He later stated, “Liberalism should be about lifting people up, and you don’t do it by slapping people who are trying to say, I’m on your side.” … You want to be a good ally, but not too good, or you are being a white savior. Use your voice, but don’t do anything about yourself, but speak, unless it’s your time to listen, and then silence is violence. Although sometimes silence only means that someone has two jobs and has three children. They have baby food on their shirts, I don’t hate my heart. “
He concluded: “I am concerned that the kind of tension the gotcha guardians are creating is going to make people afraid of mixing at all, and it will push us towards a kind of re-segregation, where instead of just seeing one person , and not a color, now we are only seeing color. Maybe this is the old school liberalism speaking, but I don’t think that is the way to go. “
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
