The Washington Post‘s liberal black columnist William Raspberry once said something reasonable on race (he defended the Boy Scouts against charges that their name was racist when applied to blacks). But the DC thought police would have “wilded” any white who made a similar comment.

Whites aren’t even allowed to make political criticisms. Just recently, a white publisher was denied an alumni award by George Washington University because of a “racist remark.” He had called DC Mayor Marion Barry a “clown.”

Barry, a man whose voice would be outlawed if English were made the official language, is a crack-smoking philanderer and former welfare hustler. Now he hustles on a grand scale, but he should not have been called a clown. The remark should have been reported to the Clown Anti-Defamation League.

The received view on these matters was expressed by a black professor at Howard University: blacks cannot be racist; whites always are. This is a useful guide to modern race relations, especially if you’re white and fortunate enough to live in Washington, DC.

In DC, black radio stations urge listeners not to shop in white-owned stores. Black ministers lead anti-white boycotts. Black professors teach that whites invented AIDS and crack cocaine as genocidal “chemical warfare” against blacks. Black employees of convenience stores and gas stations radiate hostility to any white customer. The DC government itself candidly discriminates against whites in employment, contracts, and “city services.”

On the streets—hard as it might be to believe in these days of Benson hurstomania—interracial crime is virtually always black on white, with some of it justified as “fighting the power.” Even in the better areas, black pedestrians make obscene or threatening re marks and shout anti-white rap songs to the accompaniment of ghetto blasters turned to maximum static.

What a relief to walk, shop, or eat in DC’s small Ethiopian area, which is peopled by successful, confident blacks whose self-image is not defined in anti-whiteness and who are therefore invisible in the liberal media.

Not invisible in the liberal media was Raspberry’s recent column about a popular slogan on buttons and T-shirts in the nation’s capital: “It’s a Black Thing. You Wouldn’t Understand.”

This is “hip, humorous, and race conscious in a healthy sort of way,” says Raspberry. “A Congressional Black Caucus is legitimate” but a “Congressional White Caucus would be unthinkable.” “Black Is Beautiful” is permissible, but “White Is Beautiful” is “the slogan of bigots.”

Oh?

We were told the civil rights movement would usher in a color-blind society. In fact, the goal was always a race-obsessed society with state power enforcing discrimination and redistribution in favor of blacks. And that is exactly what we have.

Of course there are racist whites. But outside of a miniscule band of KKK members, few define their lives in anti-blackness. Most DC blacks, on the other hand, seem to be charter members of what we might call the BBB.

We are supposed to condone DC, the aptly nicknamed “workfree drug place” with its anti-white government, anti-white radio, anti-white ministers, anti-white universities, and anti-white citizenry, while denouncing white racism and the dreaded thought crime of “insensitivity,” or so says William Raspberry.

One of my rules is to never trust a liberal columnist whose last name is a little red fruit. So far I’ve had no reason to amend it.