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Call to Boycott the Olympics in China an Act of Hypocrisy
By
Kris Bailey
Recently,
there have been protests all over the world against holding the Olympics
in China. Taking full advantage of this emotionally charged issue,
both Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack
Obama, have called on President Bush to boycott this event. It is
irresponsible of both Senators to use what might be the only opportunity
for some of these young people to showcase their talent for political
gain.
The only people that will be hurt by this idle gesture are
the kids who have spent their entire lives training for this moment.
Now Clinton and Obama want to snatch it out from under them for the
sake of a few votes. Am I the only one who wonders why, if they feel
so strongly about China’s human rights violations, they didn’t
call for a boycott on borrowing money from the Chinese or a boycott
on buying merchandise made in China.
While extreme conservative television and radio personalities
like Elisabeth Hasselbeck of ABC’s The View and Frank Pastore
from KKLA, in their ignorance, continue to berate Rev. Jeremiah Wright
for expressing his anger over more than two centuries of oppression
of Blacks in America, so-called ultra-liberals want to boycott the
Olympics. In both cases, they just don’t get it.
Let’s face it, if racism in this country has not been fixed
despite a bus boycott, the entire Civil Rights Movement, several
riots and repeated pleas for Reparations, which by the way continue
to fall on deaf ears, the problem of China’s human rights violations
will not be fixed with one symbolic boycott.
While Clinton and Obama are calling on the President to boycott
the Olympics, I am calling on them to stop the hypocrisy and the
rhetoric. The US needs to realize that the old philosophy, “Do
as I say, not as I do,” is no longer working. As long as there
is unfair and unequal treatment in America both racially and economically,
people around the globe will continue to look at the US with disdain
as it tries to set itself up as the world’s moral police. As
someone very wise once said, “People who live in glass houses
shouldn’t throw stones.”
Until there are fair and equal opportunities for education
and employment, and equality in America’s justice system, I
say, “Let games begin.”
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