By Debbie Schlussel

This week, there is much ado about the newly unveiled Martin Luther King, Jr. monument on the Washington Mall.  But, to me, the statue and what it stands for apparently taught a far too large number of people that their racism–racism against non-Blacks–is okay.  Last night, I saw, yet again, the real racism in America that is growing and intensifying, because guilty White liberals enable it.  If you play the race card, YOU are the real racist.  And you are no different than a criminal who frames an innocent person in a crime.  No different.

How do you fight off humiliating, false accusations of racism? How do you disprove the negative–something that never happened? Those are the questions I faced last night when I was the victim of absolutely false accusations by race-card players, a Black couple who probably do this often. The lying race merchants wouldn’t stop talking, and after I complained to the studio representatives (after politely and unsuccessfully asking them to be quiet several times), they told the studio rep that I made racist comments to them. I said no such thing, and yet, they were instantly believed.

Here are the details:  last night, I attended a movie screening that also included members of the public with free passes.  After the movie started and there were several empty seats, I moved up from the press row and my reserved seat, which was too close to the screen.  I was enjoying the movie.  Fifteen minutes into the movie, a Black couple in their 20s or early 30s walked in and sat in the press row.  They began talking.  Soon, security asked them to move, telling them that the seats were reserved.  They got up began talking loudly while looking for empty seats elsewhere.  They came to my row in which there was an empty seat next to me and other empty seats in between others.  They asked me if anyone was sitting in the empty seat.  I said, no.  They then loudly asked the other people to move down, sat down in the two seats next to me and wouldn’t stop talking.  Each time I said “sh . . .” or asked them to please be quiet, they began talking louder and taunting me.

I got up and went outside the theater to complain to the studio representative.  He came into the theater and told them to be quiet or he’d “kick your ass out.”  The people loudly said “thank you,” three times.  He sat down in front of me and the woman from the offending couple stuck her head and neck out toward at me and began staring at me in an attempt to further annoy me.  I complained again, and she returned her body to the back of her seat.  After a while, the studio representative left the theater, and the woman got up and followed him.  They both returned to the theater, with the studio representative apologizing incessantly to this man and woman for no apparent reason and moving them back to the press row where they arrived 15 minutes into the movie.

When the movie was over and I walked out of the theater, the woman confronted me, yelling that she needed to know “which paper you write for.  I’m gonna call Channel 7 and report you.”  I laughed and said, “What are you gonna report?  That, you wouldn’t stop talking during a movie and I complained?”  Then, the studio rep confronted me in front of departing moviegoers and told me that the woman said that I told the couple I didn’t want them to sit next to me because I don’t want to sit next to Black people.  This is absurd.  If that were true, I would have lied and said the seat next to me was taken.  I’ve never said such a thing in my life, but the studio rep told me that he believed the woman because she came out and cried and said she was afraid of me.  “I don’t really know you,” he added.  I was humiliated. (And, in fact, he knows me. He knew me well enough to eat the over $200 worth of catered food I paid for he and his family to eat at his late grandfather’s “shiva” (Jewish mourning) house. And I know his mother, to whom I had just given an expensive book about Lodz, the concentration camp in which the grandfather had been interned. But, hey, why not believe race-baiting liars you know far less because, after all, they’re Black so it’s gotta be true, right?)  The studio rep proceeded to deliver multiple apologies to the couple and give them several movie favors as parting gifts for his guilt over something that never happened to them.  It was disgusting. This guy was like a Casey Anthony/O.J. Simpson juror in his naivete and gullibility.  Apparently, anyone can play the race card and is instantly believed without a shred of evidence.

Fortunately, another movie critic confirmed that the couple were loudly, incessantly talking during the screening, when they initially sat behind him.  And security, which watches through binoculars, confirmed what actually happened.

I’ve never said a thing like what I was alleged to have said . . . EVER.  I grew up in a Black neighborhood, where my Black vice principal neighbor at my majority Black high school frequently drove me to school along with her daughter.  My parents begged me to remain in my all-White (and Jewish) private school (not because of race but because they wanted me to continue my Jewish education).  If I were truly a racist and didn’t want to be around Black people, I wouldn’t have declined to follow their wishes.  Nor would I currently live in a majority Black city in an apartment building and complex in which the majority of my neighbors are Black.  If I was such a racist, I wouldn’t constantly do favors for my elderly Black neighbors and buy them water and batteries I needed for myself during the 2004 Blackout.  It is my own Black neighbors, NOT me, who’ve told me they will move out of my building if I leave, because they don’t like the Black neighbors moving in. They are the racists, not me. Ditto for the Black mayor and police chief in the city in which I live, who publicly complained in the media about the “ghetto” Blacks moving into the city, something which shocked me.

I frequently sit next to a Black movie critic with whom I am friendly and who I asked to do a movie review show with me.  The racism charge made against me, last night, is simply false, phony, fabricated. But that’s how it goes with cries of racism these days, cries that seem to flow more easily than water and with far less veracity.

Sadly, anyone can play the race card.  How do you refute it?  How do you prove you never said things you never said?  It’s nearly impossible.  And that’s the problem.  Many Black Americans and other minorities are encouraged and enabled in making these false racism charges and complaints.  They know they will get away with it because they are instantly believed.  In most cases, it’s a matter of believing one side over another because there is no recording of what was said, no independent witnesses to refute it.

I will complain and have always complained when people talk loudly and incessantly at movies, whether they are Black, White, blue, purple, or green.  I don’t care what race you are.  Just shut the bleep up.  I’ve complained about White people talking, too.  The problem, though, I’ve encountered is that the majority of the people that tend to think this is their living room or they have the right to do whatever they want, including talking loudly, texting, and talking on their cellphones during movies, are, in fact, Black.  That’s the real racism:  thinking that you can do whatever you want because Whitey’s rights and payment of a $10 ticket (not in this case, but in most cases) is not important.  And thinking that if someone complains, you can concoct a phony racism story complete with crocodile tears and try to ruin someone’s reputation.

If this is now what constitutes “civil rights” and “equality,” then this week’s unveiling of the King statue is in dire need of a concurrent examination of whether the Civil Rights movement has gone too far.  “Civil rights” is now a matter of racism by minorities against majorities and lording over them the right to do it and get away with it. Talking loudly and doing what you want at the movies because, hey, the White people are irrelevant, is racism, plain and simple.  Playing the race card because you were called out on it is even more racist. I don’t just blame the legions of Black race merchant “leaders”–Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Cynthia McKinney a/k/a “Jihad Cindy #1,” and Michelle Hussein Obama–for this. I also blame the liberal guilt that instantly espouses as truth all the false, fabricated race card claims wantonly bandied about.

I doubt very highly that the “I Have a Dream” speech was about your right to keep your big mouth open at the movies and cry racism wolf when I complain after asking you nicely five times to be quiet. Race has nothing to do with it.

Your lack of manners and consideration for all of those around you is the real crime here. That you cried, “Racism! Racism!” to cover up your bad behavior is the larger crime.