An election is coming. The indicator is not the number of robins or the actions of a groundhog, but the fact that liberals are dealing race cards right and left.
Leading the effort is the attorney general of the United States, who asserts that there is a "racial animus" in criticism of his boss. Not all of it, he says.
He does not elaborate on who is excluded from this blanket charge, so we may surmise that it is the large number of liberal voters who have soured on Barack Obama after six years of nonperformance.
Conservatives prefer to focus on the content of one's character rather than his skin color. But liberals are obsessed with skin color and they believe demagoguery can get them elected and re-elected.
Another outburst came in a column for Sunshine State News making the incredible claim that there is a lack of dialogue on race.
No subject in America has been discussed publicly and privately more during the past 50 to 60 years.
There have been countless committees, conferences, and commissions during that time to discuss race relations.
I attended one about 12 years ago as a member of a panel for the Jacksonville Community Council, a liberal organization that studies local issues and generally concludes that more government action and spending is needed.
When I made the same point about the constant discussion of the problem, the crowd got hostile. So much for discussion.
But, do liberals really want a discussion or do they just want to dictate terms? Recently, a TV announcer suggested that black children growing up without fathers in the home might be a factor in the problems they face. He was fired, despite the fact that research, according to best-selling author Ann Coulter, shows that single-mother families are associated with many poor social outcomes.
Even though we have a president and attorney general with black skins, along with state and local politicians by the score and high-ranking corporate officers everywhere, the writer chooses to focus on the number of black people in prison. Whether they committed crimes does not seem to matter.
Liberals play a funny numbers game. Black Americans must be represented proportionately in every walk of life, or there is obvious "unfairness," in their view.
If that is the case, hundreds of players need to be fired from the NBA and white men who can't jump, dribble or shoot should be hired at million-dollar salaries to replace them.
There are a growing number of conservatives who are black. They express disgust with the fact that liberals condescendingly denigrate them by suggesting they can't succeed without sitting next to a white kid in school or racial discrimination to get through college and get a job.
Liberals are making the most of it now because they realize that in a few years, white people will be a minority in America. Blacks, Hispanics and perhaps people of Asian descent will outnumber them. It is doubtful that there will be calls then to discuss the problem of whites being underrepresented. Eventually, intermarriage will make the whole discussion pointless.
The far more important question is, will America still be the leader and envy of the world or will liberals succeed in dragging it down?
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
