AL SHARPTON: THE HAPPY NEGRO

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY
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AL SHARPTON: THE HAPPY NEGRO 

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I hate the video below. While Sharpton is out partying in the street, Trump supporters are arming themselves to the teeth. This nation is in the most dire straits that it’s been in since the Civil War, and this guy is out dancing in the street, the epitome of the happy negro. The behavior of Al Sharpton – this so-called civil rights leader – sends the exact wrong message to the people. It says that everything is cool, don’t worry, we’ve got this, everything’s under control so let’s party.

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So, why should Black people care what people think? The way people profile us is extremely important. It can have an negative impact on a young Black person's ability to get a job, or whether or not a cop blows our brains out during a traffic stop. Bigotry is not simply based on the color of our skin, but the hostility that bigots harbor towards our cultural traditions and our way of life. So there are many components to bigotry. It's just like the attitude that Black people have towards White people. We don't hate all White people, we simply dislike White people who have traditions that we don't approve of. Every White person from the South is not a bigot, for example, but hearing a Southern drawl tends to turn many Black people off. That's due to the profile we have of them in our minds. We make assumptions about them without even knowing them. That's exactly the way many White people profile us. 
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My late wife used to tell me, I don't understand why no matter how wrong you are, you never get a ticket. It's simple. On the one hand, I don't show any hostility towards the police, and on the other, I don't suck up to them either. I simply talk to them like I would talk to my neighbor, and they respond to that vibe. 
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But with respect to Sharpton, one lady told me, "Relax. He's just having a good time!" I can understand that, but if he wants to have a good time, he should do it at home, not in public. Since he professes to be a Black leader, he should carry himself like one, with dignity and class. He needs to remain cognizant of the fact that many people are already under the impression that all Black of people's intelligence is confined to below the neck. So it's important that we defeat that impression, and as a so-called Black leader he should be in the very forefront of that battle. 

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If he genuinely cared about Black people, he’d be sending out videos shouting, “Fire!” instead of videos featuring him boogying down like a geriatric teenager. Once again, he’s sending out the exact wrong message. He should be hard at work preparing the people to face the worst situation they’ve ever faced in their lives, because the demographics clearly indicate that this is White supremacy’s final stand, and they know it. That’s why they’re pulling out all stops - they’re stacking the courts with bigots, building walls to keep non-Whites out of the country, the Supreme Court is making it legal for the GOP to gerrymander and demand voter I.D. and then closing down every public office in the minority community where the required I.D. can be obtain, and at the same time, they’re purging Black people from the voter rolls in droves, and that's just to name a few of their devices. So, those are the things that Sharpton should be putting out videos about, yet, he's out there dancing. There’s a phrase for what he’s engaged in, it’s called, “Fiddling while Rome burns”.  He's just waiting around for another atrocity so he can grab him a headline.

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That’s why we can’t trust many of these so-called “leaders” – their judgment is clouded by their own self-interest. He’s more interested in gaining applause by showing the people that he can “get down” than he is in addressing the urgent issues of those very same people. Jesse Jackson betrayed that very same kind of selfish attitude when it looked like Barack Obama was going to be successful in his run for the White House. Jesse was overheard saying, “I’d like to cut his nuts off”. If Jesse’s concern was actually for the people instead of himself he should have been delighted that a Black man was going to become President of the United States. And I won’t even get into Tavis Smiley and Cornel West’s envious asses – by the way, where are they now that we need someone to badmouth the President? I guess they’re comfortable now that a White man is back in office.
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We wouldn't even know who Al Sharpton was if he wasn't such a headline chaser. He's been a distraction for Black people for years. Yes, Black people should get out and demonstrate grievances, but we need to spend more time educating ourselves. So, what turns me off most about people like Sharpton, is he claims to be for Black people, but he's really out for himself. He'll ride an issue as long as it captures the headlines, and then he’ll walk away once it grows stale. A true Black activist would be using these issues to emphasize the need for Black people to learn to out-think the White man.
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Black people need to make knowledge the new "soul". The very same creative intellect that created Ray Charles and Areatha Franklin can be put into distinguishing ourselves in math, business, and the sciences. So the time for dancing is over while Trump is still looking for a match to light the ovens.  It's time to start stimulating our minds, instead of shaking our asses.

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The only way the Republican Party can survive is by dumbing down the population, so that provides Black people with the perfect opportunity to level the playing field. While the GOP is busy dumbing the rest of the population down, Black people should be focused like a laser on becoming the most knowledgeable people in the country. That way, the only way the nation can survive is to get Black people to run it. That’s the technique the Jews used to ensure their equality. Today, this nation couldn’t survive without Jews – or at the very least, without being severely hobbled.
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Black people need to keep in mind that the White man wasn't able to enslave Black people because he could beat us up, we were enslaved because he had a knowledge of gunpowder that we didn't possess. So we were enslaved due to ignorance, and the only way that we're gonna be able to free ourselves is through knowledge, and giving priority to shaking our asses is not going to provide that knowledge. No one has ever gained freedom through shaking their ass.

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In addition, being primarily known for engaging in frivolity is why nobody takes us seriously. When a young Black person goes to be interviewed for a job, I want the interviewer to say, “I want to hire this person, because Black people are known for their brilliance”; not, “naw, if I hire this guy he might distract the other employees by trying to start a Soul Train line in the lunchroom” - and the latter is exactly how many people view us. We simply don’t have an image of professionalism, and Sharpton's spectacle in the video below is contributing to that. We have an image - whether deserved or not - of disrupting the workplace, and coming to work with our head so bad from partying the night before that we can barely perform our job.
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I was a union rep for 20 years, and one day a brother came up missing from his assignment. I couldn’t find the guy anywhere, so finally I checked the parking lot and found him in his car asleep. I woke him up and told him he’d better get back to his assignment before they realized he was missing. He looked up at me and said, “If there’s two things I can’t stand, it's niggas and flies.” So, I left him there. This went on for a few days, and finally management noticed that he was missing after being unable to contact him by phone. Eventually security found him and he was placed up for removal. Then when he came to me, hat-in-hand. I told him I’d do what I could, but not to get his hopes up, because it was an open and shut case. But when we met on his case, management wanted to compromise. They wanted me to agree to a 14-day suspension of a guy in another case. The guy they wanted to suspend wasn’t guilty of anything, they'd just trumped up a charge because they didn’t like him. But they said if I agreed to the compromise, in return they'd simply have the sleeper sign a Last Chance Agreement. I refused, so the sleeper was fired.

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Thereafter, sleeper didn’t even want to take responsibility his own actions. He called me a sellout and everything under the Sun. He claimed that I turned on him to save a White boy – but, again, the White guy wasn’t guilty of what he was charged with - I didn't turn on him for a White boy, I turned on him in pursuit of justice, and justice is blind. Why should I make the White guy suffer for the sleeper’s irresponsibility? The last thing I heard about the sleeper was he'd lost his Cadillac Escalade, all his women and fine clothes, and he was living on Los Angeles' Skid Row, but I didn't feel a thing.
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The point of this story is, long after the sleeper was gone, his behavior tarnished every Black person in the unit. Every time I represented a Black person before management they would bring up the sleeper – and I mean, even 3 years later!  I had to ask them several times, "What did the sleeper have to do with the current case!!!?  But their attitude wasn't lost on me, and that attitude was, "You're all alike". So, I often wondered how many deserving young Black men were refused a job because one brother wanted to party and get his head bad all night and sleep on the job during the day. 

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Admittedly, while the situation is much different, the issue is the same. It’s all about not reinforcing the White man’s racist image of us. How dare Sharpton be out on the street shakin' his ass and profiling us? He’s supposed to be a Black leader! So, if he’s out on the street being frivolous and undignified, what message does that send about the rest of us? And what makes it even worse is he’s out there boogyin’ while innocent Black people are being murdered on the street by rogue cops all across this country. That’s why the White man's attitude is, "Aw, don't worry about it. They'll get over it. Their dumb asses will be back out on the street Twerkin' in a week." So, we've got to get serious, become more professional in our conduct, and stop profiling ourselves as happy negros.

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Image is everything. After seeing this video, when Sharpton tries to address a serious Black issue, his image in this video is going to be in the back of the White man’s mind. So who’s gonna take him seriously? I know I can't. If you're upset over the conditions that Black people are suffering, you can't turn your outrage off on a whim. I go to bed upset, and I wakeup upset - and I'm never in the mood to get out on the street and shake my ass. Can you even imagine Martin Luther King or Malcolm out there shaking their asses like that? Their careers would’ve been over. So while Sharpton might have garnered a little applause from the people on the street, all he's actually done was help the White man profile us as frivolous children who shouldn’t be taken seriously. 

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Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does. 

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BLACK LIBERATION MUST BEGIN WITH BLACK EXCELLENCE

Beneath The Spin*Eric L. Wattree

BLACK LIBERATION MUST BEGIN WITH BLACK EXCELLENCE
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Black liberation will only exist as Martin's dream until we seize control of our own destiny, and the only way we can accomplish that is by educating ourselves and modifying the cultural mores we were taught during slavery, and later, during the Jim Crow era. We can get out and shout, scream and demonstrate until the cows come home, but all that’s going to do is possibly gain redress on atrocities that’s been committed against us one incident at a time - and even then, only after the atrocities have already been committed. Clear evidence of that is the fact we’re still demonstrating over the very same issues that Martin and Malcolm were fighting to correct over 50 years ago. 
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The root of the problem is that we’re being “managed” by others, and we’re stuck in the attitudes and behaviors that our “handlers”ingrained in us over generations.  That places us in the exact same position as a pet, and no pet has any control over its owner, or how it’s treated by that owner. He’s completely at the owner’s mercy.  But Black people are not pets. We have options, but in order to avail ourselves of those options we must free ourselves of our  “training” by re-educating ourselves and gaining intellectual independence.
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In a previous article, “The Grits and Gravy Debate,” I pointed out the following:
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“Many Black people contracted a serious mental disorder during slavery, and it's been passed down through the generations over the years. It entails an innate distrust and disdain of our own people, the lack of focus and a seeming inability to prioritize, and the tendency to be disagreeable and hostile toward anyone who challenges the status quo. That attitude makes it next to impossible for Black people to come together and organize to improve our condition - and it also serves to insure the stability of the White supremacist system.
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“Even Martin Luther King was initially criticized by the Black church for causing an unnecessary disturbance to the status quo. They told him to stop rockin' the boat and just pray on it, and eventually racism and bigotry would work itself out. That mindset is so pronounced within the Black community that Malcolm was even killed by his own people. The White man has done his job well, so if we want to move forward in a society that has the odds stacked against us, we must learn to stick together, organize, focus, and make knowledge and a dedication to serious pursuits what it means to have “soul.”  We must seek to own the racetrack, instead of just being the horse.
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So we must learn to stop just blindly accepting the statu quo.  When the cops shoot and kill an unarmed Black man in his own backyard, what do we do?  We go crying to White politicians for justice. We do that because we just blindly accept what we’ve been taught - that politicians are our leaders.  But the fact is, that politician that we go crying to is not our leader, he’s our employee. So we’re, literally, living our lives by allowing the tail to wag the dog, but that’s only the case because we allow it to be.
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We must learn to take control of our lives and place ourselves in a position where we don’t have to beg and cry for justice, but demand it.  But of course, we can’t out-scream the White man, because he controls the media, and we can’t out-fight him because we're only 13.3% of the population and he controls the military and police. But while those things might be true, we can out-think him, and Black people have both the intellect, and the proven creativity to do just that; we simply have to refocus it, and that’s exactly why the Black community must make the pursuit of knowledge our number one priority. Again, we must make knowledge the new “soul.” Instead of Black people being world renown for how much rhythm we have, we must refocus our intellect and creativity on becoming world renown for how much knowledge we possess, and with just a little effort we can do just that.
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The Republican Party has been mounting a brutal assault on our educational system for nearly forty years now, and there’s a reason for that - they know that it’s incumbent upon them to keep America ignorant and uninformed, because people who are informed and highly educated tend not to vote Republican. Highly educated people have both the intellect to see through conservative propaganda, and the knowledge to know their history and agenda. Once we begin to recognize that fact, we’ll also recognize the opportunity that it provides the Black community. Since the GOP is leaving no stone unturned to keep America ignorant and uninformed, we should leave no stone unturned to obtain as much education and knowledge as we can. Thereafter, we can use our exceptional knowledge to level the playing field against White supremacy. Black people could quite easily use their innate intellect and creativity to become the most educated group in America - Black women are already accomplishing that goal; now all we have to do is get the brothers onboard:
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BLACK WOMEN ARE NOW THE MOST EDUCATED GROUP IN AMERICA

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“Black women are now the most educated group in US, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
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“Between 2009 and 2010, black women earned 68 per cent of associate's degrees, 66 per cent of bachelor's degrees, 71 per cent of master's degrees and 65 per cent of all doctorate degrees awarded to black students.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/black-women-become-most-educated-group-in-us-a7063361.html
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But many Black men have an aversion to the active pursuit of knowledge. They tend to focus their considerable intellect on trying to be cool and other macho pursuits, like trying to be perceived as ladies men and players.  There's a reason for that.  During slavery, the only Blacks that field slaves knew who spoke anything that even resembled "proper English" were the house slaves, and they were looked upon with disdain, because the house slaves tended to look down their noses at the slaves who worked the fields. As a result, even though many Blacks fail to realize it on a conscious level, a negative attitude has been passed down through the years towards anything that reminds us of the house slave (or "house nigga")–and that includes articulate speech, and the desire for academic excellence.
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That explains why we hear obviously intelligent young Black people going around saying things like "What it is?" or "What it be like?"  Many of these young people can speak better English than White people, but they tend to believe that they have a moral obligation to sound ignorant in order to demonstrate that they take pride in their Black culture. So what does that say about their underlying mindset?  It says that they equate the Black culture with ignorance, and that's a toxic mindset, because you are what you think.
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That also accounts for why we hear so many Black Ph.Ds on national television quoting Tupac instead of Langston Hughes or James Baldwin. Essentially, it's a public apology for being a seeker of knowledge. The message is, "Yeah, I've got an education, but don't worry about it - I'm still one of you." This attitude also accounts for the question that arose regarding whether Barack Obama was "Black enough", and why there was so much pressure on Obama to attend functions like Tavis Smiley's "State of Black America" talkfest - they wanted him to prove that he hadn't been "tainted" by his pursuit of excellence.

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We've got to get away from this kind of thinking - first, because it sends our young people the message that they have a moral obligation to remain ignorant and on the bottom rung of society in order to prove their worthiness as truly Black,  and secondly, because it leaves us unprepared to face the new realities of the world around us.  The Black community has both the intellect and the resources to move to the very top of this society, and we must begin to utilize them both. Thereafter, we won't have to tell others that Black lives matter, we can show them.  So, "What it is?" - it's stupid not to get on our job.

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BLACK RESOURCES

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The African American community controls as much spending power than the Gross National Product of Germany - $1.1 TRILLION - the third richest industrial nation in the world, so why are we whining to the White man to provide for our needs?
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Dr. James P. Neelankavil, a professor of marketing and international business at Hofstra University, says in his book, International Business Research, that "Since the output of a country is an indicator of its economic activity, the GNP [Gross National Product] is often used as key factor in evaluating a country’s economic strength. The five largest countries in the world based on their GNP are the United States, $7 trillion; Japan, $2.5 trillion; Germany, $1.1 Trillion; France, $873 billion; and China, $393 billion."
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So based on Professor Neelankavil’s data, the African American community’s buying power of $1.1 trillion is equal to the economy of Germany, the third largest industrial economy in the world. We control $127 billion more than France, and $607 billion more than the gross national product of China. So why was it that in the 2014 midterm election people like Tavis Smiley and Cornel West were running around suggesting that due to high unemployment in the Black community, Black people would be justified in sitting at home, not voting, and thereby, letting the Republican Party win governorships around the country, and take over the House and Senate? There’s something wrong there. Either they, and their ilk, are grossly uninformed - in which case, they need to keep their mouths shut and educate themselves - or they’re in active collusion with the GOP the Black community’s worst enemy, and the domestic enemy of the United States as a whole.  And with respect to Smiley, that's not as speculative as one might think. Tavis Smiley was given national exposure by Walmart, the most conservative and worker-hostile corporation in the United States.
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So the Black community has got to educate itself, and stop listening to political demagogues, Black or White. Before we can do that, however, we're going to have to get the people’s attention and get everybody on the same page in order to mount a collective effort. How are we going to do that?  That’s easy. We’re going to have to start with our churches.
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The Black community is going to have to put pressure on our Black churches to form a consortium and remain open 7 days a week to provide community services instead of having preachers just give spoken-word concerts every Sunday and then taking Black wealth out of the community. We must insist that they begin to perform community services instead of just running their mouths. They should be hiring unemployed mothers to provide low-cost childcare for working mothers, and enlisting their retired congregants to provide professional tutoring in music and the arts after school. These professionals could teach our young people to play musical instruments, write poetry and prose, perform modern dance, and even instruct them in dress design and computer programming. The churches could also organize sports teams, and put on fashion shows, and concerts. They could also serve as political action and education centers where the people can meet, organize, get to know one another, and learn the value of patronizing the businesses in our own community instead of just driving past on their way to Walmart.  After all, the Bible says, "IF YE WERE ABRAHAM'S CHILDREN, YE WOULD DO THE WORKS OF ABRAHAM" - John 8:39.  Thus, according to the Bible, talk is cheap.
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If we would just learn that, we wouldn’t have to say a word to politicians, because as our local Black businesses began to prosper, and Walmart and the other White businesses began to feel the pinch of losing their cut of our $1.1 trillion, it would say it all - that it’s a new day in the Black community. Then, instead of shunning us and telling us to go sit in the corner, they’d start catering to us; and if a cop shot a Black child, or upset the Black community in any way, all hell would break loose, because the politicians would know that we were gonna come after them in force, and in solidarity, on election day. And the White business community would be up-in-arms because they wouldn’t want to loose any more of the trillion dollars they’re competing for in the community due to our anger.
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Then once we've gotten everybody on the same page and established our community's clout, we could begin to encourage Black entertainers and athletes to invest in the community, and get awards shows like the Soul Train, and B.E.T. Awards to use their platforms to honor our young Black scholars and the people of outstanding achievement in the community.  The entertainers would still play a role, but their role would be to entertain and pass out awards, instead of strutin' up on stage to receive them.  If we did that, it would send the message to Black youth that the pursuit of Black excellence is cool, and it could bring them national notoriety.
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Another thing it would do is offset the White establishment attempt to portray the excellence of Barack Obama as a once in a generation aberration. By organizing to do the things pointed out above, we would not only motivate and refocus the mindset of our young people and the community, but demonstrate to the world that the Black community is filled with thousands of Barack Obamas. In addition, when our community leaders spoke to the various politicians, they’d speak with the clout of an employer to an employee, as it should be. 

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WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THIS

YOUNG BLACK MAN WOULD BECOME

ONE OF THE GREATEST PRESIDENTS IN

AMERICAN HISTORY? 
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PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA JUDGED 8TH GREATEST PRESIDENT
IN AMERICAN HISTORY.
DONALD TRUMP CAME IN LAST AT 44TH
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President Barack Hussein Obama came in as the 8th greatest president in American history after Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower in the 2018 Presidents and Executive Politics Presidential Greatness Survey. Donald Trump came in dead last in 44th place.  The Survey was based on 170 responses from current and former members of the American Political Science Association's Presidents and Executive Politics Section.
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https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/trump-lincoln-presidential-greatness-survey/index.html
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THAT'S WHO YOU REALLY ARE

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Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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