If I were black, I would be cringing in shame at the latest photo of Attorney General Eric Holder praising the likes of Al Sharpton, a man on record for very odious words and vile actions.

I would hear my now-deceased grandma when she intoned that you can't sleep with fleas and not become flea-infested -- this from a woman who knew full well the effects of American racism when her husband of 50 years could get a job only as an elevator operator even though he went to Brooklyn College in the Jim Crow days of the 1940s and aspired for more.  This from a petite matriarch who would quote Martin Luther King, Jr. that "[t]he Negro must work passionately and unrelentingly for full stature as a citizen, but he must not use inferior methods to gain it.  He must never come to terms with falsehood, malice, hate, or destruction." 

But that is precisely what Obama, Holder, and so many of the czars of the White House do.  Sharpton's record is quite clear.  Sharpton's philosophy rests on the premise that American capitalism, racism, and imperialism are intertwined and "[are] a threat to the vital rights of the Black people."  To this end Sharpton helped incite anti-Jewish riots in Crown Heights, New York in 1991 when a Hasidic Jewish driver accidentally ran over and killed a seven-year-old black boy.  Sharpton delivered the following inflammatory speech.

Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. ... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'.

As a consequence, the riled-up crowd went out and murdered innocent rabbinical student Yankel Rosenbaum.  The blacks of Crown Heights rioted for three days and three nights.  Not once did Sharpton ever call upon the rioters to stop their anti-Semitic-inspired violence. 

Sharpton helped support The Committee to Free Angela Davis, who had been imprisoned for "her role in abetting the murder of a California judge." 

Sharpton is most well-known for the Tawana Brawley case.  Despite "a complete absence of any credible evidence to support Brawley's claim that she was kidnapped and raped by six whites in Dutchess County," the trial dragged on for months.  It resulted in the most heinous of slanderous charges against then-Dutchess County assistant prosecutor Steven Pagones.  An extensive and costly investigation eventually resulted in the revelation that Brawley had made up the entire story.  Pagones won a $345,000 court judgment against Sharpton, but Sharpton never paid his share of $65,000; instead, a group of wealthy Sharpton supporters did. 

In 1995, Sharpton along with Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama helped organize Louis Farrakhan's October 16 Million Man March.  Of Jews and whites, Farrakhan has this to say:

I think we have made a grave mistake; we have been deceived into thinking that the Jews have been our allies in our recent civil rights struggle[.] ... Yes, he poses as your friend. He's with you as an agent, he's with you as a manager, he's with you as an investor, he's with you as a guide in economic development, but he has never asked you to do what he has done. He networks with other rich, influential Jews and he buys, he invests, he's in trade and commerce. 

How did we get a Black president? Because those Satanic Jews know the time that this is the time of your separation from them that God wants to give you a land of your own as the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God[.] ... You didn't see when they got in the room and said "we have to deceive them and through them deceive the entire world[.]" ... How could they be the chosen of God and leading the world into filth and indecency? 

White people, although they hated us, are not the architects of white supremacy. That started in Europe and it is here in America and we document the architecture of white supremacy in this volume, Volume 2 The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews.

In 1995, Sharpton led a boycott against Freddy's Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned business in Harlem.  The "boycott started when Freddy's owners announced that because they wanted to expand their own business, they would no longer sublet part of their store to a black-owned record shop.  The street leader of the boycott, Morris Powell, was also the head of Sharpton's 'Buy Black' Committee.  Powell and his fellow protesters repeatedly and menacingly told passersby not to patronize the 'crackers' and the 'greedy Jew bastards [who are] killing our [black] people.'  Some boycotters openly threatened violence against whites and Jews -- all under the watchful approving eye of Sharpton, who referred to the proprietors of Freddy's as 'white interlopers.'"

While he has disavowed his previous comments, Sharpton has also made crude anti-gay remarks.

In August 2000, Sharpton featured at a rally Malik Zulu Shabazz, who called upon black young people, including gang members, to unite against white America.  In this YouTube video, Shabazz is heard "attacking 'white America', saying he doesn't have to be patriotic because 'white America' has 'given him nothing.'"  He even goes so far as to claim it was the actions of people which led to the September 11 attacks, which "he saw coming" -- saying "the chickens came home to roost," a phrase that Reverend Wright used in his own hate-filled speeches.

In May 2003, Sharpton was invited to Harvard Law School, where he characterized Republicans as racists who "cut taxes for the rich while [they] strangle the poor"; furthermore, "he likened black Republicans Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to subservient house slaves; he called for '$50 billion a year' in tax hikes so that America could 'invest in working-class people, not multi-billionaires.'"

In April 2009, Sharpton and his National Action Network (NAN) were fined $285,000 for having violated election rules during Sharpton's 2004 presidential bid.

On May 2, 2010, Sharpton addressed a church congregation in Danbury, Connecticut, where he said that the late Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream "was not to put one black president in the White House," but rather "to make everything equal in everybody's house." 

The attorney general of the United States is empowered as "an initial contact with the White House on pending criminal matters."  The idea that Holder would turn to this racist, criminal for a scintilla of advice is inexcusable.  It is another mounting piece of evidence of the racist ideology that oozes out of the Obama White House.  But then again, every time Sharpton threatens to boycott a product, the companies try to pacify him by supporting his NAN or even hiring him as a consultant!

Judicial Watch asks, "Is [Sharpton] the kind of character who should be ordering the feds around and dictating what investigations the DOJ should and shouldn't be conducting? Remember, this is the agency responsible for enforcing the law and defending the country's interests as well as ensuring public safety against threats."

Sociologist Orlando Patterson "has described Sharpton as a racial arsonist."  Lisa Carter describes herself as a Los Angeles African-American.  Writing for Examiner.com, she asserts that "Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are a curse to African Americans."

Sharpton has set the black community back decades, and now that the patina of respectability has been planted on him, we can expect yet more double standards, more racial tensions, and a battering of the American justice system.

If grandma were still alive, she would be reminding me to read the excellent piece by West African-American writer L.E. Ikenga.  In 2009, this American Thinker contributor wrote that Barack Obama was not the product of Martin Luther King's thinking.  Rather, "Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious."  Her predictions were eerily chilling and all too true, and now in 2012 we have seen the fruition of a system riddled with hypocrisy, race-baiting, and injustice.

As a white woman, I am appalled; as a black woman, I am ashamed.

In the meanwhile, Grandma is weeping as the promise is perverted.

Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.