The individuals who fashion themselves as intellectuals have claimed they know what is right in racial issues because they are black, and their parents were discriminated against. They claim that German reparations for genocide are analogous to reparations from a government that no longer exists (the Confederacy) for slavery. They claim that the student body is ignorant of facts.
Please allow me to use your time to share facts with you, and we shall expose the �subtle� racism that everyone is so interested in finding. Next week, we shall explore the roots of the problems plaguing the African-American social conscience, and the solutions that must be considered.
The first topic is subtle racism. We nominate racist rap artists for awards. They use an old adage from Africa, which terms Whites as �devils� because the Portuguese and British (hardly representative of all Whites) pillaged, enslaved, and destroyed their communities. The rap artists refer to Whites as devils in their music, and subsequently encourage the listener to kill them. Dr. Dre, 2-Pac, Onyx, Gravediggaz, Wu-Tang Clan, Ice Cube, and Ice-T are examples. If some crazy neo-nazi group began calling Blacks �demons� and wrote songs about killing them, with other inoffensive songs intended for radio, would we even tolerate it? Of course we would not, that is sick, and so is the Black racist counterpart that we are tolerating, playing on the radio, praising, and issuing awards to.
We also tolerate subtly racist comedians like Chris Rock. In fact, when I first watched Chris Rock�s �Bring the Pain�, I thought it was one of the funniest hours of comedy I had ever seen. After the third time I watched it, one of his statements stuck out in my head, �Blacks aren�t the only ones who are on welfare, Blacks live in like ten places in the whole country. Most of the people on welfare are poor white people, livin� in the trailer home, [having sex with] they sistas, and eating mayonnaise sandwiches.� In fact, the first two times I watched that I laughed when he said it. However, the third time I thought to myself, �Why is that funny? If it was a White comedian on stage saying �Blacks live in 10 places where they shoot their brothers, make illegitimate children, deal drugs, and eat fried chicken�, there would be a public outcry and it would be all over CNN, righteously�. So why was I laughing at Chris Rock�s blatant racist stereotyping? Because I, like many other Whites, have become desensitized to Black on White racism. We should not tolerate the accusation that the rural USA consists of incestuous white people in trailer homes, with an appetite for mayonnaise, but we do, and we laugh at it.
Why is it not taboo for Black leaders to talk about religion, and even quote the bible? John Ashcroft said that he prayed in his office before he starts the day, and all of the sudden the whole liberal media is all over him, talking about violating separation of church and state. It�s acceptable for Clinton to begin his day in the office with oral sex, "as long as he's doing his job", but it�s not acceptable for Ashcroft to begin his day with a prayer. And yet many black leaders and organizations, such as Jesse Jackson, NAACP, and Johnnetta Cole hold prayer sessions, use biblical allusions, and even quote the bible in their speeches. They do not receive criticism for this, and they shouldn�t. But it is a hypocrisy for America to tolerate humble, reverent, spiritual leaders only if they are not White.
Mary Frances Berry, the head of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said, �Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.� This is a very interesting frame of mind for a woman in one of the highest positions in the fight for �equality�. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall said, �You guys have been practicing discrimination for years. Now it is our turn.� Once again, the motives of powerful civil rights leaders are exposed. For those leaders to make statements like that, they should replace the pretense, �Civil Rights Movement� with �Replace-the-Descendants-of-Racist-Discriminators-with-New-Ones Movement�. One of my years at tech, there was a White kid on my hall who was very socially inept, and if you walked past him, he would glare at you if you looked in his eyes. You could never see any friends around him. I get that same glare every single week from Black males on campus who I don�t even know. While the glare is the same, the motives are different. One is an antisocial sociopath, who has come to be such through insecurity and poor self-esteem. The other is a selective sociopath, who has come to be through racism. The prior blames all of society for his shortcomings, the latter blames the all-famous, mysterious, White �system� for theirs.
This system supposedly discriminates because inner city Black schools are poor. Yet many more rural White schools are even poorer.
The racist system theory says that the White government inserts drugs and guns into their communities. Yet the principle of supply and demand says that running an illegal market in a place that has a population density of 1000 to 15000 people per square mile, compared to 100 to 700 people per square mile, offers anonymity and much easier sales (because the only advertisement is word of mouth). For the same reasons, the mafia operated in cities, terrorizing and stealing from Whites, and across the world, organized crime flocks to cities. Another system conspiracy theory is debunked.
There is an initiative to blame the poverty of the African-American community on the system. Yet many groups of immigrants, including my great grandparents were discriminated against and had to work three hard labor jobs to support their families. In fact, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Eastern European Immigrants, and Asian-Americans have fared very well in their struggle out of poverty. Do you think that they weren�t discriminated against? My great grandparents were in immigrant ghettos in the North, and their children could tell you a few stories about how White Anglo-Saxons discriminated them.
Racist laws, aka affirmative action policies at 28 elite colleges gave racially based assistance to African-Americans. This Bowen-Bok finding showed that 86% of those assisted came from middle-class to affluent households. In other words, the system gave privileges to already privileged families because of their race. Is this a poverty-based initiative, intended to help the poor Blacks that need help? Hardly so. And the colleges are funding it.
Now that the subtle racism in our country has been exposed, let�s think about reparations. First of all, you are talking about almost 150 years in the past. Next, you are putting the current Federal United States Government on the block, which has descended from the Union, remember, the ones who fought and died to end slavery? So is your issue with the southern states, who are most directly descended from the Confederacy?
If that is so, here�s another curve ball. In 1890, 30% of our population was born to immigrants. A generation later, in 1920, 50% of our population was born to immigrants (45 million). Basic math would tell you that the vast majority of the country has no reasonable link to the thousands of American Anglo-Saxons who participated in slavery prior to 1865. Anyone who seeks apologies or reparations from such unassociated parties is either a very poor history student, or a self-victimizing racist who needs someone to blame.
My great grandparents came here as part of the exodus to escape war torn Europe. Before that they were simple craftsmen and farmers. If anyone wants my tax money and an apology to pay for the crimes of the Anglo-Saxon descendents that my descendents were fighting too, I will offer you another proposition. You go after the British and Portuguese who enslaved your descendents, and I will seek reparations from Turkey, whose descendents tore apart the cultures of my ancestors and practiced genocide on us back in the 15th century. These notions are not intellectual, they are key examples of the self-victimizing, and subtly racist crusade that acts as a self-destructive impetus, corrupting what was once a veritable civil rights movement.
It is time to be liberal, and quickly make changes to this decaying movement. The ones who have damaged the progression of the African-Americans from the 1980�s to present day are the greedy Black leaders like Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume, Al Sharpton, their supporters, and the patronizing white liberal establishment, which reinforces the self-victimizing, anti-authority attitude that leads to racism, despair, and self-destruct. These offenses perpetuate the desperate societal mindset that plagues a beautiful people and holds them down. Next week, we shall explore the sociology of that collective mindset.