American blacks and whites live in two disjointed worlds. They always have, but in different ways over time.
Fifty years ago, blacks lived in a physically different world - the "other side of the tracks," the designated black neighborhood, separate from the rest of everywhere whites lived.
Today, legal segregation is no more. Except in inner-city ghettos, almost all Americans see someone of another race every day - at school, work, or as a neighbor, and certainly on TV. Most Americans have friends of other colors; mixed-race couples are now so common as not to be worthy of note.
And yet, politically, blacks and whites might as well be on two separate continents. If only white votes had counted in 2008, John McCain would be in the White House by a landslide - he won the white vote 55-43.
Speaking of landslides, though, when it comes to the black vote, Obama cleaned up an astonishing 96%. His score in Washington, D.C. was about the same - yet there is no state, jurisdiction, or demographic subgroup, not even the most red-blooded, where Republicans command such Soviet-style levels of unanimity.
This same stark difference is reflected in opinion polls of all kinds. 73% of blacks think the CIA intentionally distributes drugs to inner cities to keep the black man down, whereas all but 13% of whites see this suggestion as the kookery it is.
This poll from Rasmussen is particularly pertinent for the ongoing national discussion of Prof. Henry Gates' interaction with the Cambridge police:
Seventy-three percent (73%) of African-American voters believe that most blacks receive unfair treatment from the police. Just 21% of white voters share that view...
Thirty-two percent (32%) of black voters say that most policemen are racist, but 52% disagree.
Among white voters, just seven percent (7%) believe that most policemen are racist and 71% say they are not.
Who's right? It's becoming increasingly apparent that we'll never know. As firmly as blacks believe they are treated unfairly by, well, pretty much everybody pretty much all the time, just so firmly do whites believe that's not the case and that we live in a basically just society.
The harder black and liberal leaders push for overt set-asides, affirmative action, and other programs intended specifically to give a favorable boost to blacks, the greater the resentment builds in the white community and we see pushback like the recent Ricci reverse-discrimination case.
As everyone's mom used to teach, "Two wrongs don't make a right." We aren't going to get rid of old racial resentments and preferences by building new ones, yet that's what we're called on to do, incessantly and eternally.
There was another way, and while it may not offer a choice anyone will accept, it does present hard truths and hard questions that need not merely to be asked, but answered.
The United States is famously a nation of immigrants. With the minority exceptions of the American Indians who were already here and the slaves who were dragged here against their will, every single American either chose to come here from someplace else or their ancestors made that decision on their behalf.
Why? Until the last few decades, immigration to America was a self-exile from one's friends, family, culture, customs, climate, language, and pretty much everything that makes a person "fit in." America is and always has been quite a culture shock from anywhere else - more so to some immigrants than others, of course, but even those who already spoke the English language found themselves in an alien world - for example, English settlers in the colonies found that the understood and well-established social norms of class and birth didn't have the same weight here.
What's more, coming to America was dangerous. The months-long passage on tiny wooden sailing ships was a journey of constant peril; the later steamers frequently caught fire or smashed into icebergs. A trip to America could be a death sentence just as easily as a door to the Promised Land.
Then, upon arrival, the streets of America turned out not exactly to be paved with gold. The many modes of failure and death are too numerous to count: shot by native "savages," dead of starvation and exposure in the high Sierras, drowned in one of America's many unbridged rivers, even killed by previous immigrants resentful of competition from new ones. The labor available, whether it be prairie farming or laying track for the new railroads, was backbreaking and often deadly. And in the pre-modern era, the specter of disease haunted everyone rich and poor.
That's why we say of the early pioneers, "The cowards never started and the weak died along the way."
Yet the Pilgrim Fathers gave up comfortable lives in Holland to practice their religion as they saw fit. Millions of Irish fled the known famines of Galway for the unknown hazards of the new land. Jews and minorities from Eastern Europe suffered one too many pogroms and decided that anywhere else would be better.
Therein lies a great truth about the heritage of America: Every immigrant from Plymouth Rock to Ellis Island was also an emigrant from somewhere else.
Simply put, each and every person who came to America left their homeland because the oppression was too great to be borne.
Over the last few weeks we have heard the usual timeworn arguments over race. On the one side, we have the indisputable fact that legal discrimination against blacks is dead and buried and that blacks have reached the very pinnacles of power and wealth. On the other side, we hear the constant refrain that discrimination is as insidious as ever in a way which cannot even be understood by one who has not lived it. Never the twain shall meet.
It does not really matter anymore which side is right. The point is, the affair of Henry Louis Gates has conclusively proven that persuasion and discussion has accomplished all it can.
If a black Harvard university professor can complain of being racially profiled - in a city, state, and nation each led by a black executive, in a jurisdiction with a black chief of police who reports to a black female mayor - and yet his complaint is accepted as received truth by, at the very least, a vast number of his fellow black Americans... then it is clear that nothing more can be done.
Sgt. Crowley's partner was a black man who swore that the arrest was justified yet the charge of bias gained a hearing. Black and Hispanic police officers witnessed Gates' arrest and unanimously supported Crowley's actions, yet the President gave Gates' accusations credence by saying that the mixed-race police group involved had acted "stupidly."
Will we have to listen to complaints of racial bias until every position of power is held by a black person? Or will we, even then, find that "it's all Whitey's fault" because he has all the money?
That is the situation in South Africa today: the black majority has populated government almost entirely with blacks at all levels, yet Whitey remains under assault because most wealth is held by whites. It should come as no surprise that the white population of that nation, after having lived there for hundreds of years, is now leaving.
Blacks will never form a majority in the United States; it's projected that America will be majority Hispanic within the lifetime of many of our readers. Any dreams of a black-run America will be well and truly dead then.
If Prof. Gates believes himself to be assailed by official discrimination at all levels, as he clearly does; if black America largely believes themselves to be held back by discrimination and racism on all sides...
America, for all its ills, is not the Soviet Union or East Germany. We do not have an Iron Curtain keeping people in by force. Any American who wants to leave is free to do so.
There are many other places that would love to have a Harvard professor, or even a plumber. South Africa is starving for educated professionals and Prof. Gates need fear no official discrimination there. Other nations in Africa have no significant white population at all; by Prof. Gates' own definition, racism there is impossible.
Let us make one thing perfectly clear: in no way are we arguing that black Americans ought to leave this country. They have every bit as much right to be here as American citizens of any other hue. Although they are not entitled to any more rights, they have every bit as much right to the exact same civil rights, the exact same equality of opportunity, the exact same privileges and opportunities of citizenship as anyone else.
Despite these facts, it's clear that enormous swathes of black America truly believe that their rights are being denied. Michelle Obama famously said this nation is "just downright mean" to black people.
If a black person truly believes that, why be a part of it? Why not decide, as virtually every other American's ancestors once did, that there are better opportunities elsewhere and go there?
Our racial strife is often blamed on slavery. The truly stunning question is just how deep that blame goes.
President Lincoln, who saw hundreds of thousands of his countrymen die in a war to make men free, felt that racial forgiveness and reconciliation would never be possible. In an early draft of the very Emancipation Proclamation, he wrote:
[T]he effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.
As important as Lincoln felt black repatriation to be, it's plain that he didn't view racial separation as a task to be pushed forward regardless: he emphasized that relocation should only be done with the consent of those relocated. For whatever reason, most American blacks who were offered the taxpayer-financed opportunity to leave decided that America held more opportunity for them than the Africa of their ancestors in spite of all those whitey racists running around loose.
As Lincoln himself said:
A house divided against itself, cannot stand.
The black ex-slaves decided that it was preferable to stand with their ex-oppressors than to return home. Have today's American blacks made the same decision? Have they even thought about it?
A century and a half has passed since the end of slavery and America has paid a heavy price for its original sin. Legal discrimination lasted long after slavery ended, but that too was done away with decades ago. Today, a black man sits in the highest office in the land.
Yet there are still those who condemn the racist "U.S. of KKK-A."
When, if ever, is it reasonable to hold individual black people responsible for their own actions and choices, as we hold individuals of all other races? Prof. Gates did not verbally assault Sgt. Crowley as a black man, he did so as a man - an individual human being. Black criminals in jail did not deal drugs as black men, they committed crimes, were convicted, and condemned as men. Tiger Woods does not win golf tournaments as a black man, he does so as one single supremely talented and dedicated man.
To say that black people must continually be treated as black people is to say that they are incapable of standing on their own two feet. This is to infantilize them, if you will - to degrade and demean them just as surely as Jim Crow once did.
The slaves brought from Africa had no choice in the matter. Today's blacks, though, do. They can choose to return to Africa if they please; they can choose to gain an education and rise to the Oval Office if they wish to.
Or, they can turn to crime and drugs and wind up in jail. What has that to do with color or race? Nothing.
America's conversation on race has reached an impasse. White Americans look at the Oval Office, at Oprah's vast riches, at the millionaire blacks in every sports arena and on the silver screen, and say that equality of opportunity has been achieved.
All too many "underprivileged" black Americans look at the squalor of their own lives... and blame Massa Whitey for not reaching out a noble hand of assistance, even while they cash their white-provided welfare checks, live in white-built government housing, and eat white-produced food.
The time has come. Enough is enough. America has, at long last, redeemed itself, and now has the moral authority to reject accusations of racial bias as the acts of pandering greed that they have become.
What does Chinese history have to teach America that Joe Biden doesn't know?
> professionals and Prof. Gates need fear no
> official discrimination there.
Dead wrong. He's very much in danger if he isn't "black enough". My old roommate -- who last week was arrested as Calgary's Library UpSkirtCam Perve, but I digress -- left SA 20 years ago not because of Apartheid, but because of fears of the Zulus coming into power. He said he could deal with the whites, but the Zulus were insane and bent on revenge. Anyone not black enough (like Donnie) was going to get the shaft.
And he said that in an ideal world Kenya would benefit greatly from a benevolent dictator for four to six years to route out all of the corruption. Although he is cognizant of the fact that power corrupts and it would be difficult to find someone capable of filling the position who would not end up corrupt.
In the hope of full disclosure: He is a member of the Kikuyu tribe, the tribe that won the elections in Kenya and is a well off banker.
I have known a fair number of black people that I would call very good friends. My sister-in-law being foremost in my mind but I have known a good number Africans in the engineering department where I went to school. They were not 'black' to me then and they are not 'black' to me now. Obama isn't black to me either, he's the President of the United States. My president. Period. His race is irrelevant.
I disagree with much of what he's done, as I disagreed with much of what Clinton did and much of what Bush did. Any action which increases government intrusion into my life I'm going to disagree with. The race of the person doing the intruding is unimportant.
Popular black culture however is convinced that I personally and whites in general do wish to keep them oppressed. This is non-sense. I don't care about any given black persons success or failure any more than I care about any give white person's success or failure. However, when a person is convinced that they can not succeed they won't. This then is the problem. The belief by many blacks that they can not succeed is a poison that cuts off opportunity far more surely than even the most despicable forms of racism.
Asians in the past faced great amounts of racism, looking at restrictive immigration laws and the reaction during world war II give great evidence to that. Asians today face, more or less, the same kind of bigotry that blacks do. However, Asian culture in America believes that they can succeed. No amount of racism have kept them oppressed, simply because they refuse to be oppressed. They were pushed around, forced out of many cities often through violence. And yet they survived, lived and today prosper.
Is there racism? Yes. Is it wrong? Yes. Is that an important element in the problems facing people of African decent today? No.
All of my black friends are from Africa. None of them knew they weren't supposed to succeed. All of them have successful careers. The opportunities are there. Go take them.
First off, to even believe that we are at a place that racism is a non issue is foolish in itself. You hear and see plenty of stories-- lifes--that show how successful life can be for an african american, and you feel that it is a norm. However, that is not always the case. I am glad that you're friends (to the comment above mine) are succsessful, but I repeat, that is not always the case. There is still plenty of racism around, and plenty of prejudice.
The problem is, one side cannot see how it is to be on the other side. I have seen court cases that even the viewers believe to be utter shams. In one case, a blue eyed, blonde hair white woman mowed down an innocent lady in a drunken state behind the wheel. She was tried as NOT guilty. There is no borderline that is to be disscussed. Hell, she even partied more eafter the case. If this was an African American, this would not be the case.
But, as I said, white people cannot tell how it is to grow up as an African American. They seem to think that everyone has is equally. For the most part, they are almost right. This is not to say that there aren't lazy minorities that blame others. But just because you see plenty of success, doesn't mean there are pleny of people who are held back simply because of their race. And worse off, the white people are the VAST MAJORITY. How can you possibly say that everything is equal?
And that is where it wraps up too. Sure, there is racism all across the board. However, white people more than dwarfs any other race in America, and thus hold the most power in the state. That is where the issue comes from.
On the subject of Asians prospering despite of racism, that is the exact case of blacks as well. However, you cannot say the same situation of any other majority. "Surviving", as you put it, means prospering IN SPITE OF OPRESSION. How can you say that they faced no racism?
As to the artice itself, it shows the epitome of hypocrisy. Simply put, you're saying "if black people are unhappy, why don't they leave?" That sounds stupid. Honestly, blacks are born HERE. Not there, here. Why should they have to leave? That only emphasises that there is indeed a problem.
America has not redeemed itself of anything. That is not to say that people who are harping on the past slavery are right, however. That attitude does indeed hold back progression. But almost all racist views are seen as that--blacks complaining about nothing. It is time to correct the problem, not sweep it under the rug.
Now let's say the two bullies were white. Do you know how many incidences of white-on-white bullying either go unreported, or school adminstrators simply allow it to continue until the bullied kid(s) strike back. Only then does it seem the administrators want to get involved, but it usually ends up with the bullied kid(s) being disciplined, and not the actual bullies! How backwards & ignorant we have become!
Any of you who believe racism doesn't exist in America anymore (white against black) are ignorant of the realities of racism in America. It exists -sometimes overtly, very often subtley. If you haven't picked up on it in our mass media, you're blind & deaf. It's there, it exists, and now with our first ever black President, the closet racists are closeted no more.
Whites (and I am white) have much to live down when it comes their past & present behavior towards blacks. Saying "if they don't like it, they can go back to Africa" is childish and demeaning -not to blacks, but to all whites & specifically those who utter such foolishness.
Lest you all forget, WE whites were imported to this country under vastly different circumstances from how blacks arrived here. Read your history books.
Just because you may not have witnessed racism doesn't mean it does not exist. This is myopic. It exists, but should not be used as justification to batter one another.
We revert to knuckle-dragging neanderthals when we pander to this sort of regressive, bigoted thinking, and it's one major reason the world as a whole -and our country- can't move forward positively. For shame.
If you are on the receiving-end of racist social systems, high unemployment, programs designed to keep you dependent upon others, and bigoted, entitlement-mentality whites, you'd WANT affirmative action because most avenues for relief from your personal plight would be shut down to you.
Conversely, it is incumbent upon black Americans to find their place in our country. It cannot be stressed enough that if you come from a poor background, one of the few but major avenues for relief from the relentless grind of the circle of poverty is through education.
Until black America is ready to embrace this notion and a long road of hard work that lay ahead (and many have) they will continue to struggle against oppression -from within their own community and without.
Why do you think affirmative action ever came into being? For the same reason women want to pass the Equal Rights Amendment -equal employment & pay for equal work. But the white male population doesn't believe women are worth the same pay, for reasons as flimsy as the ones you've expounded on. Nor did/do they believe blacks should be given ANY chance at equal employment, housing, community, self-determination, destiny, you name it.
Ah, but the white man has his notion of manifest destiny. Apparently only white men are allowed this notion, if some of the tripe that's been written here is any indication.
Discrimination. Discriminatory practices, based on prejudice, a sense of entitlement, bigotry, you name it. It's all been well-documented in overt cases, and many women - whether white, black, hispanic, asian, or other- STILL are subjected to it.
Many black people are STILL subjected to overt & subtle racism. Just because you never experienced it firsthand doesn't mean it does not continue to occur, and doesn't mean we shouldn't remedy it.
You can't just shore up your argument by saying "what if....?" It doesn't work that way cos you're rewriting history to suit your current argument, while at the same time invalidating the experiences of millions of blacks throughout our history.
You cannot now expunge the record and make things look better than they really were or are. Black people are STILL being killed for nothing more than the color of their skin, and it's 2009. Women are STILL making less than men for the same or comparable work.
These discriminatory practices are actively engaged in by the privileged white male class, and to counter its ill effects on our society, in our defense we've instituted some rather drastic measures. Why? Drastic circumstances required it.
You might not see it that way, but walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you can say unequivocally that these measures didn't need to be taken to remedy centuries of abuse.
Black people aren't racially biased in favor of reverse discrimination, but I could see how they would feel justified in their attitudes when they consider how crappy they've been treated by white people -another unfair generality. But consider this question: What was the white man's excuse for being abusive in the first place? They had no justification other than their sense of superiority.
Why do whites insist on perpetuating the animosity, justifying their pitiful, bigoted, disciminatory behavior with "AFFIRMATIVE ACTION MADE ME DO IT!!"
It's now more important for black Americans to put away their animosities because in many cases they've served to keep the black community down. They're imploding from a poverty of mind and spirit. Not all, but some.
In other cases, animosity has provided the impetus for positive change. Righteous indignation can be a good thing -if it spurs people to act to preserve their dignity & sense of self-worth.
Has affirmative action outlived its purpose & usefulness? When it prevents the best-qualified people from getting jobs or promotions, then I suppose you have a point -albeit a small one. But when you juxtapose it with long-term systemic racism by whites against blacks, then your point fades.
Imagine how the indigenous blacks in South Africa felt for as long as apartheid was openly practiced by white invaders from Holland? Imagine yourself, if you can, as one of them, living in their OWN country, but horribly abused by the whites from Europe. Disgraceful.
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The only white racist people that I've ever met are poor. Middle and upper class people don't care what color your skin is but only how much you can produce. We do however all make judgments based on how people look. Guys that sag aren't likely to get hired. Women that walk in showing off their midriff aren't likely to get hired. I worked as a manager at a retail store and I saw people of all races showing up dressed inappropriately for an interview. They don't get hired. I'm sure they go to interview after interview wondering why they can't get a job.
Some of the blacks likely blame racism. In truth its their inability to dress in a business appropriate manner for the job they are applying for.
As colorblind said, slavery has existed in their world for a very long time. We are all the decedents of slaves. Worrying about the past will not fix the future. We are here and now. In the now racism will not stop you unless you let it. I have never owned a slave, I have never turned a black person down for a job because of his race. I will not pay for the mistakes of my nor any one else's ancestors.
@sims
I am well aware that racism still exists in this country. The thing about my friends is that they were all from Africa; Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. They didn't know they weren't supposed to succeed in America. I know my sister-in-law at least has directly faced racism. If the others have I don't know, we've never talked about it. Neither they nor I nor any of our other white friends gave a second thought to the color of any one's skin.
Successful people can't afford to care what color someone's skin is, not because of laws but because they want to be the best. You become the best by having the best people possible. If you only hire white men, or just whites, you will not have the best people possible. You're handicapping yourself. A racist company will never be able to preform as well as a company that hires based on merit.
Only you can decide if you will be successful.
"Why do whites insist on perpetuating the animosity, justifying their pitiful, bigoted, disciminatory behavior"...are so generalizing and racist in nature that I dont know where to start....but you just dont see it do you...we will never get anywhere with this issue if people like you continue to see and place all the emphasis on white male racism everywhere while neglecting all of the things that other racial groups do as well...also I am insulted when the slavery issue is put solely at the door of the white race when in actual fact the slaves that were sent to America were often sold by other blacks into slavery (where is the great hew and cry from black Americans about those terrible people, I never hear it...could it be because they were black and not white)..and also slavery continues to this very day in black Africa but instead we focus our attention on the slavery of hundreds of years ago...oddly enough I always wanted equality of the races but I never thought it would just be turned around so that now I feel have to stand up for my own race from are unjustified attacks on a whole group of people...I feel you anti whites have backed me into a corner...and believe me I am not a closet racist, I work and live in a multicultural environment every day, but when I read these comments it angers me..I have a white son and daughter you know and there is no way I will allow them to be dumped upon in atonement for acts from centuries ago that they played no part in.
White people are discriminated against just as much as any other color.
@ Marsha....Race matters (especially to blacks), it always has and it always will.
In what way would that prevent black persons, or members of any other race, from succeeding? Asians have done it so obviously it can't be an impossible hurdle to get over.
"But if children heard these preparation-for-bias warnings often (rather than just occasionally), they were significantly less likely to connect their successes to effort, and much more likely to blame their failures on their teachers-whom they saw as biased against them."
If you believe that there is racism every where you won't be willing to taken any responsibility for your own failures. If you don't take responsibility for your failures you can not learn from them and you can not improve yourself.