Judging by the emails I'm getting, my prediction in the previous piece of this article was spot on. I pissed more than a few of you off. I'm cool with that. The subject matter is much too important to the future of our nation to risk nothing with half-stepping and measured language. The problem is truth, not racism.
You'd never know it by listening to the Legacy Media, Hollywood, and so-called leaders. They all seem to go out of their way to project America as a cesspool of hate, misdeeds, and whitewashed history. But, dear friends, they all have a vested interest in pulling the wool over our eyes. In any situation where conflict is invoked, you have to ask a primary question. Who benefits from the conflict? Make no mistake, this is mostly a manufactured fracture between people of good conscience who are simply people of their time and unknowingly follow the wrong advice and information.
I'll repeat the phrase I've used previously. We don't have a race problem in this country, we have a truth problem. Black folks are lying to themselves and White folks about what they truly think and what's really going on. White folks are lying to themselves and Black folks about what they truly think and what's really going on. It's a vicious cycle that plays itself out every day and almost everywhere in the country. Let's break it down, shall we?
The media would have you believe that there is some sort of white supremacist renaissance these days. Anything and everything they don't like, be it social, legal, economic, or cultural that doesn't square with their Leftist views is, according to them, evidence of deep seeded and long standing racism. But whenever pressed to details and specifics, they inevitably retreat into tired old chestnuts, poll tested phraseology, carefully crafted platitudes and bromides, and completely dispelled canards. It's evil. It's despicable. It's destructive. And yet, they get away with it because it makes a very effective weapon against most people who shy away from being labelled as racist, sexist, homophobic, or fill-in-the-blank name calling. Nobody wants to be thought of as that kind of person, and the truth is, the overwhelming number of people you meet are NOT.
Nowadays, they call the thermonuclear effect of this type of disparagement "Cancel Culture". But Cancel Culture is nothing more than a weaponized continuance of Political Correctness. In the past, the simply tried to make saying certain things uncomfortable for people. They started to replace ignorant language with single letter substitute, such as "the n-word". Initially, it seemed OK to do (at best) and innocuous (at least). It was childish and succeeded in accomplishing only two things. First, they silenced debate by bastardizing the language. Second, they laid down the foundation for the sanction oriented punishments you see today. Along with cancel culture, we now have actual laws against saying (read:thinking) a certain thing or certain ways. While any thinking person can comprehend that certain language and speech is rude and/or objectionable, IT'S JUST WORDS. When I was a kid, they used to say "Sticks and stone can break my bones, but names will never hurt me". Today, it's more like "You said something I don't like, so you should be tarred and feathered or thrown in jail". Not exactly the America I grew up in.
So how do these things come to bear on the truth problem I suggest. Buckle up, pilgrims. You're probably not gonna like this next part. We are creating the very thing we're supposed to be trying to eliminate. We are CREATING PREJUDICE. When you make it impossible for people to discuss what they are thinking or feeling, you drive those thoughts and feelings deeper into their psyche. You allow small things to grow into much larger issues. Much the same way that new immigrants cloistered amongst themselves when they arrived here to be amongst their own and viewed anyone else as "them", we are doing that very same thing with races in this country today. When a White person hears Black people freely using prejudiced or racist language with no consequences, but have their integrity called into question for pointing it out, what do you think the result is? Simple, they just harbor feelings of anger over the disparity. When Black folks are preached at that the entire justice system is RACIST, from the cop on the beat to the judges and juries in courtrooms all over the nation, what do you think the result is? Simple, they see the justice system as the enemy and any exposure to it as dangerous to them personally.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 began a practice called "Affirmative Action" which, in short, gave special consideration to Black folks in hiring, promotion, university acceptance, contracting, and other ventures. Initially, it was thought to be a possible solution to aiding Black Americans to more fully integrate into society and increase economic mobility. A strong argument can be made that, perhaps initially, it was successful. But it created a major problem that seemingly no one wanted to address. It promoted a type of RACISM. If two people were being considered for a position, one White and one Black, both equally qualified, the nod would go to the Black candidate due to Affirmative Action. Yes, it would succeed in moving more Black folks up the ladder, the problem is that the selection was done strictly by RACE. All you need do to understand that would be to reverse the situation. If the White person was given the position because they were White, it would obviously be seen in a RACIST light. That being said, the practice continued for a decade or so before the results didn't pan out the way the designers intended. They contended that the reason Black folks weren't being hired, promoted, etc more than they were MUST be due to racism, an immoral act. To counter that, they designed an equally immoral act. When the numbers for equally qualified candidates didn't jive with their initial estimates, they simply changed the rules and, in some cases, lowered the standards to ensure that more Black folks would be chosen.
What do you think the result was? Welp, White folks saw it as "reverse racism" where they were being discriminated against by virtue of their race. If they actually said so, guess what? They were called RACIST. So those thoughts and feelings became internalized. There was an article in Time magazine back in the early 90s where they interviewed Buppies, young Black Urban Professionals about how they felt in the workplace. Not shockingly, they said they felt ostracized by their White co-workers whom they assumed saw them as unqualified "Affirmative Action" hires. These ideas were an internalization of feelings they had because they harbored thoughts they couldn't express. Aiding these young Black professionals up the economic ladder was supposed to integrate them into the workforce, academia, and civil service to add their diversity of thought to the American quilt. Instead, it created the exact same kind of PREJUDICE and RACISM it purported to abhor.
In case after case, instance after instance, if you examine each on it's merits ONLY, you find this to be repeated. Over and over, people are instructed to think and believe as they are told, and not to trust what their own eyes see. Whenever a new "solution" was proposed and enacted to eliminate PREJUDICE and RACISM, it simply added to the low and slow boil the country experienced. Succinctly, it added to the problem by forcing it underground and into our collective subconscious. President Lyndon Johnson's "New Society" did more to set back race relations in this country than Jim Crow ever could. Johnson created the modern day welfare system that takes taxpayers' dollars from one person and gives it to another. What do you think the result was? Yup, the exact opposite of it's stated intent. See, while America is one of, if not THE, most charitable countries on the planet, Americans willingly offer up and donate part of their wealth to people and causes they believe in and think deserving. They derive a increased sense of self for having done so. Believing that the government steals their money and gives it to someone else they don't think of as deserving doesn't produce that same increase. It produces malice.
At the same time, the recipients of the support were thought to use the "hand up" as a stepping stone toward individual economic success. Not unpredictably, the short term "hand up" became a lifelong "hand out" and the recipients of this largess had their future prospects stifled because as soon as they started to achieve economic viability on their own, the money stopped coming in. What do you think the result was? Again, not unpredictably, these folks adjusted their mindset and lifestyle to keep the "free money" coming. Not only did you no longer need a 2 parent family with a working parent to "bring home the bacon", marriage was seen as a penalty that would reduce or eliminate a person's eligibility, thus marriage before children (which was stable and on the rise previously) began to plummet to it's current rate. As I stated before, children born and raised in a 2 parent nuclear family are considerably at an advantage for academic and economic success. As the New Society program sunk it's claws into Black Culture, it generated the exact opposite of it's stated intent. More people with less education produced less opportunities and a higher number of recipients.
If you're following the logic pathway I'm trying to lay out, by now it should be getting clear to you that truth is the real problem, not RACISM. Over a decade ago, Louis Farrakhan promoted the idea of how to increase the economic and political power of Black Americans. He went into no small amount of detail in explaining that, while some of the problems that Blacks were experiencing were the fault of Whites, a still more important part was over their own making and, thus, well within their power to fix. While Brother Minister Farrakhan and I would disagree on a great many things, in this instance, a stopped clock is right twice a day. He was spot on in his exclamations. How was his message received? Quite obviously, he is Black, so the charge of being a racist could not be levied, but he was still viciously excoriated by other Black leaders and White liberals for suggesting that the total cause of difficulties being experienced by the Black Community weren't totally the fault of Whites. HERESY!
The power elite have spent decades trying the convince Black America that they were incapable of affecting their own circumstances. They HAD to rely on the good graces of a benevolent government to help them or they would surely fail. I can't think of a more racist notion. Imagine the unmitigated gall of telling someone that, because of their race, they are incapable. I was born in the projects and grew up as poor as poor gets, but I was also told that, in America, you can be whatever your hard work, natural talents, and God's grace directs you to be. It would seem we are no longer in the America I grew up in. My mother would wash your mouth out with soap if you used the phrase "Colored People". It wasn't meant to be a pejorative, but she thought it rude and ignorant. Fast forward to today, where anyone who is not White is openly called a "Person of Color". Wait, what? So there are 2 base words in that title, person and color. If you leave the "ed" at the end of Color, it's bad, but if you use 2 other letters, "of" and put it in between the two, it's somehow inclusive and righteous? Not in my worldview. I find that phrase to be RACIST at it's core, because it's sole purpose it to divide, separate, and delineate people by race. Just more of the "us versus them" mentality I spoke of previously.
If you ask White folks what they believe and what they think is going on, here's what you will find out. They don't like the way Blacks in the country act toward them. They are tired of being belittled, bashed, and subjected to an almost constant ridicule not just by Black folks, but by the media, Hollywood, and the power elite. They are tired of being accused at every turn of racism when they, themselves, don't believe they've committed any such offense. White folks are pretty much sick and tired of being told they are guilty of the acts of people who lived over a hundred years ago. They recoil at the very idea of "reparations". In my case, both sides of my family didn't even get to America until after 1900, so nobody in my entire gene pool was every involved in slavery. And yet, Whites are told that (once again, because of their race) they are guilty of benefiting from it and must, thereby, atone. Balderdash. A person can only atone for the sin they themselves have committed. Totally racist things can be said about them, and they are not allowed to respond or reject such accusations. To argue against the assertion is seen as, you guessed it, racist and, in the most modern parlance, it shows a person's "White Privilege". You would be hard pressed to find a working class White person who believes he or she is somehow "privileged" by their race. In fact, to assert such asininity is, welp, RACIST.
If they were allowed to share their views, good and reasonable conversation and debate could take place and the truth would be the best disinfectant. Barring that, these ideas are buried deep and given a life of their own which only serves to engrane them into the national psyche. The same is equally true for Black folks. If you ask Black folks what they believe and what they think is going on, here's what you'll find out. They are constantly told that America is racist, the system is replete with "institutional RACISM" and they can only trust and believe other Black folks. They are told that Police are basically the Gestapo for White Supremacy, the only way to succeed is to play the game, keep it real, and always be Black first. The level of distrust that is simmering amongst Black folks is astonishing and, quite frankly, sad. In major cities all over this country, it was promoted for decades that the only way to police Black neighborhoods was with Black police officers. Affirmative Action practices since 1964 have now seen that come to fruition. In most major cities today, not only the beat cops but also the leadership of the departments are Black. Crime is still a major problem in these cities. Black neighborhoods are still not as safe as White neighborhoods, in general, and the level of contempt for the police in these cities amongst their Black residents is still just as palpable. Ask the family of Tyre Nichols.
When you are told that RACISM is everywhere, you start to believe it. Even when you can't see direct evidence of it (think Klan rally), you are told that it's "institutional". Ubiquitous. How, then, as a Black person in American today, can you allow yourself to think otherwise. So Black folks separate themselves into their own "community". They live by the rules of their own culture, even when that culture is infected with Ghetto culture that causes their children to be exposed to the worst aspects of life. Black kids in Chicago are being shot and killed by other Black kids. What does the media say about that? It's an example of "institutionalized RACISM", because the White Supremacists are bringing in the guns. As I said, I'm a White guy, so I can't speak to exactly what a Black man or woman thinks and feels, but I can listen. I will listen. But we have to get to a point where we tell the race mongers to shut up, sit down, and stop poisoning every conversation with their vile rhetoric. Good people of good conscience can disagree, but I would rather have the conversation and know what a person really believes and what they really think is going on. Then and only then, can progress be made.
It's my opinion that the conflict we see today is a straw man. It's a false narrative being foisted upon us. We are having our strings pulled by others which creates this conflict and, as I said at the beginning of this piece, you have to ask who benefits from the conflict. In the next (and in all likelihood final) piece of this article, I'll try to paint that picture for you. Let's try to list those who benefit from the racial conflict and, in doing so, take the power back from them and chart a course forward together.
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