There’s a whole cottage industry out there working 24x7 to come up with new ways to blame white Americans for the problems of black Americans and none of it makes any logical sense.
If there were actually white people’s meetings, where all of us got together and decided the fate of humanity, Saira Rao’s comment would be spot-on. If the world were like that classic Eddie Murphy skit where white people were given things for free and handed money just for the color of their skin, it would be perfectly logical for black Americans to get angry at white Americans.
However, the truth is something far different. There is no racist conspiracy. If anything, most white conservatives are indifferent to race and would prefer not to discuss it at all. I’m sure they exist somewhere, but I don’t know any white people that are secretly seething because Jay Z has money or that are angry that a black man was president. Of course, anyone could figure that out if they paid attention for 5 seconds. It doesn’t even make sense to argue that some white conservative who advocates a colorblind world, thinks Thomas Sowell is a genius and is happily backing Larry Elder as governor of California actually believes black Americans are inferior to white Americans. It’s completely ridiculous and illogical.
Liberals try to convince people that we should all be looked at as part of groups first, but the real truth is that everyone is an individual. Furthermore, the reality is that individuals of all races in America tend to go way off track for roughly the same reasons. They drop out of high school. They have substance abuse problems. They have severe mental health issues they don’t treat. They don’t get married before they have kids. They commit crimes and go to jail. They’re generally screw-ups who can’t show up on time, take instruction, manage their money, or hold a job. Certainly, not everyone who fits into one of these categories is a failure. Everyone reading this could probably name a success that checks one or more of these boxes. However, if you look at the individuals that can’t hack it in modern America, you are going to find that the vast majority of them fall into one of these categories. The reality that some people don’t like to admit is that most people end up where they end up in life for a reason. Some activities and ways of living tend to produce bad results. Others tend to produce good results. In most cases, you can draw a straight line from the results people achieve to the things they’ve consistently done in their lives.
The reason any group of Americans lags behind another group is that percentage-wise more of the individuals in that group tend to do things that produce bad results than individuals from another group do. The unfortunate reality is that percentage-wise black Americans are more likely to drop out of high school, not go to college, have kids out of wedlock, and commit crimes than people from most other races. If you want to know why black Americans as a group tend to lag behind some other ethnicities, that is the biggest part of it. If you could magically somehow correct all those issues, almost all the disparities between black Americans and other groups would eventually disappear.
Unfortunately, people don’t like hearing that type of thing about any group they identify with and even if they did, those are awfully tough issues to fix. So, what’s going to pay more if you’re a liberal activist? Telling people things they don’t want to hear and then trying to help them fix intractable issues that aren’t solvable with a new government program, or just shouting “that’s racist!” which coincidentally, doesn’t require people to do anything to fix their own problems? When you falsely claim that racism is responsible for the problems black Americans have, it puts the onus on other people to solve their problems. “It’s not you, it’s them!” In this case, the “them” is white people. It’s conservatives. It’s Republicans. But is it really?
It’s not the KKK or racist police officers killing black Americans in Chicago every weekend, it’s other black Americans. It’s not white conservatives forcing black Americans to drop out of high school or skip college. There are very few white Americans talking young black men into committing crimes, joining gangs, or getting black women pregnant out of wedlock. That’s something they’re choosing to do on their own. Look at the most screwed up, dangerous, places in our country for black Americans to live and you’ll typically find they’re liberal cities where black Americans monolithically backed the people in charge.
When Republicans do try to reach out to black Americans, they typically get slapped in the face with charges of racism for trying even though black Americans across the board know it’s all mostly a scam. If Joe Biden was a Republican, he’d be called a racist. If Donald Trump was a Democrat, no one would be calling him a racist. Whether they’ll admit it or not, every single person reading this knows that’s true. Almost all charges of “racism” in politics are a pure scam. As Mary Frances Berry, the former Democratic Chairwoman of the US Commission on Civil Rights said in a rare moment of honesty:
“Tainting the Tea Party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that Tea Party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”
Yet, we still endlessly fight over the dumbest things. Is Aunt Jemima racist? Do Confederate statues need to come down? Should we put up statues of a dirtbag like George Floyd? Even when liberals get their way in these fights, you know what happens? They just move on to the next thing that’s supposedly intolerably racist. Nobody is lifted out of poverty. Nobody has a better life. Nothing happens at all except we move on to the next thing we’re all supposed to hate each other over.
Meanwhile, as it gets harder and harder to find anything that could reasonably be called racism that prevents black Americans from succeeding, the charges of racism get further and further into the weeds. We would probably get as close to universal agreement as we can on any subject in America that black Americans not being allowed to vote, use the same water fountains as white people, or send their children to the same schools as white people is racism. However, we’ve now gotten to the point where what gets called racism is increasingly ridiculous. We’re sending the FBI out to investigate Bubba Wallace going to a new garage that had a door pull that he thought looked like a tiny noose. We’re being told everything from math to merit-based admissions to the American flag is racist. There’s no possible end to it because there’s practically nothing too trivial to be potentially considered racist. Just to give you a great example, John McWhorter, who seems to mean well and does good work, recently did a 1,400-word piece exploring whether police officers using a different tone of voice with black Americans than white Americans was racist. Where does it end?
This is an endless rabbit hole that produces only division and achieves nothing of significance other than putting money into the pockets of professional race hustlers like Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Shaun King. Is there anyone who believes that people whose entire professional careers revolve around claiming that things are racist are ever going to willingly declare that this problem is solved? It’s never going to happen. Are the Democrats ever going to declare that racism is no longer a problem if they believe it will get more black Americans to go to the polls? Not a chance. It’s not even a surprise that they’re trying to play people this way, it’s just a surprise that so many people of all races go along with what is so obviously a damaging scam.
Along similar lines, look at this chart:
In a rational world, everyone would acknowledge that there’s no way a racist nation with a majority white population would even elect, much less re-elect a black man. So, what happened after Obama was re-elected? Well, the Democratic Party, liberal activists, and the liberal media concluded it would be profitable and politically useful to promote racial division. Since then, they have put an enormous amount of money, time, and effort into getting people to hate each other based on race and it worked just as it was intended. It’s not the “colorblind world,” “we should all be looked at as individuals” conservatives trying to convince people of different races to hate each other, it’s the Colin Kaepernicks, Joe Bidens, and Patrisse Cullors who are benefitting from encouraging race-based hatred. Just the fact that there are so many professional race hustlers getting rich off of this should make a lightbulb go off in people’s heads.
The sad truth is that all the evidence anyone needs to see that this isn’t a racist country is already there and anyone with an open mind who wants to find it can already see it, just as people who are determined to call everything racist can find reasons to do that as well as long as people don’t look too closely.
It reminds me of something that happened in my childhood.
Despite the impression you’d probably get from the movies or the Democratic Party, when I was a teenager in North Carolina in the eighties, I genuinely didn’t run across a lot of people that were racists. The only occasional exceptions to that were a few of the older white people who grew up in a segregated, racist country and were too mentally inflexible to change their views. One of those people happened to be the father of a female friend of mine who was throwing a party. I was there early when I heard about something that happened upstairs. Roughly 15 people showed up at the party. 14 white guys, most of whom I knew, and a black guy. When my friend’s father came to the door, I was told he said something like, “I don’t allow black people in my house, but all the rest of you are welcome to come to the party.”
In today’s world, this is where the story would stop. “SEE? RACISM IS EVERYWHERE! BE OUTRAGED! BE HORRIFIED!”
In real life, as it always does, the story went on. The white guys who were invited in politely declined because if their friend couldn’t come with them, they weren’t going in either. They all turned around and left as a group. My female friend? She was HORRIFIED at what her father had done and was on the verge of a panic attack. The whole party essentially died at that point and people cleared out. Later, I was hanging out in a parking lot with the guys that left. Everyone was having a good time and in general, people seemed to have a worse opinion of my friend’s father after that.
So, what’s the real story? Is it just the first half of the story that leaves out a lot of facts and is designed to outrage you or the whole story, where the vast majority of people did the right thing and weren’t racist at all? The story we’re seeing on the news in America is the first one, but what anybody who makes even the smallest effort to look will find is that the real America is in the second story.
I get nervous around black people. I'll cop to it. When I'm in a room with black individuals, particularly college students, I get nervous wondering how many of them look at me and hate me for the color of my skin. Does that make me racist?
I find your straight talk, fair analysis and all around good American guy attitude refreshing and a pleasure to read. Your description of how most white Americans feel about race fits me to a T. But I am getting pretty damned tired of the ingratitude and willingness to embrace victimhood on the part of black Americans. Blacks who immigrate legally to this country have a much better outcome in America than do our own home grown black people, simply because they know how fortunate they are to be in America, which would be the least race-conscious country in the world if the leftists would just shut up about it! Of course they won't - it serves them well at the expense of all of us, blacks and whites.
Your response to that hateful twitter comment by Ms Rao was a perfect retort against a belief bereft of gratitude. I have one thing to say to her. If you feel so hated and abused, no one is keeping you from leaving.