OK, we’re supposed to be in this NEW “post-racial” world I keep hearing so much about.
Sounds GREAT! Almost sounds too good to be true.
Still, I keep getting mixed signals.
While I’m told we NEED “an honest discussion about race in America,” I’m also still being told that whites, especially white males should avoid talking about race, as they are usually apt to offend non-whites and non-males and, of course, it goes without saying, Liberal (guilt-ridden) whites....perhaps THEM most of all.
Really?...I mean, is that really true? If so, why should that really matter? After all, virtually EVERYTHING that ANYONE Left-of-Center, non-white or non-male says about race tends to offend the hell out of me...I just don’t whine about it when it happens.
So, it seems the “conversation” that’s wanted is the one where “oppressed minorities” list their grievances against “white males” and we beg their forgiveness and apologize for being so greedy, so oppressive, so white and so male.
The problem is, no one, at least no one on this end really wants to have that “discussion,” primarily because it’s inherently DISHONEST.
An “HONEST Conversation about race,” isn’t going to be very pretty, I’m afraid and it WILL almost certainly be offensive to those who believe in today’s “grievance politics,” that asserts that the various and sundry “protected minority’s” grievances need to be heard and respected.
I’m very aware of those “grievances,” but if those grievances deserve a hearing (and they've had one), then so do our side’s.
What I’m about to give you is the perspective of virtually EVERY sane, rational white male in America (sorry white Liberals, you don’t qualify as either).
WoW! 205 words and no real “discussion” yet. Man, this jump-starting this “honest conversation” really IS a lot harder than I’d originally thought it would be.
Let me start off with a brief DISCLAIMER: I am about to give a white, male perspective on race. I can’t give a non-white, or non-male perspective because I am neither of those things.
(I know, I’m stalling, right? I mean that wasn’t a “disclaimer," it was stating the god-damned obvious. I mean my picture is right in the upper left-hand portion of this blog, so...yeah, I know, I’m stalling again....Man, am I just GREAT at this stalling shit, or what?...)
OK, look, sometimes the best way, in fact the ONLY way to kick off a discussion like this is to just “let it fly,” or “come right out with it,” as they say. Alright, let me jump right in here with a list of just a few of the things that bother me about the current state of race-relations in America;
Yes, it bothers me that in most locales "urban" (a/k/a/ “predominantly black”) school districts get the lion’s share of the school funding, apparently as a reward for garnering the lowest test scores and graduation rates. I mean it MUST BE a “reward” because we all know that when those same “failing schools” turn over from predominantly black to predominantly Asian (as a number have in places like the South Bronx and parts of California), those same “failing schools,” with the same teachers, the same books and the same old dirty walls, suddenly see test scores rise and drop-out rates fall and THAT is often followed up with budget cuts, so that other or “newly failing schools” can get rewarded with more cash for failures.
In nearby New Jersey, over 50% of that state’s school revenues (funded primarily by property taxes) go to just 31 of the state’s 568 districts. Those “lucky 31” are, of course all “urban” school districts. So, while failing school districts like Atlantic City’s and Newark’s get 800% and 600% return on their property tax dollar (that’s $8 for every $1 and $6 for every $1), respectively back in education dollars, suburban communities, like Mendham average a paltry 4% (yes, that’s 4-cents for every $1 they send in) ...and YES, that bothers me.
And yes, it bothers me greatly that when covering the incredibly rare white-on-black violent crime, the races of both victim and suspects are routinely published, while the races of those involved in the far more common black-on-white violent crime are rarely, if EVER published. It leads one to erroneously believe that one of those kinds of crimes is somehow “worse than” the other. And YES, again THAT bothers me.
It also bothers me a great deal that when blacks do poorly on various standardized exams that’s called “disparate impact,” and is alleged to be “proof of discrimination,” But when blacks comprise 65% of the MTA or 80% of the NBA that’s called “a racial achievement.”
Worse yet, is having to hear some of the inane rationales some blacks give for their doing poorer (on average) than other groups on such exams, such as “Blacks are more social than whites and don’t have as much time for studying,” OR “Blacks value things differently than whites.” These are sickening excuses, because those things described are individual/personal failings, known as “lack of discipline” and “lack of focus.” They are NOT ethnic or GROUP traits, they are individual flaws or failings and it’s an affront to all blacks who DO NOT possess those failings and YES, that bothers the hell out of me!
It also bothers me that Police Departments across the country automatically file virtually all white-on-black violent crimes as a “hate crimes,” while only labeling black-on-white crimes as “hate crimes” when the evidence is both overwhelming and undeniable.
That is an absurd double standard, especially in light of the fact that, each year, approximately 1.2 million violent crimes involving blacks and whites occur nationwide. In just over 90 percent of those cases, according to U.S. Justice Department figures, the perpetrators are black and the victims are white. Violent white felons choose black victims for fewer than 3 percent of their attacks, whereas violent black felons choose white victims about 56 percent of the time. Statistically, the "average" African American is an astonishing 56 times more likely to attack a white than vice versa.
And YES...that last god-damned statistic bothers the living SHIT OUT OF ME!!!
Whoops! I went a little ballistic on that last one – still, I meant all of that.
Moreover, I look forward to anyone who is either offended or incensed by this brief list to explain in the most painstaking of detail why I should NOT be offended by any of this. I will respond to all such responses with all the due haste, patience and politeness as the respondent accords to me.
First, some basic ground rules;
DO NOT tell me that any of the things I said here are “not true,” they ALL are.
DO NOT tell me something like, “You have to understand that blacks are rightfully angry at whites for...” because quite frankly, I DON’T have to understand excuses for vile ethnic bigotry and I do not choose to do that.
YOU CAN challenge any point so long as you provide links and documented evidence to support your contention...AND YOU CAN assert any opinion, no matter how odious and/or invalid, so long as you can avoid the tasty trap of invective and personal attacks.
Boy oh BOY! I don’t know if anyone else feels any better after reading this, but I sure feel a whole LOT better having written it and gotten some of that off my chest.
Man! I can’t wait for this honest discussion of race in America to begin!
7 comments:
Yep, that is the way it is in the America we know and love. I am so TIRED of the race card being played. It is always the blacks that play it. Just because we have a 'black' (who is half white too) the race card is coming out of the woodwork! GAH!!!
In truth, I actually liked President Obama's idea for "An honest discussion about race," I only differ with the content that those in the media and academia have in mind.
The "race card," is really just another "victimology card," and there are whites who play their "victim's cards too.
Still, in the end, at least in my view, our core problem is NOT, for the most part, a racial/ethnic one, THE PROBLEM is this all pervasive sense of grievance and worse, entitlement that’s been inculcated into our culture by the Left.
Past suffering is NOT hereditable.
For instance, my Dad’s father (my paternal grandfather) grew up in an age of rampant and overt anti-Irish discrimination, largely by those of English and German Protestant descent. Signs in Boston and New York reading “Irish and Dogs Need Not Apply,” while blacks were hired for some of the same low-level positions the Irish couldn’t apply for.
When he did get a job as a dispatcher for a private bus line, he could never advance and as a result trained many newer and younger guys who jumped over him. He was told repeatedly and openly, “Sorry, but you don’t have a Mason’s (Freemason’s) ring.” (That was a standard designed to keep Catholics, in those cities, primarily Irish Catholics, “in their place”).
But my Dad grew up without ANY sense of grievance, let alone entitlement because of anything his Dad went through, and of course none of that ridiculous and morally and spiritually crippling nonsense was ever foisted upon me.
My Dad grew up during the Great Depression, graduated High School and went right into WW II and stayed in the U.S. Navy for eight years into the start of the Korean War.
When he got on the NYC Fire Department (the FDNY) he was filled with GRATITUDE over a job where he could advance according to his own ambitions and test-taking skills. He passed every promotion exam on that job and rose to the top of its ranks. He kept on studying even AFTER he’d become comfortable financially and even beyond his “favorite rank” (Battalion Chief) because he actually felt that he “owed that to the City that provided him with that opportunity.”
He and that GREAT attitude are the antithesis of the corrosive weakness of today’s grievance mongers who feel it’s THEY who are “owed something”...by an “unjust society?”
Really?
Actually, America’s been more IMPERFECT that it's been “unjust”...individual people, even some states and regions, from time to time, have been "unjust," but America has largely been guilty of being imperfect.
Consider that we live in a world TODAY, where chattel slavery and the most brutal oppression of women is predominant in about 80% of its populations.
And that pervasive chattel slavery and the oppression of women is NOT a result of “European colonialism implanting paternalism across the globe,” (Europeans did no such thing...Africans were selling other Africans into chattel slavery in the Arab-run Zanzibar Slave Trade long before Europe entered that market). Western Europe (primarily England and France), along with America were not only the first nations to abolish chattel slavery and accept women as equal partners, they remain, some two centuries later, among the ONLY nations in the world to have YET done that.
If the USA is to be condemned as “unjust” than sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab-Muslim Mideast are so hideously and irredeemably unjust a full two centuries later, as to warrant complete destruction...and ditto for huge tracts of Asia, as well!
Today's corrrosive "grievance politics" has stripped our culture of its humility, its decency and its bonding humanity.
If it was really all about race, then why does the black community attack in such a vicious and cruel manner blacks who are conservative? Doesn't a black person look in the mirror and see a black person? And isn't that all white people react to? The color of the skin? Whites don't really care what you THINK, they only care what color you are. Yeah, right.
Liberals need to open their eyes and mind. My daughter who is half Hispanic and half white and has friends who are all mixed up like her wonders what she is SUPPOSED to think. I always tell her to think for herself.
I probably have not said this well. Sorry.
"If it was really all about race, then why does the black community attack in such a vicious and cruel manner blacks who are conservative?" (HHS)
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Absolutely right!
It really isn't about "race" at all....it's primarily about "grievance politics" and "group identity," the foundations of the Left.
Black Conservatives, like female Conservatives are considered "de facto white males," by Liberals, which is why we saw the spectacle of blacks throwing oreo cookies at Michael Steele when he ran for the Senate back in 2006.
BRAVO!
Hi TREXPRESS!
Thanks for stopping by!
And THANKS for being out there on that wall. Too many of us take that for granted....God bless.
excellent post, jmk. what you did by writing this, is affirm the thinking of many who, maybe, don't feel comfortable sharing these ideas in mixed company. your perspective has been sorely needed in the blogospher. well done!
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