Is It Really About Racism?

It is puzzling to me that in today’s world of “white privilege” rhetoric and the persistent cry that America’s founding and subsequent progress is fundamentally racist that no one has asked the obvious question.  Is it possible that a white person achieves a significant level of success because of skill and competence and not simply skin color?  Is it equally possible that a black or brown person fails to achieve success in life because of bad choices, few skills or incompetence?   Neither one of these propositions are tied to skin color.  They are based on individuals and their ability to contribute in meaningful ways to an organization, a culture or a nation.  Every time I read that “merit” is a white supremacy concept I am both shocked and concerned that this concept might take hold.  You measure value by contribution to a goal of some sort – economic, physical, mental or spiritual.  I have never met anyone who is inherently valuable because of skin color.  Their value comes from behavior and their actions.  Negative actions equate to negative outcomes – simple. 

              So, one might legitimately ask why does the idea of being oppressed and the concept of systemic racism seem to appeal so widely to black Americans, but less so to Hispanic, and even less so Asiatic Americans?  I contend that this is an issue of culture.  Hispanic and Asian Americans bring strong cultural roots when they come to America and for the most part are free to both assimilate and still continue to practice key parts of their home country culture that brings them joy and sense of identity. 

              The blight of slavery for Black Americans in the USA stripped the enslaved Africans of their culture.  They were punished for practicing cultural rituals of their home country and admonished to forget where they came from.   A telling example is the demand that all African slaves be renamed to reflect their new home.   As a result, the owners of slaves and those who endorsed slavery stripped generations of enslaved Africans of the most important things that founded their identity and sought to replace it with some watered-down version of “American” culture.

              What we are seeing today is not a demand for racial justice, it is a demand for revenge.  A demand to seize power and restore a culture to the Black Americans.  Not an African culture, but a unique culture that is an amalgam of African practices and parts of American culture that have a special resonance to Black Americans.  The white supremacy argument is a smoke screen that hides the deep desire to have something a Black American can call his or her own without referring to the common threads of white America’s European roots.

              We need to stop the nonsense of reparations and the inanity of the social justice arguments and approach the real problem.  How can we the white majority get out of the way and let Black America have something that is uniquely their own that can be woven into the tapestry of America?

              My final observation centers on the problem of white liberals who want social justice by destroying social institutions and substituting soft racism.  Soft racism is the idea that only white liberals know what black and brown people need.   Liberals have a messiah complex leading them to the idea that they must restore justice by crushing white people (so they feel the pain) and save the black and brown people.  This divisive attitude offers no solutions only punishment for those that succeed by making good choices.  It rewards bad behavior and poor choices because it assumes the inability of a black or brown person to do otherwise.  The liberal’s soft racism is fueled by ego and shame, that provide seemingly endless fuel.  Ego because they imagine themselves so special, and shame about slavery and the horrific aftermath.  This apparently produces selective amnesia about any progress made over the last 45 years.  It ignores the fact that the only legal discrimination in the US is authorized under the Affirmative Action Program where less qualified minorities can replace qualified majority applicants for an opportunity.  Affirmative Action is fundamentally reparations.  It was explained to me while I was in training as unit Equal Opportunity officer, that Affirmative Action was a program that remedied the head start in life’s race to success that many white people had when compared to minorities.  Advantages like a two-parent household, regular attendance at school, and being held accountable as a child for bad choices.

So perhaps it is time to start asking if there are more substantive causes for black underachievement than racism. Until we can truly identify the problem we cannot attack the causes.