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What Can Whites Do to Improve Race Relations in America?
ClashDaily.com ^ | 8/28/13 | Donald Joy

Posted on 08/28/2013 7:13:14 AM PDT by IChing

I grew up in a rural area of upstate New York that was overwhelmingly white, with almost no racial minorities around to speak of.

In school, and in books, magazines, and on TV, I was bombarded with messages and tales about the extent of horrors that whites had done to other races over the generations, especially to blacks.

For example, I was a tender lad of 13 or 14 when the wildly successful TV miniseries about slavery, Roots (based on the book of the same title by Alex Haley), dominated the airwaves and the national consciousness. Some of my schoolteachers during that year oriented much of their classroom time around discussion and study of the topic of Roots, and in my 7th-grade social studies class we spent weeks with specially developed materials designed to enlighten us about the anthropological dynamics of a certain tribe in Africa, the Egba Yoruba.

At that age, I was already a voracious reader, and became fascinated with the general subject of the black experience and race relations in our country. After watching Roots on TV, I got my hands on Alex Haley’s book, and read it cover to cover. I perused other books, such as The Me Nobody Knows: Children’s Voices from the Ghetto, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Black Like Me.

Starting in the first grade, I had been completely indoctrinated in the socio-political sainthood of Dr. Martin Luther King, and I was very inspired by his legacy. For a class assignment, I wrote and made my own illustrated book about Dr. King, out of construction paper, staples, and magic markers.

Similarly, I was imbued with a reverential respect for Abraham Lincoln, and the legend of his having so courageously freed the slaves. On an 8th-grade field trip to Washington, D.C. I gazed up in awe at Lincoln’s memorial statue on the National Mall. Many years later, by moonlight on the reflecting pool in 2005, I proposed to my wife on the steps of that monument to Lincoln. But as a younger person, nobody, none of my teachers or parents or media figures ever told me what Lincoln had actually said regarding his prognosis for race relations in America once slavery was ended–I found out about that only in recent years.

Having very little actual experience with members of other races as a kid, I was nonetheless left with stereotyped impressions from various media, which in later years I found to be pretty accurate. While visiting my grandparents on the New England coast, I began to gain real-world experience: On one occasion, a young black man stole a ten-speed bicycle from my grandmother’s driveway. During another visit, at age 15, I was shoved to the ground by a much larger black guy when he and his friends didn’t like the idea that my friends and I were partying on their turf.

It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I found out that Alex Haley plagiarized much of Roots from a white author, and was successfully sued for it. Not only that, but that key aspects of Haley’s supposedly genealogically-researched story, and its depiction of slavery, were completely falsified.

I entered Air Force basic training at age 17, and that was when my firsthand experience with blacks really got underway. In the ranks, I found many of my black fellow servicemen to be perfectly wonderful brothers in arms. Some others, not so much. But mainly, the military ethos, discipline, and overall environment made racial differences not too important, it seemed.

It wasn’t until after I left the service and ventured into the cities of Buffalo, N.Y., Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.(especially in black ghetto areas), mainly to do security and law enforcement work, that I became painfully aware, firsthand, of the shocking level of sheer depravity, chaos, racial hatred, crime, and mayhem that so many millions of black children are born into. After the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, and after having had numerous horrible experiences with hateful blacks on the streets and even in office workplace settings, I increasingly began to be concerned about what I sensed was an overall problem of a worsening racial situation in our country.

Whites and blacks all along throughout the years have been told that the problems of blacks are the responsibility of white people, for which whites should accept blame, and for which whites should come up with solutions, or at least bear the brunt of whatever remedies are declared, by whoever, to be in order. Simultaneously, outrageous levels of crime and violence done by blacks are to be publicly downplayed by the media and authorities, lest it be implied that black adults, parents, leaders, and so are to be held accountable.

The general approach has been that the overall condition of blacks in America is the result of the actions of whites, and therefore, whites must be the ones to make things better, and right.

Now, Barack Obama is in his second term as president, and has played a key role in aggravating and badly worsening the state of race relations throughout his occupation of that office. Obama entered the national scene fresh from two decades at the feet of Jeremiah Wright, and proceeded to hustle and con his way into the White House, appointing the blatantly race-oriented Eric Holder as his Attorney General.

With Obama’s shamefully divisive exploitation (for the purposes of rousing and rallying key blocs of his voting base) of local events such as the Henry Louis Gates incident and the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman debacle on the national stage, Obama has shown us all that poor leadership has disastrous consequences beyond implications for the overall economy and international intrigues/wars. Many Americans have to go about their daily lives concerned for their physical safety, while those in the highest offices of the land fan the flames of racial animosity and violence.

So what should white people think and do about it all?

If we assume that the races are intrinsically equal, we have to ask about, and expect a resolution to, the issue of whether and when blacks will, overall, ever assimilate to the standards of civilized society–because enough of them haven’t yet, so as to cause a grave alarm. So, what is it that whites must do, anyway? How many programs and apologies and decades of forbearance shall it take? If we are to operate in good faith, it should not be taboo to speculate in such a way.

We’re all familiar with that old saying, “you can’t keep a good man down.” It means, just as is found in the teachings of the ancient religions, that oppression is really only the test of character–and that if someone or something is keeping you down beyond a certain point, then you must not be a good man.


TOPICS: History; Miscellaneous; Politics; Society
KEYWORDS: blackcrime; canmsnbc; fireholder; mlk; obama; racerelations
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Been meaning to write this for a long time.
1 posted on 08/28/2013 7:13:14 AM PDT by IChing
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To: IChing

Im turning Black and Gay a week from Thursday


2 posted on 08/28/2013 7:14:24 AM PDT by woofie
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To: IChing

Stay armed?


3 posted on 08/28/2013 7:14:47 AM PDT by freebilly (Creepy and the Ass Crackers....)
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To: IChing

The headline is wrong, it should be: what can blacks do to change race relations.


4 posted on 08/28/2013 7:15:24 AM PDT by svcw (Stand or die)
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Comment #5 Removed by Moderator

To: IChing

Short answer: Remove Obama from office. He is the single, most divisive factor in the current worsening of race relations and is working every day to foster violence between the races.


6 posted on 08/28/2013 7:16:11 AM PDT by Truth29
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To: IChing

Nothing. If the other side wanted peace, we’d have peace.


7 posted on 08/28/2013 7:16:11 AM PDT by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults)
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To: IChing

Get back to church. Start taking seriously the admonitions in the Bible about how we are to treat one another.


8 posted on 08/28/2013 7:16:42 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: svcw
The headline is wrong, it should be: what can blacks do to change race relations.

They certainly should carry the bulk of that burden.
9 posted on 08/28/2013 7:17:12 AM PDT by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: IChing

Personally, I’m pledging to eat more pork chops and watermelon.

I may spark up a Kool...


10 posted on 08/28/2013 7:17:59 AM PDT by headsonpikes (Mass murder and cannibalism are the twin sacraments of socialism - "Who-whom?"-Lenin)
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To: IChing

I intend to cram black misbehavior down their throats until they change.


11 posted on 08/28/2013 7:18:21 AM PDT by Uncle Miltie (No Bombs for Al Qaeda!)
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To: freebilly

Yes, stay armed and watch your six. It is not up to us Candy-Ass Crackers to defuse the very virulent, very destructive racism that is rampant in the lower-class black community. I’m just staying on track with MLK — ‘I look forward to a time when my little children are not judged by the color of their skin but by the quality of their character.’


12 posted on 08/28/2013 7:18:37 AM PDT by bboop (does not suffer fools gladly)
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To: IChing

“Programs” and “apologies” are signs of weakness that we’ve been doling out for years. Now blacks have gone the next step, which is to beat “woods” senseless with no fear of retribution. Time to stop but it won’t. Too many apologists. And too many blithering idiots.


13 posted on 08/28/2013 7:18:44 AM PDT by albie (re)
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To: woofie

So you’re saying whiggers ought to have access to affirmative-action benefits?


14 posted on 08/28/2013 7:18:52 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: freebilly

Just be quiet and pay your taxes.


15 posted on 08/28/2013 7:19:08 AM PDT by glorgau
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To: IChing

Not. Our. Job.

Blacks are less than 1/6 the population, but about half the violent criminals are black. They need to accept responsibility, adapt to Western culture, abandon the entitlement and thug lifestyles, and take the opportunities this country offers on the terms that they are offered.


16 posted on 08/28/2013 7:19:31 AM PDT by Little Ray (How did I end up in this hand-basket, and why is it getting so hot?)
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To: Little Ray

Keep moving


17 posted on 08/28/2013 7:20:10 AM PDT by Phillyred
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To: IChing

We could all kill ourselves but that seems a bit extreme.


18 posted on 08/28/2013 7:20:22 AM PDT by Zathras
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To: IChing
In my personal life I have no problem. When I meet a black person I extend to him or her the same curtesy I do to anyone else. In many ways I do not notice a color barrier until I watch TV and see the race baiters in action.

That is where the problem lies.

As far as my part I am doing all right. It is the race baiters who have the problem with us.

19 posted on 08/28/2013 7:20:56 AM PDT by Slyfox (Without the Right to Life, all other rights are meaningless.)
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To: IChing

The very first action has to be from white AND black conservatives: STAND UP TO LIBERALS WHO ARE ENSLAVING BLACK AMERICA. Liberals have spent the past 50+ years slowly brainwashing black America into adopting a victim mindset, and that won’t be easy to de-program. It can be done, but it’ll take guts, i.e. folks who don’t care if they’re called “racist” by the knee-jerk MSM and black leadership.

The truth is a powerful weapon.


20 posted on 08/28/2013 7:21:35 AM PDT by Kharis13 (That noise you hear is our Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.)
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