Yeah, that's really working well.
Posted on 12/30/2010 3:33:21 AM PST by Scanian
The fanciful idea of living in a colorblind society is one of the greatest impediments to sophisticated discussions about race in America. If there is going to be a soothing of racial tensions in American society, there first has to be an understanding that race -- albeit a social construct based on some biological realities -- exists and matters, and it is not just a vestigial figment of centuries-old white racism.
It is axiomatic that race is a part of our social reality; however, where we need more discussion is on precisely where race matters. The fundamental problem with race in America today is that we have a band of profiteering, country-trotting black liberals claiming that race matters in all the areas where it clearly does not.
For the purpose of the left's political gain, millions of people have been persuaded that capitalism does not work for blacks and that as a result, blacks need socialistic interventions. As I demonstrated in a previous article, these black Marxist prophets greedily indulge in the capitalistic rewards that they would never receive under the socialist economic model that they hypocritically present as the way forward for blacks.
Indeed, race matters; however, two things happen when some conservatives propagate the wrongheaded, politically correct idea that race is obsolete. First, they make the road clear for liberal sophists to persuade people that race matters in all the places where it does not, and second, conservatives lose the ability to effectively challenge liberals on the caustic effects of their policies on minority communities.
The message conservatives need to be advancing is that race matters vis-à-vis specific issues. By championing the fallacy of colorblindness, the conservative's authority to discuss race in the public sphere is inadvertently ceded to liberals.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Another great article from The American Thinker...thanks for posting it.
Glad you liked it...I believe the writer is from Africa originally...he brings a unique perspective.
It does, but not necessarily in a negative sense. I was a horndog for morena latinas and still am for just one of them now. However, culture is by far a greater barrier than race. That encompasses religion, family values and overall morality.
Cultural similarities can aid an individual in transcending race as an issue.
Look at OJ before we found out he was a psychotic murdering SOB, or Tiger Woods before we found out he was a lying, cheating, horndog douchebag. We used to think they were just awesome and each seemed to transcend any aspect of race. They were admired. Heroes and role models.
Once their differences with acceptable cultural tolerances emerged, well...
Anyways, most of us are beyond race, we just don't like douchebags.
Politically correct idea that race is obsolete. Do we end the Afriacan American beauty contest?,ban the NAACP?.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I guess the author of this "piece" never listened to the late MLK jr.
It’s PC for guilt-ridden white folks.
Agree the PC mob is a bad thing.
D’Souza is right, not this guy.
Affirmative action IS racial injustice.
“culture is by far a greater barrier than race” And the biggest discrimination is against the ugly.
Race as a factor has several aspects:
In some areas it affects our thoughts but not our actions.
In other areas it affects our actions. And we differ on that.
In renting houses, apartments and to roommates living with me, I’m so prejudiced against drinkers (for good reason) that race becomes irrelevant. On the other hand, I’m prejudiced in favor of Mexican immigrant tenants, also for good reason.
I’ve observed all types of color blindness, racism, reverse-racism, and just plain bizarro in other landlords and tenants ... and in the many places I’ve been as a consultant.
In one large suburban Chicago insurance company my IT manager hired a Black guy because he was the most competent candidate for the job. But he didn’t go through the corporate diversity program of the HR department to do it. The HR department made life hell for that Black programmer and his manager because they weren’t informed and didn’t take credit for it in their compliance reports to the government and Operation PUSH.
So is racism involved here? It becomes quite a complex topic for which cliches and rhymes don’t work.
Race only matters because we make it matter. And the people in America working hardest to ensure it stays that way are the very ones who claim race discrimination harms them.
I don’t think that he is “not right”, but as Scanian said, he has a different perspective, and it has validity to it as well.
Robert Putnam: Diversity Is Our Destruction My thread with now useless links
Dr. Putnam's Bunker-Buster That will link the complete review by Pat Buchanan.
E Pluribus Unum : Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century(PDF)
Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration.That's just the abstract. I If you read the whole article, you'' understand Buchanan's reaction to it and those alarming titles. Happy New Year!
Better said: “Affirmative action is State-Sanctioned Racism.”
Finally someone posts what I have known for the longest time. Racism is a natural construct of the division of power and wealth and exists in all societies. We will never get rid of it. To attempt to do so would require equally racist laws in reverse. Thus not solving the problem at all. We need to recognize reality and thus once having done so we can manage it.
One major problem with supposed efforts to be “colorblind” is that if some characteristic (e.g. style of dress or social mannerism) is most common among people of a particular race, any effort to discriminate against people with that characteristic is construed as “racist”, and consequently people are supposed to ignore the characteristic. This in turn means that since people can’t “officially” discriminate based upon a characteristic which might be useful for judging e.g. employment candidates, they may find it necessary to “unofficially” discriminate based upon other criteria which are correlated with the “protected” one, thus unfairly discriminating against those who don’t have the bad characteristics, and removing any incentive people would have not to exhibit the bad characteristics.
Never having been a foot ball or golf fan, neither were ever my "black heroes" but I get what you are talking about.
People like Walter Williams and Herman Cain are my "black heroes". I don't expect either of them will ever disappoint us, in the manner of O.J. or Woods. I'd vote for either one of them in a heart beat, whatever they were running for.
The prime example of which, is sitting in the White House...... Or rather, in Hawaii, on yet another vacation.
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