What an Honest Discussion on Race Would Look Like-and why Obama and the Left would avoid it

And why Obama and the Left would avoid it like the plague.

July 22, 2016

On Thursday, July 14, Barack Obama held a nationally televised “town hall” meeting on American race relations—and, unsurprisingly, punted on that “honest” discussion of race that he and his ilk accuse the rest of us of deferring.

A truly honest discussion of race, you see, threatens the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC) or, alternately, Big Racism.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that for virtually every kind of crime, blacks are perpetrators in numbers wildly out of proportion to their number in the national population. For instance, young black males constitute no more than one to three percent of all Americans, yet they are responsible for over 50 percent of all murders.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that police officers generally are more likely to shoot unarmed white suspects than blacks, while black and Hispanic officers are more likely than their white counterparts to shoot unarmed black suspects.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that blacks shoot police officers at an astronomically higher rate than that at which officers have shot black suspects.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that while black-on-black crime is indeed epic, the rate of black-on-white crime is nearly as high: Of the 560, 600 crimes of violence involving blacks and whites, blacks were perpetrators 84.9% of the time. Whites, in glaring contrast, targeted blacks only 3.6 % of the time.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that, contrary to the conventional wisdom on display at Obama’s town hall, blacks are both the greatest racial victimizers and those least victimized by other races. Not only do they target the members of the white majority exponentially more frequently than the latter target them; so too do blacks target Hispanics at a rate rivaling that at which they select whites for acts of violence: Of the 256, 074 violent crimes involving blacks and Hispanics, the former attacked the latter 82.5% of the time, while blacks comprise only 4.7% of those targeted by Hispanics.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that for all of the fashionable cant about “white privilege,” the median household income for white Americans in 2014 ($60, 256) was the 16^th highest in the nation. That’s right: White households earned less than those of Americans of various other racial backgrounds. Indians, coming in at $101, 591, earned more than anyone (and substantially more than whites). Yet so too do Taiwanese ($85,566), Filipinos ($82,389), Japanese ($70,261), Chinese ($69,586), Lebanese ($69,514), Iranians ($66,186), Turks ($64,617), Portuguese ($64,002), Palestinians ($63,864), Pakistanis ($62,848), Indonesians ($61,943), Nigerians ($61,289), Syrians ($61,151), and Egyptians ($60,543) in America out-earn whites.

To repeat, in an historically white country, a country that remains (much to the chagrin of the left) predominantly white, a country that is supposedly rife with “white privilege,” many peoples of color—yellows (Asians); browns (Middle Easterners); and, yes, blacks (Nigerians)—are economically more “privileged” than allegedly “privileged” white Americans.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that to this white “racist” society that the merchants of the Racism-Industrial-Complex (RIC) have been calling “AmeriKKKa” for decades, more African blacks have voluntarily migrated within a mere 15 years (1990-2005) than all of the blacks who were brought here during the whole time that America was involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that while whites were by no means unique insofar as they participated in slavery, they were indeed unique inasmuch as they were the first Earthlings in all of human history to spearhead a revolt against, not their own enslavement, but the enslavement of others:

This perennial practice of slavery was brought to an end courtesy of just those people—whites—who the titans of Big Racism and their minions continue to demonize as uniquely evil today.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that the British empire, the most powerful in the world up until this time in the 18^th century, wielded its military and economic might to—horror of horrors!—force Africans, Asians, and Arabs to stop trading in human flesh. And a truly honest discussion of race would mention that the British did this at considerable cost to their own well-being, and with little in the way of material gain.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that the peoples of color upon whom the British visited their “imperialism” would frequently resist attempts to abolish slavery, and sometimes resist through arms.

A truly honest discussion of race would mention that statistical comparisons of “blacks” and “whites” are, at best, misleading, for when white and black Americans of similar demographic descriptions are compared, whatever economic and other “inequalities” initially appeared evaporate. In his The Vision of the Anointed, the black American thinker Thomas Sowell shares some examples:

(a) As long ago as 1969, black males that came from homes with reading materials had the same incomes as did whites who hailed from the same kind of background and with the same amount of schooling.

(b) Thirty-five years ago, in 1981, black married couples that were college educated and working earned slightly more than their white counterparts.

(c) The poverty rate among households headed by single white females is twice the rate as that found among households headed by black married couples.

(d) Black married women with only a high school education have lower infant mortality rates than white single women with college degrees.

Sowell rightly concludes: “Many of the ‘racial’ differences based on gross statistics are shown by a finer breakdown to be differences between people with different values and lifestyles, who are differing proportions of differing racial populations.”

When Barack Obama and his ilk are ready to face these (and more) challenges to Big Racism’s monopoly on the public’s collective consciousness, then perhaps we have a truly honest discussion of race.

“Pennsylvania became the first official U.S. state to pass an emancipation law in 1780, with the passage of the Gradual Abolition Act. The law established that children subsequently born to slaves would be considered free, although it did not free enslaved African-Americans born before the law’s existence. That model of “gradual emancipation” was eventually adopted by most Northern states, aside from Massachusetts, which instantly abolished the practice following a state Supreme Court decision in 1783. Under the Pennsylvania law, the children of slaves were considered “indentured servants” until the age of 28, when they were freed. Up until that point, they were still required to work for their mother’s slave owner.”

- Excerpt from Pennsylvania Historical Commission

“Through the means of mass petitioning William Wilberforce, who led the campaign in the Commons, hoped to exert pressure on Parliament to abolish the slave trade. The strategy almost worked; in 1792 the House resolved by 230 votes to 85 that the trade ought to be gradually abolished. But petitioning on this scale was always likely to cause alarm in the minds of men with one eye on events in France. Ultimately, radicalism was to prove the Achilles heel of the early abolitionist movement. The rising tide of revolutionary violence in France and, with it, the growth of political reaction at home, inevitably took its toll. In 1793 the Commons refused to revive the subject of the slave trade, effectively reversing the resolutions of the previous year.”

“Ironically, however, war in Europe helped to prepare the way for final victory. The acquisition of new territories in the West Indies, notably Trinidad, Berbice, and Demerara, led many of the old planter élite, who were increasingly fearful of competition, to desert the anti-abolitionist ranks. Capitalising on this change of heart and the entry into Parliament of a batch of new liberal Irish MPs, the abolitionists in 1804 renewed their campaign. In 1805 a Bill providing for the abolition of the slave trade to conquered territories triumphantly passed both Houses. The following year this was superseded by a stronger measure that outlawed the British Atlantic slave trade altogether.”

- Excerpt from BBC British History of Abolition

The reason I posted these two excerpts is to show that the popular view that the British Empire was the first English-speaking government to abolish slavery is false. In fact, the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were the first, which was a direct result of the impact of the American Revolution and the founding of our liberty-oriented Constitutional Republic.

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