Posted on 02/26/2002 3:28:30 AM PST by Mean Daddy
What is called Black History Month might more accurately be called "the sins of white people" month. The sins of any branch of the human race are virtually inexhaustible, but the history of blacks in America includes a lot more than the sins of white people, which are put front and center each February.
Obviously, there is current political mileage to be gotten from historic grievances. At a minimum, politicians and activists get the media attention that is the lifeblood of their careers. Then there are racial quotas, money for special minority programs and hopes for reparations for slavery. If nothing else, some people get excuses for their own shortcomings -- and excuses are very important.
One of the many penetrating insights of the late Eric Hoffer was that, for many people, an excuse is better than an achievement. That is because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future. But an excuse can last for life.
Those black achievements which did not involve fighting the sins of white people get little attention during Black History Month. Indeed, many of those achievements undermine the blanket excuse that white sins are what prevent blacks from accomplishing more. How many people have heard of Paul Williams, who became a prominent black architect long before the civil rights revolution, or about successful black writers in the 19th century?
There was also an outstanding black high school in Washington, D.C., which had remarkable achievements from 1870 to 1955. For example, most of its graduates during that period went on to college, even though most white high school graduates did not make it to college during that era. As far back as 1899, this school's students scored higher on standardized tests than two of the three white academic high schools in the District of Columbia.
Given the terrible educational performances of so many ghetto schools, you might think that there would be great interest in how this particular school succeeded when so many others failed. But you would be wrong. Where there was any reaction at all from the black establishment to an article I wrote about the history of this school, that reaction was hostility.
Dunbar High School was an achievement, but it destroyed a thousand excuses. The prevailing dogma is that all the failures of black schools were due to the sins of white people, including inadequate funding and racial segregation. But Dunbar was inadequately funded -- its class sizes were 40 or more -- and it was racially segregated for more than 80 years. Its history of success was therefore not welcomed by black "leaders."
Another big problem with Black History Month is its narrowness. You cannot understand even your own history if that is the only history you know. Some explanations of what has happened in your history might sound plausible within the framework of just one people's history, but these explanations can collapse like a house of cards if you look at the same factors in the histories of other groups, other countries, and other eras.
Shelby Steele has pointed out that whites are desperate to escape guilt and blacks are desperate to escape implications of inferiority. But, viewed against the background of world history, neither group of Americans is unique. Nor are the differences between them. Both their anxieties are overblown.
Black-white differences in income, IQ, lifestyle or anything else you care to name are exceeded by differences between innumerable other groups around the world today and throughout history -- even when none of the factors that we blame for the differences in America was present.
For example, when the Romans invaded Britain, they came from an empire with magnificent art, architecture, literature, political organization and military might. But the Britons were an illiterate tribal people. There was not a building on the island, and no Briton's name had ever been recorded in the pages of history.
The Britons didn't build London. The Romans built London. And when the Romans left, four centuries later, the country fragmented into tribal domains again, the economy collapsed, and buildings and roads decayed. No one would have dreamed at that point that someday there would be a British Empire to exceed anything the Romans had ever achieved.
Maybe we need a British History Month.
There were only few non-violent Indian tribes. Slavery and War over terrritory were a way a life.
So now we are supposed to feel bad because the colonists were better prepared for war than they were. Remember Indians too had to come from some place else and carve themselves into the land now called America. They did not sprout up out of the land here.
As much as I want to believe in the non-violent , peacful religion of the Indians, a good deal of it is liberal propagada.
Historicaly, if people could find others to enslave, they would. Not that I agree with it, I just believe it is human nature.
"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well."
Booker T. Washington 1911
Thanks for posting that quote. The man expressed the most profound insights with such amazing simplicity, that some "sophisti-cats" sought to portray him as simple-minded. As far as they were concerned, deep thoughts required indecipherable sentences.
You're quite welcome :o)
The most difficult of concepts can be understood with the most simple of explanations. Booker T did just that...again and again.
And in any event, it wasn't ALL white men that are to blame for these acts. There is plenty of blame to go around. At some point you shut the hell up and try and get on with your life rather than sit on your butt like a loser and whine about how unfair life has been. Here's a clue: Life is not fair and it has never been fair and it will never be fair.
Texas Independence Day, State Championship Q Cookoff
Stone Mountain Event Center.
Winner gets an auto bid to the Jack Daniels World Chamionship Look Forward to seein ya boy... Bout time ya had a haircut... LOL
I'll buy ya beer afterwords..
What about it Dog...
Yeah, damn white men. Look what I found:
Starved Rock is an erosional remnant of St. Peter Sandstone that forms a high terrace in the Illinois Valley. the rock is an historic site of a successful siege against the Illini Indians, resulting in the starvation and demise of the entire tribe.
Ooops, the Illini were wiped out by other Indian tribes. And I thought they were all peaceful people living as one with nature.
My comment isn't limited to your one post.
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