WHAT IT MEANS TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA

A couple of days before that, his attorney general said that America needs to be honest about race. Since then, any number of prominent black people have said we need to have a national discussion about race.

Not a one-sided harangue, but a two-way discussion. Let’s move beyond the politically correct “Whites are racists, blacks are victims” and actually talk things out.

Toward that end, in the spirit of the president’s remarks, I’d like to discuss what it’s like to be a white man in America. And I’d like to be held to the same standard as the president. His remarks were personal impressions based on generalizations, traditions, culture and folklore.

I’ll be called racist.That’s because our system is based on a double standard. Black criticisms of white society are insightful; white criticisms of black society are bigotry.

White people know that if they say anything that doesn’t exactly toe the line of political correctness, they run the risk of losing their jobs and their public reputations. We live in a society where the accusation of racism is evidence enough; to be accused is to be guilty.

We also think that we pay the bills. We think that we disproportionately pay the taxes and that black people disproportionately collect the welfare. We feel like we are being ripped off and that this uneven shouldering of the burden will eventually bankrupt and kill our country.

I work in a building that houses a Social Security office. One elevator serves that office specifically. It is stunning to note the demographic difference between the elevators. Overwhelmingly, white people go up one set of elevators to work, and black people go up the other set of elevators to apply for SSI.

The culture of many white Americans is one of hard work and self-reliance. Our heritage teaches us that work is ennobling, and our religion teaches us that by the sweat of our brow we should eat our bread.

And we feel like we are being robbed by a socially dysfunctional urban black America where out-of-wedlock birth, educational failure, criminal conduct and other irresponsibility perversely entitle people to money we earned to support our families.We believe that races are equal, but cultures are not, and that a woefully failed black urban culture is cancerously destroying lives and communities. And we feel like we have to both foot the bill to support it and fight it, and watch out for spillover that might threaten us.

White people also believe black America has a predatory crime problem that creates a real danger for all of us.

We believe that because it happens to be an undeniable truth. Blacks are disproportionately involved in crime, and while some blacks believe that’s because of a racist criminal justice system, most whites believe it’s because blacks are more likely to commit crime.

We all pretend not to notice the race of the mug shots on the evening news, but we’re only pretending. We notice, and we don’t forget. We don’t believe the criminal justice system is victimizing inmates, we believe the criminal justice system is protecting us from inmates. We believe people in prison deserve to be there – they did the crime, they do the time.

Black violence – much of it directed against other blacks – has over the years since 9-11 racked up a higher body count than the war on terrorism.

If black people are complaining about Stand Your Ground laws of self-defense, white people are saying that you don’t have to worry about it if you don’t attack anybody. The cry against Stand Your Ground is a cry in defense of people who are violently assaulting other people. Black people are disproportionately injured in all types of self-defense situations because black people are disproportionately involved in attacking other people, and pushing those people into self-defense. That’s not a problem with the law, that’s a problem with people’s conduct.

White people also believe that we are disadvantaged in the workplace. We believe that quotas and diversity programs discriminate against us in hiring and promotion. This is truest in the government and corporate workplaces.

It’s true for the white male hoping to get hired on the police or fire department, and it’s true for the mid-career white person passed over for less-qualified minority employees.

Many white people are bothered by the social conduct of some black people. Often there is a loud, obnoxious and profane behavior, and a crude sexual harassment of women in public settings.

Black apologists often speak of “culture” and of the need for whites to understand and respect black culture. The president on Friday said we needed sensitivity training. Many whites would like that to be a two-way street. We’d like a little courtesy extended to our sensitivities, too.

White people believe that black people have a chip on their shoulder about race. And a persecution complex. And an inability sometimes to talk or think about anything else.

We also think that black people get pulled over by the police for the same reasons anyone does – for breaking the traffic law – and that the cry of racism anytime anyone has contact with the police is a bunch of crud.

Of course, my account is just as full of generalizations as the president’s. He made assumptions about the thinking of the very diverse group of Americans who happen to be black, and he made assumptions about the thinking of the very diverse group of Americans who happen to be white. I have done the same. He was undoubtedly part right and part wrong. I am also undoubtedly part right and part wrong.

Do you think some of my observations were hurtful and overbroad? What of the president’s implicit assertions that white women on elevators are racists, and that cops on patrol are racists, and that store employees are racists? Are his claims different or more justified?

The president, to the extent that he understands the subject, told us what it’s like to be a black man in America.

But what he had was not a conversation, it was a condemnation. And two can play that game.

With all this clamoring in recent days for a conversation, it is understood that what activists and politicians really want is one more denunciation of white America. The conversation is about how racist America is and how unfair it is to blacks.

White people also believe that we are disadvantaged in the workplace. We believe that quotas and diversity programs discriminate against us in hiring and promotion. This is truest in the government and corporate workplaces.

A few weeks ago, I was (once again) returning to the US from a trip to China.... through the Atlanta airport. As I was standing in line at immigration, I started looking at the people working for INS. There were SIXTEEN agents checking people on the US Citizen side... ALL SIXTEEN were black males.

There were 12 agents on the Visitor's side.... ALL TWELVE were... black males.

That caught my attention. So, I started counting the number of black employees I saw before seeing a white person... among INS, TSA, and airport employees..... I made it up to 38 before I saw ONE white guy... in the TSA security line where you re-check after customs.

After seeing that guy, I made it up to 78 without seeing another white person.

Now... I KNOW Atlanta has a large percentage of black people... That is not news. But, seriously? ONE white employee out of 78 people?

And...anyway.. 78 people working in the customs check-in area?? They were EVERYWHERE... most, doing nothing... but standing around, or yelling at people to walk.. (In the ONLY direction available to go).

This excellent response to Obama's 'Trayvon Speech' reminds me of Pat Buchanan's excellent response to Obama's 'Reverend Wright Speech'...

A Brief for Whitey, March 21, 2008, by Patrick J. Buchanan

LINK

How would he pull it off? I wondered.

How would Barack explain to his press groupies why he sat silent in a pew for 20 years as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered racist rants against white America for our maligning of Fidel and Gadhafi, and inventing AIDS to infect and kill black people?

How would he justify not walking out as Wright spewed his venom about “the U.S. of K.K.K. America,” and howled, “God damn America!”

My hunch was right. Barack would turn the tables.

Yes, Barack agreed, Wright’s statements were “controversial,” and “divisive,” and “racially charged,” reflecting a “distorted view of America.”

But we must understand the man in full and the black experience out of which the Rev. Wright came: 350 years of slavery and segregation.

Barack then listed black grievances and informed us what white America must do to close the racial divide and heal the country.

The “white community,” said Barack, must start “acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination — and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past — are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds … .”

And what deeds must we perform to heal ourselves and our country?

The “white community” must invest more money in black schools and communities, enforce civil rights laws, ensure fairness in the criminal justice system and provide this generation of blacks with “ladders of opportunity” that were “unavailable” to Barack’s and the Rev. Wright’s generations.

What is wrong with Barack’s prognosis and Barack’s cure?

Only this. It is the same old con, the same old shakedown that black hustlers have been running since the Kerner Commission blamed the riots in Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit and a hundred other cities on, as Nixon put it, “everybody but the rioters themselves.”

Was “white racism” really responsible for those black men looting auto dealerships and liquor stories, and burning down their own communities, as Otto Kerner said — that liberal icon until the feds put him away for bribery.

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ’60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks — with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas — to advance black applicants over white applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.

Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.

I have a mixed view of that.

Up until now, I believe there has been a historical justification for the Blacks’ overwhelming support of the black candidate.

It was part of America’s healing.

Now the president has been a black guy. TWICE.

It is now time to get beyond all that, and just be Americans.

I may catch heck for agreeing with Blacks on the issue, up until now. I believe they did have a discriminatory system they were imported into, and yes they all bound together.

However that has now changed.

Obama blew it bigtime, with his support of black racial grievances.

That is a part of history now.

Now we need to drop all of that racial thought, and get along as Americans.

For real.

No laws governing one side. Eliminate all race-related laws. Period.

Just get along.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.