Posted on 11/22/2016 2:58:27 PM PST by Kaslin
That race continues to be a major source of anxiety and division in America is an undeniable fact. While some politicians continue to use race to divide, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is trying again to bridge the gap in his latest PBS documentary series "Black America Since MLK."
As a conservative white person, what I like about this program and Gates' previous programs is that he doesn't judge or preach. He lets facts and people speak for themselves. Many whites do not understand the African-American struggle, because they have not lived it. They should listen to the stories.
Oprah Winfrey quotes Jesse Jackson as saying, "Excellence is the best deterrent to racism." Who could disagree with that?
The story that gripped my heart most is told by Ronald Day, a man who grew up in the projects and dropped out of high school because he saw no future for himself. Day turned to selling drugs and made a lot of money before he was eventually caught. He served 15 years in prison. A legitimate point is made that blacks go to prison more often than whites for selling basically the same drug -- crack cocaine in mostly urban areas, powdered cocaine in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods.
The program notes that between 1983 and 1997, the number of African-Americans incarcerated for drug crimes grew by 2,000 percent, more than six times the rate of increase for white Americans.
Gates ends the program by asking: "Were the problems we faced really of our own making, or were they part of the unfinished business that the civil rights movement never had a chance to resolve?" The answer is both, which is not a contradiction.
African-Americans may now be open to listening to new voices. One indication of that is that Donald Trump won 7 percent more of the black vote than Mitt Romney did in 2012.
What I like about Gates is his gentle nature. He draws people out and implores viewers to listen to their legitimate expressions of sadness and anger at not being treated as human beings equal to all other human beings. These programs invite blacks and whites to a table of conversation, not confrontation. It is in listening to each other and our differing life experiences that we create the best atmosphere for bridging the racial divide.
In conversation, as Oprah Winfrey says, "you are able to connect to the heart of somebody." When you are able to connect with someone's heart you connect with a real person that has nothing to do with the color of their skin, but rather, as Dr. King said, the content of their character.
Watch this program and check your local listings for time and date, especially if you are a white conservative. You can also go to PBS.org and see the entire series. It is worth your time. Gates is making a valuable contribution to race relations in America. Who doesn't consider that a worthy and necessary goal?
Obama really brought us altogether as victims.
I hate the old line about someone being unable to understand something because “they haven’t lived it.” If that’s the standard no one can understand anything beyond their own life.
They need to read a book (or watch a video, after all it's the 21st century) which makes clear how absurd identity politics, and particularly the anti-white variety thereof, has become.
I recommend the title, "White Like Me."
Me too. It is a trite cliché. I guess no affluent black person could really understand the struggle of a poor white coal miner since the black person “hasn’t lived it.”
Blacks' grievances are largely manufactured, and the few that aren't are mostly their own doing. It's THEIR culture that's failing, not ours.
Perhaps because selling crack to black kids who can't afford it does more damage to the black community than selling coke to white businessmen who can does to the white one.
Just think of all the new blouvards being named BHO
Ironic that the only black folks who will watch this program are not the ones who need to hear the message. Kind of like you wont find to many white trash watching NOVA, Frontline,or American Experience.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_arrest_controversy
I remember the night MLK was killed.
The Black message changed in 12 hours from “Do not stand in our way because we are Black” to “Give us free stuff.”
Another hundred years and the story will be the same!
Terence said that being human, nothing about being human could be alien to him.
This bit of wisdom is entirely contrary to the spirit of modern so-called “progressivism” that requires sympathy on an emotional level even as it disallows true empathy. It places suffering and elation alike in a black box that no one unapproved of can penetrate, or rather is allowed to penetrate.
The absurdity of the present “liberal” formulation of race and identity is that, entirely contrary to MLK’s stated wishes, it has found a way to resurrect the very old idea (once behind black slavery in the US) that the color or a person’s skin says something ineffiable about them, who they are and even who they should be, so that progressives are very much those who judge by the color of skin and not the content of character.
Where it is different is now the jailor is INSIDE the jail, not outside. The door is locked from within and anyone (who is not white) who does not want to be bound by this idea of race then becomes a traitor to their race. As for whites ... well, more about that in moments.
But the jail absolutely REMAINS no matter from which direction the door is held closed!
Men continue to be judged by the color of their skin and not the content of their character.
Now, about whites: please don’t think that this way of thinking about race that I’ve described doesn’t come with a self imposed prison for them too.
Consider how this way of thinking enjoins working corruptions of blood: declaring some guilty and offenders because of their race.
To believers in this way of thinking this is the jail for whites.
To be black and not accept the primacy of race is to be a traitor to your race. To be white and not accept the guilt that is imputed by your race is to be a traitor to Justice herself!
There is, naturally, more that can be said: such as how this belief system goes beyond merely working corruptions of blood to assert what might be called innocence of blood — or where actual wrongdoers cannot be held liable for their actual misdeeds or flaws in their own characters because of their race (infamously the claim that black persons cannot be racists as an example); but, I suppose the above is enough for one post.
Cal, you wrote stupidly
Sir
You wrote eleven paragraphs. None of them expresses any trace of logical thought. Try harder.
Are you in a self imposed jail yourself?
Well said.
I agree, I actually think I have a fair understanding of what it is like to be “hanged by the neck until dead”, something which I obviously haven’t “lived”.
“Just think of all the new blouvards...”
Shoudn’t that be bloWvards?
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