Posted on 01/10/2003 6:00:24 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
Wishful Thinking Not Enough to Rid Country of Racism (Big Barf Alert)
January 3, 2003
BY JUAN ANDRADE
Just watching Pat Buchanan a few minutes on a rerun of ''Donahue'' last Monday was enough to keep me off Iraq and on affirmative action at least one more week. The victims were angry white men; the culprit was affirmative action.
It took Buchanan about two minutes to shift the focus and start blaming the influx of immigrants for America's race problem. Nothing could be further from the truth. Buchanan is just a liar and a hatemonger. Is it any wonder racial discrimination doesn't stop? Why can't bigots like Buchanan accept responsibility? Why blame immigrants for the way whites have historically treated non-whites in this country? I don't purport to have all the solutions to our race problem, but I'm convinced accepting responsibility has to happen first--i.e., whites must recognize they created a huge problem and now need to be proactive in helping remedy the problem.
About 30 years ago I had a conversation with Roy Chaney, a white guy with whom I'd played on the same Little League team and later on the same semi-pro baseball team. We were discussing affirmative action and Executive Order 11246, which President Lyndon B. Johnson had signed in the mid-1960s. (I should tell you that Roy passed away a few years ago so, out of respect, I am being extra careful to reconstruct our conversation as accurately as possible.)
My friend didn't deny that minorities, namely blacks, had been discriminated against. But Roy questioned whether today's whites were responsible for what their ancestors did 100, 200 or 300 years ago. I told Roy that any white, including him, who did nothing to stop racism or correct the consequences of racist practices was responsible for perpetuating the race problem started centuries ago by whites. Like any other reasonable person, Roy wished for a color-blind society. He meant well, but wishing wasn't good enough then, and it damn sure isn't good enough now.
You see, my friend was unknowingly part of the race problem because he merely wished for a color-blind society, not realizing that we had to create that society. We can't just wish our way into a color-blind society. Almost everybody would prefer a color-blind society but, from all indications, it must be contrary to human nature.
Without affirmative action, whites would have continued showing favoritism to some colleague's kid, or to any applicant of the same racial group. You can still see the evidence today in corporate America, police and fire departments, labor unions, the legal profession, park districts, transit and housing authorities, in public school administrations, etc. There's favoritism galore! Qualifications weren't a priority and, in too many instances, they didn't matter at all. Qualifications became an issue when minorities started applying.
A former congressman who was on the same Donahue show said the solution to our race problem has to begin with teaching our 1-year-olds that we are created equal.
Give me a break! That's so naive. Stupido! How is a black father who has been discriminated against all his life, born into a life of poverty and deprivation, failed by a mediocre public education, and is now unskilled, underpaid or unemployed, and unable to provide decent housing, supposed to convince a child that we are equal? That may work for a former congressman with a Harvard education, but that crap won't fly in the 'hood. Life is not about being born equal; it's about being treated equal.
No, the better solution is to help tomorrow's dads get a college education or a good-paying job today. Minority children are more likely to believe that we are created equal when they can begin to see their own parents achieving like everybody else. Seeing is believing. I can assure you, lying to them about equality is not going to help.
Affirmative action will help put educated and gainfully employed minority adults into more households as role models for a new generation of achievers.
Buchanan types propose changing society from the bottom up because they know it will never happen, and that will keep whites on top forever. The solution to our race problem is going to have to start from the top down, and for that to happen, whites are just going to have to make room on the ladder to the top for more minorities for as long as it takes, Buchanan types be damned.
El Stupido Liberal!
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
The left has been trying for over a century to remake america into a universalist, socialist state (where, conveniently, the leftists will have all of the power). They have been thwarted in their quest by the white middle class.
Thus thwarted, the left has engaged in a variety of tactics to destroy this opposition. First and foremost among these tactics is race guilt. If the white middle class can be demoralized into accepting a belief that it is evil, then it will not oppose massive welfare transfers, affirmative action, mass third world immigration, or--ultimately--its own eventual immolation.
This is the reason why the lefties seem to be so obsessed with racial issues....it is their number one weapon to pacify white middle class opposition to their socialist agenda.
Too bad Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don't share the same opinion. The a**hole who wrote this article should do us the favor of keeping his narrow minded opinions to himself. Better yet he should sow his lips shut.
Oh yes. By all means. Tell a one year-old black child - over, and over, and over again - that he'll be behind the eight ball all his life, that the whole world is against him, that he can't possibly make it and that his life will be a struggle against The Man until the day he dies. That is a much better idea.
Just DON'T tell the kid that he has a chance to make a life for himself. (If you do, he might not grow up searching for and punching the "D" in the voting booth.)
Damn, these people tick me off.
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.