Fred Reed on race and reality in America

The iconoclastic Fred Reed is one of the most reliably sane voices examining American society.  He doesn't pull his punches and doesn't sugar-coat the pill.  He states matters as they appear to him, without cloaking them in political correctness or any other anodyne.

Here's some of what he has to say about race relations in America today.

The underlying problem that will not go away is that blacks as a race have not shown themselves able to function in a modern society. Degrees and exceptions yes, but the central fact remains. One is not supposed to say this, and would that it were not true, but it is.

In particular they have lagged far behind academically. Attribute causation as you wish. The condition remains. It has proved impervious to every conceivable social program. For this reason affirmative action has become an entitlement rather than an entry point. For this reason the blacks in the blighted cities will never be employable. Everything works against them, most potently their own attitudes. Joblessness rises among better qualified whites. Obama brings in more Latinos to compete with blacks.

Further, those in the ghettos show little disposition either to study or to work. This also is an obvious truth that one must not utter. A Mexican woman will work as a maid until she figures out something better; a black woman will not. A young Salvadoran man will make his way up Central America, through Mexican police likely to beat him, ride the Train of Death to the US border, and sneak into a country whose language he does not understand to work construction and send money back to his family. A black in Chicago won’t buy a Greyhound ticket to the same job. Yes, there are reasons. A condition does not go way merely because there is a reason for it.

It isn’t working.

Does anyone, black or white, man or woman, Left or Right, see any hope of change? Apparently not, since discussion consists entirely of vituperation. Squalling about conservative racism or liberal hypocrisy does nothing at all to change anything at all. Blacks, the only ones who could render their schools orderly, or make their children do their homework, or persuade their women to essay matrimony, do not.

The cultural divide appears unbridgeable. Blacks are a self-aware, aggrieved, and angry people widely apart from the civilization of whites. They have little desire for assimilation and indeed actively reject it. In Mexico, blacks speak normal Spanish and, in France, normal French. In America, Dat be actin’ white. They give their children strange names, Latoyota and Keeshawn, to maintain distance from whites. Their music is both frequently obscene and frequently hostile to whites. “Acting white,” as for example by studying, is punitively disdained. This is not headed for comfortable multicultural commensalism.

The core of blackness seems to consist of, first, a belief that all of their travails spring from the malignity of whites and, second, that whites owe it to them to solve their problems.

In politics, the focus is entirely on cosmetics. For example, Obama has ordered the Justice Department to use “justice-involved youth” instead of “juvenile delinquent,” and to cease using the word “Negro.” How this will improve literacy in the ghetto is not clear. He wants schools to suspend black and white students proportionately, being unhappy that blacks are suspended at higher rates. His is the quintessential black point of view: Everything springs from racism, of which blacks don’t have any, and the solution is a federal regulation.

Obama never says that black kids ought to study more or that black women ought to behave responsibly in childbearing. He clearly believes them incapable of it, a position is indistinguishable from that of the KKK. They both seem to be right.

Why should things be otherwise? Blacks have no roots in European civilization, nor in African, if any. Slavery decultured the slaves, leading to a free-floating miasma of American blacknism. This is unfortunate, which changes nothing.The denomination “African-American” serves more to separate them from whites than to link them to Africa. American African might be more realistic.

The racial experiment has failed. We must not say so, but I suspect that most of us know it. To admit it would be to concede the unspeakable. The horrible question arises again: What now?

It is apparent that nothing of any use in going to be done and probably that nothing can be done. The police? Pulling all police out of black neighborhoods would end complaints of racism by cops. It would also leave the ghettos utterly controlled by criminals. Take your choice.

The calls for the burning of white neighborhoods do not bode well. Whites often are well armed. Gun sales are way up. Men I know have no desire to shoot anyone but will do so if their homes are threatened.

What now? The Fergusons, Baltimores, and Milwaukees may calm down, but if they do, the underlying situation will not change. Nobody seems to have any more idea than I do what to do about it, which is no idea at all.

What now?

There's more at the link.  Essential reading, IMHO.

I can offer one response to Fred's "What now?"  It's based on cold, hard reality, learned in Africa over many years of traveling that continent and seeing what works and what doesn't.  It's not politically correct, it's not merciful, and it's not very helpful . . . but it's practical.

Simply put, it's like this:  YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU GET.

Right now, the US government and US society are subsidizing the current mess in our inner-city communities.  We're paying through the nose for it, directly and indirectly;  and we're getting what we pay for.

Solution?  STOP PAYING FOR IT.

Cut off the funding.  Now.  Completely.  Not a dime more for failing schools, subsidized programs producing more failures, 'Blackness' orientation/education/promotion/whatever.  Shut them all down.

I can already hear the screams, "But you can't do that!  You'd leave a vacuum!"

So?

What we have now has always failed, is continuing to fail, and will continue to fail.  We aren't doing those trapped in its coils any favors by going on paying for them to fail.  We may have nothing worthwhile to replace the programs we're cutting, but at least we'll stop wasting money hand over fist.

Some practical ideas:

• Get back to the 1990's welfare reform program, which has been eviscerated under the Obama administration.  Welfare absolutely cannot be a lifelong entitlement, except for those who are definitively unable to provide for themselves due to mental and/or physical incapacity (which needs to be measurable and accountable).  At the moment, so many programs (including our tax code) are funneling money hand over fist to those who haven't earned and don't deserve it that they've been (justifiably, IMHO) called 'stealth reparations for slavery under another name'.  That's got to stop.  Period.  No exceptions.
• I'm a retired pastor, and I think in those terms.  My approach to social welfare is Biblically based.  For all except those physically and/or mentally incapable of doing so, "If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat."  That work can be as simple as cleaning up the neighborhood and keeping it clean - but it has to be done.  If it's not done, why should tax dollars support someone living in a pigsty of his or her own making?  Equally, why should tax dollars support addiction or dependency?  Why should tax dollars be used for luxuries instead of necessities?  Structure welfare accordingly.
• Let's get back to the three R's at school, and dump all the feel-good nonsensical 'courses' that do nothing whatsoever to prepare anyone for a productive membership in society.  'Black studies' and similar ethnic-based 'education' are a bad joke - and the joke's on those who've embraced them.
• Let's can all the social organizers and community activists and others who have done nothing whatsoever to solve the problem - indeed, most have only made it worse.  In particular, let's nail the criminals who've turned our inner cities into crime-ridden, drug-addled ghettos.  Shut them down, the hard way if necessary.  No more soft touches.  No more catch-and-release.

That's one approach.  What's yours, readers?

Peter