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
22 comments:
In short where africans are, Africa is. There is a reason Africa as a whole is in the straits it is in, and it ain't the white man's doing......
One other desperately needed measure is to stop the silly war on drugs.
It costs billions and serves only to make the criminals rich.
Legalize and regulate the drugs. Give the drug companies license to produce and sell them.
You get far more reliable quality (reducing the number of overdoses) and the drugs become much cheaper, reducing other criminality.
The drug users have a much better chance to remain somewhat integrated into society.
The government stops shilling out untold billions to stop the cartels, and instead gets taxes from the sale of the drugs.
The gangs and the organized crime lose their primary income and especially the gangs won't be so appealing anymore.
The Three Rs are necessary, but not sufficient. An updated version of the Seven Liberal Arts might be in order.
One thing that I've noted as sorely lacking in modern education (including mine, which isn't all that modern) is any sort of grounding in Moral Philosophy, for which political indoctrination is not in any way an acceptable substitute. If your political positions are derived from an underlying moral philosophy, you can defend them in a rational discussion; if not, you're reduced to shouting down anyone who fails to agree - which of course is where the politicians want you.
(I recently started reading Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils, before life got Busy again. Suddenly a whole lot of the nonsense coming out of DC and Sacramento fits into a framework - against which We Were Warned back in 19-freakin'-22.)
Not a chance, Pastor. Race whoring and poverty are no longer mere rackets - they're industries. You'll see race and civil war before you'll see reformations like that.
The truth is that liberals allowed blacks to degenerate into the tribal mutts they were centuries ago. They've gone feral, and before they can be civilized they'll have to be re-domesticated. That means bloodshed too.
There are peaceful ways out of this, but they require a triple digit IQ and they aren't politically correct.
as long as black people serve a politician's purposes they will be kept as they are.
when the $$$ run out the pols will abandon them, much to their surprise.
it is disgusting that a whole group of people may be legally held in thrall.
they are literally a captive audience.
Race or sexism based higher education ("Women's Studies"?) is, I think, one of the major factors increasing college costs; someone has to pay for those courses and professors, guess who it is? Not to mention those degrees have a pretty low probability of landing the holder a decent job.
If we are paying mothers to "mother", then we should stop paying them when there is evidence of mis-mothering.
Kid does not get to school? Knock 20% off their check.
Kid is hungry at school? Feed the kid and garnish a reasonable amount (say, $10) from her check.
Kid did not learn the assigned material? Knock of 20%.
Kid cannot demonstrate proficiency in fundamentals on standardized tests? Knock of another 20%.
Like you wrote, we get what we pay for. The other side of that coin is that we communicate what we expect by what we inspect and we prove that we inspected by what our incentives (or by what we defund).
They will stop being paid, when their production (votes) is no longer needed.
When a dictatorship is established, and votes are no longer needed, then the money will slow down, the resultant chaos will be blamed on the opposition, and the former welfare recipients will be organized into a new red guard, with all their hostility toward the rest of the country intact. Group commanders will probably be pulled from the student loan debt debacle, as the they will already be saturated with PC thought. Get your debt forgiven and command a company in the Glorious Revolution!
Remember, they don't need to be crack troops- they are going up against civilians, not an army.
You get what you pay for. The US has paid for a dysfunctional Black community for over half a century and is reaping the reward. The moral poison of the Great Society welfare programs and all of their spawn have achieved the predicted ungoal of destroying families and any semblance of moral responsibility
The problem isn't black people, the problem is all of the federal and state welfare programs sucking any semblance of personal responsibility or achievement out of so many lives.
We have been forced to pay for the creation of seething hotbeds of unreasoning entitlement and dissatisfaction while opportunistic hordes of "spokesmen" for the black community (often claiming to be clergy) make a comfortable living stirring up hatred so they can skim the appeasement. Every incentive of every welfare program is designed, whether deliberately or not, to destroy any incentive to better oneself. This has been going on for generations now and will not end well but do not blame skin color blame the real culprit charity by law.
Separation. It should have been done after the civil war as was suggested by lincoln and others at the time. Either allow blacks to have an autonomous state or region to themselves or more fairly, repatriate them to whatever section of Africa their ancestors were taken from. They can finally be free of white oppression, exploitation and white culture and return to their ancestral roots and life ways.
The sooner the better. The coming Hispanic majority isn't wracked by white guilt over the evils of slavery and oppression like Anglos are. They'll deal with blacks the way they have in Compton and other areas in LA. They'll simply run them out and kill the ones who won't leave of their own accord.
The 21st is gonna be one hell of an interesting century.
they are industries, those who profit will never let go.
It may be worthwhile to get in touch with Colin Flaherty. While Colin doesn't get into causes / solutions much, he does extensively document the sheer depth of the problem, and occasionally brings on a prison psychologist who's had some similar experiences to yours, though with a different focus.
If nothing else, the podcast and book "White Girl Bleed a Lot", and the followup "Don't Make the Black Kids Angry" are worthwhile reads (and listen) for their extensive documentation of both the extent of the problems, and the extent to which they are covered up or excused.
Also, I'm not sure we can rule out "cut them off" - but if all we have is multiple modes of failure, then the one that results in fewer victims MAY be our best course. It at least holds out a hope that in cutting them off from the crutches of dependency, they may get their lives in order if only because they are left no other choice.
One factor to consider is what lifeguards are taught - that many drownings involve two victims. The man who was drowning, and the one who went out there unprepared, and was dragged down, overcome, by the first victim in a panic. Also - airlines tell you to put your own mask first, before your kids for a similar reason.
We certainly do alcoholics and addicts no favors by continuing to enable them, sometimes you HAVE to cut them off. It's terrible, but it also is better than the alternatives. And to some extent, the enabler is morally culpable too.
Cutting welfare is a necessary, but not sufficient, first step. The same welfare benefits are available to all, but blacks are more dependent. Blacks have chosen to not be or act white, and thus have created a separate culture inside the US. Two separate cultures can never live with each other for an extended period of time. They want to be separate, so let's separate from each other.
I'm personally in favor of sending at least 90% of them back to Africa (that's what Liberia was created for), or swapping them (three or four for one) for Mexicans.
No, it's neither constitutional nor nice. Merely necessary for the continuation of America. There is always a next civil war, and the next one is going to be divided by culture and race. Being human, I prefer that my culture and race survive and maintain some semblance of our historical freedoms in the country that we carved out of the wilderness.
So they complain that European justice isn't fair?
As you like it -- Singaporean justice is available at a nominal rate.
One rightly suspects that the reason for why Singapore has no visible "street people" is that during the transition to the current government, anyone found in such a state who could not make himself self-supporting soon found himself making a new habitat at the bottom of the South China Sea.
You appear to believe that ghettoes are the problem.
I believe they are the solution, and as soon as city-state status can be granted to them and new Singaporean-style governments can take over, the better.
"We can have a New Soweto right here in Detroit ..."
Perhaps Detroit could save itself by remaking itself in a new image, casting off its beggared denizens, yearning to be entitled, as residents of various city-states that will have to show and prove they deserve to succeed and survive.
And maybe, just maybe, if they don't fail entirely and turn into Calhoun Mouse Utopias winding themselves down, their residents may also choose to speak English.
For what it's worth, they could have far worse than Singaporean-style justice -- what's waiting for them because of a clash of cultures is Latin American-style justice, and apparently La Raza has already decided that certain people aren't going to make the cut.
As Lenin echoed the perennial question of Chernyshevsky ...
"What is to be done?"
send them back to Africa. free one way ticket. Problems solved.
If we are going to get what we pay for, let's pay for something worth having. We can't ship 'em out, and we can't live in proximity. Cut off the freebies and they will become open predators on the nearest available whites. Right now blacks (the worst of them anyway) depend on EBT and section 8 housing. I say create black empowerment zones (or pick your own euphemism) Build section 8 cities- excuse me- Black empowerment zones geographically distant enough, and with choke point ingress and egress. Within those zones let them run their own affairs without interference from whites. With EBT we are essentially paying retail for every purchase made on the card. Within the zones create the equivalent of a giant PX. Think of a heavily armored Costco. That way we at least are buying their food wholesale at a great savings. The EBT card would be absolutely useless outside the government stores. No section 8 housing outside the appointed zones. Would those zones become hell holes? Up to the residents, now isn't it?
JWM
I believe that random drug testing for all forms of public monies is fair. If you demand the public support you, you should not be on any illegal drugs. If found to be in such condition, you have one chance to redeem yourself or be cut off forever.
It's the "Curley Effect" in action. As long as the problems in the black and other minority populations are politically useful and profitable to certain politically motivated groups, the problem cannot be fixed. What we see as a problem they see as a power-base and profit center.
We must first fix the political and financial incentives, then the problems will largely fix themselves.
American blacks were a lost cause the day Lyndon Johnson (Democrat) signed his welfare bill into law. It gave them no incentives to work to improve themselves or their children and single handedly destroyed the two-parent black family.
What graylady said^^^
That bastard LBJ knew EXACTLY what he was doing to blacks when he proposed it. And, the stupid blacks revere him anyway.
IIRC, they stopped shipping blacks to Liberia when it dawned on the organizers that they were breeding faster than they could be shipped out.
It seems to me that Blacks in the US have a similar outlook to Arabs in much of the Middle East: the view that their problems are all (and always) somebody else's fault - the Blacks blame Whitey; the Arabs blame Jews, the USA, "Imperialists', 'Zionists', anybody but themselves for their own failure.
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