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The very notion of black victimhood is idiotic
The Sun Herald ^ | Posted on Thu, Jun. 16, 2005 | By Walter Williams

Posted on 06/16/2005 6:54:24 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy

If you listened to the rhetoric of black politicians and civil rights leaders, dating back to the Reagan years, you would have been convinced that surely by now black Americans would be back on the plantation. According to them, President Reagan, and later Presidents Bush I and II, would turn back the clock on civil rights. They'd appoint "new racists" dressed in three-piece suits to act through the courts and administrative agencies to reverse black civil rights and economic gains. We can now recognize this rhetoric as the political equivalent of the "rope-a-dope."

As my colleague Tom Sowell pointed out in a recent column, "Liberals, Race and History," if the Democratic party's share of the black vote ever fell to even 70 percent, it's not likely that the Democrats would ever win the White House or Congress again. The strategy liberal Democrats have chosen, to prevent loss of the black vote, is to keep blacks paranoid and in a constant state of fear. But is it fear of racists, or being driven back to the plantation, that should be a top priority for blacks? Let's look at it.

Only 30 to 40 percent of black males graduate from high school. Many of those who do graduate emerge with reading and math skills of a white seventh- or eighth- grader. This is true in cities where a black is mayor, a black is superintendent of schools and the majority of principals and teachers are black. It's also true in cities where the per pupil education expenditures are among the highest in the nation.

Across the U.S., black males represent up to 70 percent of prison populations. Are they in prison for crimes against whites? To the contrary, their victims are primarily other blacks. Department of Justice statistics for 2001 show that in nearly 80 percent of violent crimes against blacks, both the victim and the perpetrator were the same race. In other words, it's not Reaganites, Bush supporters, right-wing ideologues or the Klan causing blacks to live in fear of their lives and property and making their neighborhoods economic wastelands.

What about the decline of the black family? In 1960, only 28 percent of black females between the ages of 15 and 44 were never married. Today, it's 56 percent. In 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 19 percent, in 1960, 22 percent, and today, it's 70 percent. Some argue that the state of the black family is the result of the legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty. That has to be nonsense. A study of family structure in Philadelphia in 1880 shows that three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents. In fact, according to Herbert Gutman in "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925," "Five in six children under the age of 6 lived with both parents." Therefore, if one argues that what we see today is a result of a legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty, what's the explanation for stronger black families at a time much closer to slavery - a time of much greater discrimination and of much greater poverty? I think that a good part of the answer is there were no welfare and Great Society programs.

Since black politicians and the civil rights establishment preach victimhood to blacks, I'd prefer that they be more explicit. Were they to be so, saying racists are responsible for black illegitimacy, blacks preying on other blacks and black family breakdown, their victimhood message would be revealed as idiotic. But being so explicit is not as far-fetched as one might think. In a campaign speech before a predominantly black audience, in reference to so many blacks in prison, presidential candidate John Kerry said, "That's unacceptable, but it's not their fault."


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: victimhood; walterwilliams
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Probably already posted, but it didn't show up in a search as titled.
1 posted on 06/16/2005 6:54:24 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
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To: Nasty McPhilthy

"As my colleague Tom Sowell pointed out in a recent column, "Liberals, Race and History," if the Democratic party's share of the black vote ever fell to even 70 percent, it's not likely that the Democrats would ever win the White House or Congress again."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1410055/posts


2 posted on 06/16/2005 6:58:14 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy (Those who beat their swords into plow shears….will plow for those who don’t.)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy
it's not the Klan causing blacks to live in fear of their lives and property and making their neighborhoods economic wastelands.

Other than Grand Kleegle (or was that Beagle?) Robert Byrd, who taxes productive folks to build buildings, roads, and bridges in West Virginia, all named after him. Folks, of all races, who would otherwise provide jobs for the blacks in those neighborhoods.

3 posted on 06/16/2005 6:58:47 PM PDT by El Gato
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To: Nasty McPhilthy

"Only 30 to 40 percent of black males graduate from high school."

Those are pretty good numbers. It shows they're making inroads.

I thought it was about 10%.


4 posted on 06/16/2005 6:58:49 PM PDT by Baraonda (Demographic is destiny. Don't hire 3rd world illegal aliens nor support businesses that hire them.)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy

Love Walter Williams.

He's the only fill in that when I hear come on, am not disappointed Rush isn't on.

His jokes about his wife make me LMAO.


5 posted on 06/16/2005 7:01:18 PM PDT by Guillermo (42% of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi and Bush continues to lick their boots)
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To: mhking

ping


6 posted on 06/16/2005 7:02:19 PM PDT by infidel29 ("It is only the warlike power of a civilized people that can give peace to the world."- T. Roosevelt)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy
The average life expectancy for African American males in the U.S. is 66.1 years. In Ghana, it's 55.6 years. Per capita income $25,050 for the U.S.; $450 in Ghana.

There's your reparations.

7 posted on 06/16/2005 7:07:20 PM PDT by cincinnati65 (Just up the road a piece.......)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy

Too bad that the people who need to be reading this, aren't.


8 posted on 06/16/2005 7:10:07 PM PDT by jch10
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To: jch10

...or sadly, can't.


9 posted on 06/16/2005 7:11:42 PM PDT by cwb
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To: Nasty McPhilthy
Good article, Dr. Williams is right on as usual.

The democrats have done far more harm than good to blacks.

10 posted on 06/16/2005 7:14:48 PM PDT by infidel29 ("It is only the warlike power of a civilized people that can give peace to the world."- T. Roosevelt)
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To: Guillermo
His jokes about his wife make me LMAO.

Did you hear when he substituted for Rush, last Friday, when someone asked what his wife was getting him for Father's Day?

11 posted on 06/16/2005 7:19:23 PM PDT by Paul Atreides (FACT: You can get more reliable information in a beauty shop, than from the media)
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To: jch10
Too bad that the people who need to be reading this, aren't

Even if they did they wouldn't believe it. I guess some can't see the forest for the trees.

12 posted on 06/16/2005 7:23:30 PM PDT by oyez (¡Qué viva la revolución de Reagan!)
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To: Paul Atreides

No, I missed that one, but the one where he said what he was getting her for Christmas had me on the floor.

Golf Shoes, so she wouldn't slip around on ice when she was washing his car in the dead of winter.


13 posted on 06/16/2005 7:26:43 PM PDT by Guillermo (42% of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saudi and Bush continues to lick their boots)
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To: cincinnati65

i was thinking the same thing but have no numbers.

I'd be interested in comparing black populated Africa as a whole to the United States in life expectancies, infant mortality, frequency of disease, and income.

I've either read similar stuff hear or heard it on radio.

It's pretty hard to make the case without someone going ballistic on you though to try and make the case that blacks in the US, despite all the decay in their communities, have a heck of a lot more opportunity to make it than if born just about anywhere else, especially Africa.


14 posted on 06/16/2005 7:27:39 PM PDT by EERinOK
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To: Paul Atreides

Yeah, that was good.

"You're not my Father".


15 posted on 06/16/2005 7:30:40 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy (Those who beat their swords into plow shears….will plow for those who don’t.)
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To: Guillermo
LOL!

He said that his wife asked him what he was getting her for Mother's Day, to which he replied "Nothing; you're not my mother."

When he asked her what she was getting him for Father's Day, she replied "Nothing; you're not my father."

He also said that the reason neither one of them have found someone else is because they have been together so long and are just too lazy to look for anyone. He said, "I can do better than her, and she can do better than me. We're just too lazy."

16 posted on 06/16/2005 7:33:37 PM PDT by Paul Atreides (FACT: You can get more reliable information in a beauty shop, than from the media)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy

I always enjoyed listening to G. Gordon Liddy talking about Mrs. Liddy, especially her dreams about him.


17 posted on 06/16/2005 7:37:22 PM PDT by Paul Atreides (FACT: You can get more reliable information in a beauty shop, than from the media)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy
They'd appoint "new racists" dressed in three-piece suits to act through the courts and administrative agencies to reverse black civil rights and economic gains.

This drumbeat has baffled me all my life, mainly the last 30 years. What exactly is the mechanism that was supposed to actually accomplish these reversals?
Even the forced "blindness" in society, to pretend that blacks were every bit as educated, ambitious, competent, and responsible as non-blacks only made things worse. What's the explanation?
Are non-blacks to blame for the refusal of individuals to accept the fiction, while "society" collectively was forced to pretend that the sham was working? How can the social manipulators sweep total and persistent failure under the rug? How can they continue to justify more of the same?

I think that a good part of the answer is there were no welfare and Great Society programs.
Well... not exactly. those are the total cause of the exponentially worsened problem. I think it was Walter Williams himself who, a number of years ago made the accurate observation that "if society rewards pathological behavior, we will keep getting more of it", yet he stopped short of the obvious response, as he does in this article.

Making legal pets of the incompetent, by law, merely bred a lot more of them, and not only blacks. Equal opportunity devolution, at an ever increasing cost, both in money and resentment.
Politics has degenerated to keep pace, pretending further that "democracy" legitimizes both the fiction, and the extortionate taxation to keep up the illusion. It surely will fail, it's only a matter of when.

I fear the only bloodless solution is the emancipation of the productive and the restored slavery of the pets. The new rules are clear. You want to not only survive, but improve. The tools are there for you to use, just as the rest of us do. Pay for what you eat, for the shelter you enjoy, the "loaded" pants, the entertainment you have, but pay for it yourself. Any way you can, within the limits of the effort you have put out educationally and as adults. When and how you leave your new self-imposed slavery is entirely up to you.

But free my people from this economic bondage. We want to choose our own pets, not have pandering self-serving politicians do it for me. I may choose not to have any pets at all. Then I will feel truly free.

For those rationally challenged who will indignantly shout that charity is "the right thing", I need only remind them that they are free to exercise their charitable inclinations with no limit, so long as they do it with their own work, sweat and wealth. When it is imposed under any kind of penalty, it is no longer charity, but merely a different version of the slavery they feel so guilty about.

18 posted on 06/16/2005 7:43:15 PM PDT by Publius6961 (The most abundant things in the universe are ignorance, stupidity and hydrogen)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy
Citing the official US Census of 1830, there were 3,775 free blacks who owned 12,740 black slaves. Furthermore, the story outlines the history of slavery here, and the first slave owner, the Father of American slavery, was Mr Anthony Johnson, of Northampton, Virginia. His slave was John Casor, the first slave for life. Both were black Africans. The story is very readable, and outlines cases of free black women owning their husbands, free black parents selling their children into slavery to white owners, and absentee free black slave owners, who leased their slaves to plantation owners.
-"Selling Poor Steven", American Heritage Magazine, Feb/Mar 1993 (Vol. 441) p 90

Of course, a full telling of Black History would not be complete without a telling of the origin of slavery in the Virginia colony:
Virginia, Guide to The Old Dominion, WPA Writers' Program, Oxford University Press, NY, 1940, p. 378

"In 1650 there were only 300 negroes in Virginia, about one percent of the population. They weren't slaves any more than the approximately 4,000 white indentured servants working out their loans for passage money to Virginia, and who were granted 50 acres each when freed from their indentures, so they could raise their own tobacco.

Slavery was established in 1654 when Anthony Johnson, Northampton County, convinced the court that he was entitled to the lifetime services of John Casor, a negro. This was the first judicial approval of life servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

But who was Anthony Johnson, winner of this epoch-making decision? Anthony Johnson was a negro himself, one of the original 20 brought to Jamestown (1619) and 'sold' to the colonists. By 1623 he had earned his freedom and by 1651, was prosperous enough to import five 'servants' of his own, for which he received a grant of 250 acres as 'headrights.'

Anthony Johnson ought to be in a 'Book of Firsts.' As the most ambitious of the first 20, he could have been the first negro to set foot on Virginia soil. He was Virginia's first free negro and first to establish a negro community, first negro landowner, first negro slave owner and as the first, white or black, to secure slave status for a servant, he was actually the founder of slavery in Virginia. A remarkable man." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/secret/famous/johnson.html

I found the reference, out of Michael A. Hoffman II's "They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America" : Joseph Cinque was himself a slave trader, selling his fellow blacks into this horror after he himself was set free by a US court.

Amistad producer Debbie Allen calls this destabilizing fact a "rumor." She'd better. If the thinking public, black and white, discover that "noble" Cinque later sold his own people in the very manner he condemned, then there will be a second mutiny, this time against Spielberg and his shameless hoaxing.

Here is Samuel Eliot Morrison, one of the most distinguished of American historians, writing in his "Oxford History of the American People,"
(New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1965), p. 520:

"The most famous case involving slavery, until eclipsed by Dred Scott's, was that of the Amistad in 1839. She was a Spanish slave ship carrying 53 newly imported Negroes who were being moved from Havana to another Cuban port. Under the leadership of an upstanding Negro named Cinqué, they mutinied and killed captain and crew. Then, ignorant of navigation, they had to rely on a white man whom they had spared to sail the ship.

"He stealthily steered north, the Amistad was picked up off Long Island by a United States warship, taken into New Haven, and with her cargo placed in charge of the federal marshal. Then what a legal hassle! Spain demanded that the slaves be given up to be tried for piracy, and President Van Buren attempted to do so but did not quite dare.

"Lewis Tappan and Roger Sherman Baldwin, a Connecticut abolitionist, undertook to free them by legal process, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. John Quincy Adams, persuaded to act as their attorney, argued that the Negroes be freed, on the ground that the slave trade was illegal both by American and Spanish law, and that mankind had a natural right to freedom.

"The court with a majority of Southerners, was so impressed by the old statesman's eloquence that it ordered Cinqué and the other Negroes set free, and they were returned to Africa. The ironic epilogue is that Cinqué, once home, set himself up as a slave trader."
(End quotation from historian Samuel Eliot Morrison)

BLACK SLAVEOWNERS
http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm

Child slavery today in West Africa?
http://gbgm-umc.org/nwo/99ja/child.html

Slavery throughout historyhttp://www.freetheslaves.net/slavery_today/slavery.html

"To pursue the concept of racial entitlement--even for the most admirable and benign of purposes--is to reinforce and preserve for future mischief the way of thinking that produced race slavery, race privilege and race hatred. In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American."
--Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take it away from those who are willing to work and give it to those who would not."
Thomas Jefferson

Perhaps the group that had the strongest vested interest in seeing the South victorious were the black slaveowners. In 1830 approximately 1,556 black slaveowners in the deep South owned 7,188 slaves. About 25% of all free blacks owned slaves. A few of these were men who purchased their family members to protect or free them, but most were people who saw slavery as the best way to economic wealth and independence for themselves. The American dream in the antebellum South was just as powerful for free blacks as whites and it included the use of slaves for self-improvement. They bought and sold slaves for profit and exploited their labor just like their white counterparts.

Richard Rollins

After their capture one group of white Virginia slave owners and Afro-Virginians were asked if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their freedom. One free negro indignantly replied: "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." A slave from this same group, upon learning that his master had refused, proudly exclaimed, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take." A second slave agreed: "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." On another occasion a captured Virginia planter took the oath, but slave remained faithful to the Confederacy and refused. This slave returned to Virginia by a flag of truce boat and expressed disgust at his owner's disloyalty: "Massa had no principles." Confederate prisoners of war paid tribute to the loyalty, ingenuity, and diligence of "kind-hearted" blacks who attended to their needs and considered them fellow Southerners.

Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.

A History of the South

Fourth Edition, Alfred A. Knopf 1947, 1953, 1963, 1972

by Francis Butler Simkins and Charles Pierce Roland

P. 125-126

BEGIN QUOTE: Abolitionist assertions that the bondsmen were frequently inadequately clothed, underfed, and driven to death are economically unreasonable. Masters wished to preserve the health and life of their slaves because a sick Negro was a liability and a dead Negro was worth nothing. A rough plenty prevailed on the average plantation. “The best preventive of theft is plenty of pork,” was the advice of a Virginian.

Slaves probably fared as well in the enjoyment of the necessities of life as did most of the free laborers of the country. One of the most respected of all Northern critics of slavery, Frederick Law Olmsted, wrote that the Southern bondsmen lived in quarters quite as adequate as those of most mill or mine workers elsewhere, and that the slaves were perhaps the best fed “proletarian class” in the world. He also testified that they worked less than did free laborers.

Incomplete statistics reveal that the slaves averaged somewhat higher sickness and death rates per thousand than did Southern whites as a whole. But the slaves were from all indications as healthy and long-lived as white common laborers in the United States before the Civil War. It was general knowledge at the time in Louisiana that the slaves were better off in these respects than were the thousands of Irish immigrant laborers engaged in clearing land and digging drainage canals on the sugar plantations.

The planters were reluctant to commit their expensive chattels to this dangerous work, but preferred to hire free laborers, whose loss by death, sickness, or injury cost nothing. A careful study of the figures on a group of 875 plantation slaves whose records are preserved indicates their average life expectancy at the time of birth to have been longer than that of the general population of such cities as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia during the same period. An authority on urban slavery concludes that the medical care, health, and welfare of slaves in Southern cities were superior to the care, health, and welfare of the free Negroes; and the outstanding work on the life of Negroes in the North at this time shows that they fared no better in such matters than did free blacks in the land of slavery. END QUOTE

Booker T. Washington. It’s worthwhile quoting.

“There is (a) class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their (the black people’s) wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs . . .”
Booker goes on to say: “There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out, they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public."

Read about Child Sex Slaves!!

Tennessee in June 1861 became the first in the South to legislate the use of free black soldiers. The governor was authorized to enroll those between the ages of fifteen and fifty, to be paid $18 a month and the same rations and clothing as white soldiers; the black men appeared in two black regiments in Memphis by September.
Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1995) pp. 218-219

The last thing the UN is trying to do is reduce slavery throughout the world!

There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach and in the destruction of lives.

19 posted on 06/16/2005 7:45:41 PM PDT by B4Ranch ( Report every illegal alien that you meet. Call 866-347-2423, Employers use 888-464-4218)
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To: Nasty McPhilthy

When Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell team up, it's not fair to the rest of the world. Too much humor, wisdom, and--especially--common sense for the rest of us to compete with!


20 posted on 06/16/2005 7:48:31 PM PDT by guitarist
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