Posted on 05/04/2010 6:48:14 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students’ beating up Asian-American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America.
While Obama’s winning majorities in overwhelmingly white states suggests that many Americans are ready to move beyond race, it is painfully clear that others are not.
Those who explain racial antagonisms on rational bases will have a hard time demonstrating how Asian Americans have made blacks worse off. Certainly none of the historic wrongs done to blacks was done by the small Asian-American population; for most of their history in this country, they have not had enough clout to prevent themselves from being discriminated against.
While ugly racial or ethnic conflicts can seldom be explained by rational economic or other self-interest, they have been too common to be just inexplicable oddities — whether in America or in other countries around the world, and whether today or in centuries past.
Resentments and hostility toward people with higher achievements are one of the most widespread of human failings. Resentments of achievements are more deadly than envy of wealth.
The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.
Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields.
Others who started at the bottom and rose to prosperity — the Lebanese in West Africa, the Indians in Fiji, and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, for example — have likewise been hated for their achievements. Being born a sultan or a Rockefeller is not an achievement.
Achievements are a reflection on others who may have had similar, and sometimes better, chances but who did not make the most of their chances. Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke.
In our own times, especially, this is not just a spontaneous reaction. Many of our educators, our intelligentsia, and our media — not to mention our politicians — promote an attitude that other people’s achievements are grievances, rather than examples.
When black schoolchildren who are working hard in school and succeeding academically are attacked and beaten up by black classmates for “acting white,” why is it surprising that similar hostility is turned against Asian Americans, who are often achieving academically more so than whites?
This attitude is not peculiar to some in the black community or to the United States. The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment.
These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype — differences are translated into “disparities” and “inequities,” provoking envy and resentments under the more prettied-up name of “social justice.”
Asian-American schoolchildren who are beaten up are just some of the victims of these resentments that are whipped up. Young people who are seething with resentments, instead of seizing educational and other opportunities around them, are bigger victims in the long run, whether they are blacks in the U.S. or lower-class whites in the U.K. A decade after these beatings, these Asian Americans will be headed up in the world, while the hoodlums who beat them up are more likely to be headed for crime and prison.
People who call differences “inequities” and achievements “privilege” leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate. It would never occur to them that they have any responsibility for the harm done to both blacks and Asian Americans.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
This is the reason that “community organizers” have always
been after NASA funding.
It’s called racial spoils. Can you say tribalism?
I have nothing against NASA and applaud their achievements. But is NASA a constitutional role the government should be involved in ?
i have a friend who told me the story of her daughter’s high school graduation.
she was incensed that there was a valedictorian and honors grads.
she felt her daughter was cheated by these people.
as she told me the story her face turned to the look of a pit bull—she was angry.
i thought to myself about her daughter’s behavior:
she stole money from her mother, maxed out a credit card, wrecked her mother’s car, drank and did drugs, and was sexually promiscuous!
meanwhile, her mother ranted on about how her daughter was “equal” to those honors grads.
This is the main reason successful townships like Tulsa Oklahoma and Rosewood were attacked and destroyed.
Interesting article, but I’m not sure Sowell should have used the Philadelphia case to make his point. There may have been something else going on with that incident; when the story first broke I was surprised to read that the Asian students were Chinese immigrants who were 2-3 years older than their grade levels would indicate, so I’d hardly refer to them as paragons of “achievement” in U.S. schools.
Any guesses as to which Americans are ready to move beyond race and which "others" are not?
Liberal solution, dumb-down public skewls to give underachievers a false sense of achievement that only hurts them when competing in the real world to support ones self and family.
Yes it comes under provide for a common defense. I won't argue whether it should therefore be under direct control of the army or air force, because I think you would have a good argument that it should.
Obama has brought out the racism, of blacks and whites. We see it in the violence of black on white and Asians.
Flame away if you will but I see it written on the pages of F.R. too. Sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle. The mods delete some comments but they can’t catch it all.
By the way, mocking blacks speech with pathetic attempts at ebonics is racist.
I am embarrassed at times by the things I read here concerning black people and if I were a black conservative, I believe I’d be even more so at the remarks of some of my fellow conservatives and probably wouldn’t bother to come back to this otherwise fine conservative site.
Think before you write things, ask yourself, is “TrueBlackMan” going to be reading this comment? And there are others here too, There is no more conservative FReeper than Kevin, in my opinion.
Like I said flame away but it’s never the less true.
Hmmm. "Expected?" Seriously? Doc?
While Obama’s winning majorities in overwhelmingly white states suggests that many Americans are ready to move beyond race, it is painfully clear that others are not.
Haven't finished the article, but I can't help but wonder who the "others" might be? Who would be expressing that they are still overwhelmingly concerned with how race factors into their lives? Can't quite put my finger on it.
If there is a wiser man than Dr. Sowell in the United States he can’t write as well. As usual spot on and timely.
This also happens in the workplace. I seen people work very hard and they were kept down by management and told to “know their place”. Meanwhile some of the people favored by management with promotions, good pay raises didn’t know their heads from their @$$3$. This is even more so with managers who are liberal democrats.
Good point. My eldest son was playing football in HS and one of the high schools had ENORMOUS kids on their team. They were older kids, recruited from inner-city schools. Our high school protested the game, but nothing was done about it. It was like HS kids playing against college kids.
I just want to whole-heartily and totally agree with you on your commit.
“TrueBlackMan” has my thank you(s) and deep respect!!
Agreed. Don't do it people.
Doc Sowell is wise, but I think he seems a little naive on this subject. Did the perps actually state they did this because of asians being high achievers? I think the bad guys were just out for some blood.
What a wonderful article. Thank you for sharing.
I think “achievement” would depend on what age they entered the school system and whether they had to learn English. If they did, then being only 2 to 3 years older would be quite an achievement, I would think.
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