Posted on 07/14/2020 6:58:50 AM PDT by truthxchange
Systemic Racism The accusation of “systemic racism” is everywhere—in the news media, in the halls of government, in churches, and, above all, in politics. The term implies that our country’s entire “system” is shot through in all areas and by all people with the belief that one race (the white race) is better than all others (especially the black race).
According to the aging Sixties revolutionaries who gave their name to the Ben and Jerry ice cream brand, racism “is about everyday decisions made by people who may not even think of themselves as racist.” Systemic racism, they say, is everywhere. “When white people occupy most positions of decision-making power, people of color have a difficult time getting a fair shake, let alone getting ahead.” But such an assumption is difficult to prove. What is “everywhere”? And how do Ben and Jerry get into people’s heads and hearts to determine the motivations of their everyday decisions? Together these terms are often and carelessly used to vilify any action or perceived thought by any individual or group or even by the ancestors of any individual or group. Is it fair to assume a racist attitude if no action reveals it?
Many ordinary citizens are shocked to realize that their “everyday decisions” or their considered opinions are suddenly considered racist. • A top curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art put up an Instagram post that seemed critical of the Black Lives Matters movement. Fifteen Met staff members sent a letter urging the museum’s leadership to acknowledge “what we see as the expression of a deeply rooted logic of white supremacy and culture of systemic racism at our institution.” Criticizing BLM is racist. • The evangelical church is well-served with books describing white racial failure. Daniel Hill published White Awake through InterVarsity Press, a respected evangelical Christian publisher. A blurb at the site describes the work:
Hill began a journey of understanding his own white identity. Today he is an active participant in addressing and confronting racial and systemic injustices. And in this compelling and timely book, he shows you the seven stages to expect on your own path to cultural awakening.
• A book by Reformed author, Alexander Jun (native Korean) and Christopher Collins, White Out, informs us that white privilege is a virus or a disease. I wonder what kind of racism animated the mass murder that the Japanese committed against the Koreans in 1923?
In these examples, we see the accusation of “systemic racism” used as a guilt-inducing tool to provoke radical social change. The accusation looks like is a dishonest means of manipulation for political power. The racism charge ranges from thoughtlessness and “micro aggression” to biological determinism—“if you’re white, you’re racist.”
The Progressive group RaceForward describes systemic racism this way: “Racism shows up in our lives across institutions and society: Wealth Gap, Employment, Housing Discrimination, Government Surveillance, Incarceration, Drug Arrests, Immigration Arrests, Infant Mortality… yes, systemic racism is really a thing.” They cite the fact that as of 2015 the median income of Asian families was $85.349, of white families $67, 860, of Hispanic families, $46, 552, and of African American families, $30,555. Only one problem here with the racial discrepancies: the best off are Asians, who are neither white nor in the majority. Indeed, we must honestly ask how much skin color has to do with racism, since Hispanic “brownness” dilutes the intense appeal of “Black Lives Matter,” which claims that blackness is the essence of racism. Perhaps there are other issues involved in income disparity.
In the discussion of race, “systemic racism” refers to our overarching cultural, economic and political life, which everyone agrees should be arranged in the most efficient and fair way possible. All cultures organize in some systematic fashion. The American system was first organized by a ragged group of pilgrims fleeing England, via Holland, seeking to establish life without the domination of the crown and the established church. All white and basically Christian, it is true that many were complacent in accepting the existence of slavery, whether that of native American Indians or of Black Africans. A complex mix of competing slave trades affected our young nation from its beginning, though the practice was eventually banned in some areas of the North. In spite of these inconsistencies, the colonists achieved their independence from Britain and wrote their own laws and a now-famous constitution, using many principles from the religious beliefs that caused them to flee their native lands in the first place. This cultural system gradually solidified, integrating those who chose to emigrate in order to join the New World’s new system.
As time went on in America, immigrants poured into the country. Some, though white, like the Irish and Italians, persevered through many years of racist bias to join the American way of life, finally influencing and modifying it to fit their particular tastes and needs as newcomers. One group, however, was refused full membership—black slaves from Africa, captured with the collusion of rival black tribes and brought against their will to a totally foreign land. Sadly, cultures all over the world have practiced slavery for as far back as we have recorded history. Thankfully, many have come to understand that slavery is a thoroughly inhuman practice. England solved the problem by passing an act of parliament. America made a national start at solving it only after losing some six hundred thousand of its own citizens in a Civil War that was at least partly for the purpose of emancipation of America’s slaves. That victory, decisive yet divisive, was a baby step in making the system work for ex-slaves, but the 1865 Jim Crow laws legalized racial segregation, denying them the right to vote, hold a job, or get an equal education. It is shocking that such discriminatory laws lasted for close to 100 years. Clearly the system did not work for black Americans until, in 1964, 56 years ago, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, making all segregation illegal for the first time in American history. That Act, with final touches made in 1968, finally and completely opened “the system” to black Americans. Before 1964, racism was officially systemic, since racist discrimination was embedded in the very legal system of a country that claimed freedom for all. After that, in America, complete freedom was legally open to all.
But this legal freedom did not turn out as well as one might have expected. Life remained complicated for the black community. The system, having legally admitted to the guilt of segregation, sought to help alleviate the problem of poverty. The same President, Lyndon Johnson of Civil Rights Act fame, declared War on Poverty, a war that has spent $20 trillion on programs to improve the lives of our poor. Ironically, one aspect of the nation’s structured largess actually undermined the black family. By creating “welfare queens” who could only get government money if the father[s] of their children were no longer in the home, both sons and daughters were denied the presence of a dad. This created all kinds of psychological problems that increased academic failure and the likelihood of jail time (especially for young men) and held up single motherhood as a de facto model for young women. Instead of helping blacks integrate into and succeed in the system, as so many other ethnicities had done, well-intentioned aid often produced a black victim underclass of state dependents, who then remained outside of the successful side of the system, while constantly experiencing its underbelly.
Words of Wisdom from Black Leaders Long-time teacher, John McWhorter; Civil Rights Attorney Leo Terrell; commentator, attorney, radio and TV personality Larry Elder; US Senator Tim Scott; brilliant young journalist, Candace Owen; 90-year-old scholar, Thomas Sowell; former NFL player, Burgess Owens; author, speaker, and radio show host, Casper Stockham; pastor and singer, Biff Gore; gun rights activist and founder of EmPOWERed (a Second Amendment advocacy group for college women) Antonia Okafor Cover ; and author Robert L. Woodson, who states publicly that the accusation of racism is insulting and that we need to speak the truth (On the Road to Economic Freedom: An Agenda for Black Progress )—all these and more are African American leaders who reject the analysis of systemic racism.
Should these not be heard? Wise thinkers like Shelby Steele, whom Newsweek identifies as “America’s clearest thinker about America’s most difficult problem,” posits that “white guilt” creates a false solution of government intervention, and that affirmative action is “a deep racist reflex in American life that will forever try to limit black possibility.” He argues that the progressive anti-racist ideology is actually prolonging racism. Similarly, African American social commentator, Prof. Jason L. Riley, in his aptly entitled book, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make it Harder for Blacks to Succeed, believes “affirmative action,” soft-on-crime approaches, and resistance to school choice (all of which are meant to help black people) end up hurting them.” Riley says, “the Great Society programs did not rescue black people.” He quotes fellow African American Thomas Sowell whose research shows that the “rise of blacks into professional and other high-level occupation was greater in the years preceding passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the years following the passage of that act… the poverty rate among blacks had been nearly cut in half before either the civil rights revolution or the Great Society social programs began in the 1960s.” Recognized black scholar, Walter Williams [see below] describes Sowell as “one of the greatest economist-philosophers of our age.” Author of 56 books, Sowell considered himself a Marxist during most of his time in college, but after studying the effects of a variety of government regulations, he concluded that free markets are the best alternative, particularly for disadvantaged people. Riley continues his account of Sowell’s thought: “The progress of blacks after leaving slavery and prior to the civil rights legislation of the 1960s doesn’t receive a lot of attention because it undermines a prevailing and politically useful narrative on the left.” What is that narrative? “That black people require liberal Leftists to pity them and rescue them from their inferior victimized social positions caused by white racism.”
A growing number of black leaders are calling for another approach. In his video, "Black Fathers Matter" Larry Elder, argues that between white racism and the absence of black fathers, the latter is the bigger threat, and it is the liberal policies meant to save black people that have produced the erasure of black fatherhood. Still today, a good half century after the liberal program was instituted, 77% of black babies are born to single mothers. Elder points out that black nuclear families were more likely to be intact in the past. After the War on Poverty, women married Uncle Sam; the government, not the father, provided for the family. Contrary to the argument of liberals, the problem is not greedy, selfish, racist white Americans. In fact, Elder says, through their taxes, Americans spent (as of 2016) $20 trillion in programs like Food Stamps and welfare. The welfare state did not wipe out poverty but it came all too close to wiping out the black family. You cannot replace a father with a check because the government is not good at raising children. Until we have a government program that makes family unity a priority, nothing will change, Elder predicts.
African American professor of Economics, Walter E. Williams, in a provocative article entitled “How Not to Be Poor,” argues that avoiding poverty “is not rocket science. … First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married.” He states that “an overwhelming amount of research demonstrates that the presence of the child's biological father in the home benefits the child.” According to the 1999 Bureau of Census report, “Among black households that included a married couple, over 50% were middle class earning above $50,000, and 26% earned more than $75,000.” Children growing up without their biological father are more likely to be poor, abused, and imprisoned. They drop out of school, take drugs and often attempt suicide. There is nothing Father State can do about that. Ironically, one of the most helpful factors for a black person to benefit from the “system” is not complicated. It is not fighting back white privilege but having a black dad.
A moving call from an African American woman maintains that “Black Wives Matter.” “…a better way to preserve and enhance literally millions of black lives is for their fathers to be married to their mothers when they grow up, as my father was married to my mother. How about a culture among black men where not just their lives matter, but also their wives?”
Kendall Qualls, a black dad with five children, is a successful businessman and the current Republican nominee for the Minnesota congress. In his political platform he denounces “the destruction of two-parent Black families through social programs that discourage marriage and result in generational welfare.” He names “policies that limit educational opportunities, prohibit school choice, and protect teachers’ unions, preventing prosperity in the process.” He states clearly: “We must fight the ideology of destruction and those who promote the vision of America as a systemically racist country. We must fight those who enable and spread this vision, paving the way for mob rule in the process.” Qualls contends that the “overwhelming majority” of white people in America are not racist…if you want to find racism in America you will find it. At the same time, if you look for opportunity in America you will find it tenfold.” In other words, the solution is working to join the system in which everyone can find a place. Without fathers in the home, there is mayhem both in the schools and in the neighborhoods.
John McWhorter, mentioned above, wrote an article entitled “Explaining the Black Education Gap,” which goes to the heart of the problem: “The chief cause is not racism, inadequate school funding, class status, parental education level, or any other commonly cited factor, but the … anti-intellectualism that plagues the black community … perpetuated by the powerful strand of separatism in black culture … that rejects as illegitimate all things 'white.' … School and books are seen as suspicious and alien things that no authentically black person would embrace … this attitude goes unrecognized because of the widespread insistence on viewing blacks as victims.” McWhorter rejects the racism explanation as "infantilizing" blacks and invokes Chinese-Americans and Jews, who also experienced discrimination, and who score at the top of the charts. “Black students let each other know that it disqualified them from group membership to engage in “nerdy thinking … new ways of thinking and close engagement with the written word …[or] openness, a sense of integral commitment and belonging to the world of the school.” To “embrace school” would “signal disloyalty, even treachery.”
McWhorter unveils in these attitudes a deliberate refusal to embrace “the system.” Such observations are confirmed in a highly technical article by black Harvard sociologist, Orlando Paterson. He asks why young black men are doing so poorly in school that they lack basic literacy and math skills and why, after ten years of education a young man remains illiterate. The reason is what sociologists discovered in their interviews with young black men, something they call the “cool-pose culture,” a life-style too gratifying to give up. “For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, [and] the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation’s best entertainers were black. Not only was living this subculture immensely fulfilling, the boys said, it also brought them a great deal of respect from white youths. For young black men, however, that culture is all there is, or so they think. Sadly, their complete engagement in this part of the American cultural mainstream, which they created and which feeds their pride and self-respect, is a major factor in their disconnection from the socioeconomic mainstream.” This analysis is one more example of a conscious refusal by many in the black community to join, in total freedom, in “the system” that guarantees, among other things, self-pride, family flourishing, reasonable economic prosperity and vast cultural and literate resources, past and present. Part of this “cool-pose culture” seems to begin early in the refusal of normal schooling. Lee McNulty spent twenty-seven years teaching in Paterson, New Jersey. After he retired, he felt free to tell his story. “Gangs of kids roam the building. … They’ll walk into the classroom … and just start a fight in that class. … Our school is an indoor street corner. When I walk in that building, I have no idea anymore of right and wrong.” This seems to be typical of ghetto schools. McNulty's video was posted in 2014. That year only nineteen black high school students in Patterson, NJ were college ready. That’s in a city of 145,000. Clearly ghetto schools were failing. The behavior in the schools is reproduced on the streets. The careful research of Heather MacDonald reveals that about 80 % of black children in Chicago are born to single mothers. They grow up in a world where marriage is virtually unheard of and where no one expects a man to stick around and help raise a child.” “The official silence about illegitimacy and its relation to youth violence,” says MacDonald, “remains as carefully preserved in today’s Chicago as it was during Obama’s organizing time there.” The facts are disturbing. In Chicago, on May 31, 2020, 18 people were murdered and 85 others suffered gunshot wounds. “Blacks made up 60.5% of all murder arrests in Missouri in 2012 and 58% of all robbery arrests, though they are less than 12% of the state’s population. Such vast disparities are found in every city and state in the country.”
The Black Community’s Choice Since 1964, we cannot speak of “systemic racism” in terms of specifically racist laws on our books. As a legal phenomenon, it was abolished, by great effort and for all kinds of motivations. But some argue that racism is a moral state of mind into which privileged whites have fallen unawares. In fact, “systemic racism” is something you are born with. “If you are white you are racist.” Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, the number one selling book today, is a powerful tool of guilt inducement, especially among the rising generations, since it is being studied in high schools and universities all over the land. According to DiAngelo, her book is a bracing call to white folk everywhere to see their whiteness for what it is… a stirring call to conscience, and most important, consciousness, in her white brothers.” We are talking of a moral pandemic that will create endless social disruption. The black community is faced with a choice; either a continued search for “political power or a promotion of black human potential,” to use Jason Riley’s terminology. Political power dictates never-ending accusations of white racism. Human potential, on the other hand, develops an untouchable sense of dignity, as a human made in God’s image, which can never be taken away. In one sense, we can only find an official version of “systemic racism” in the legal structures of a country’s laws and ordinances. One might quite logically argue that a structure can be good but that in that structure evil people can insert racially biased attitudes. This, of course, is very true! However, if we define “systemic racism” in such a vague and indefinable way, we will never be able to define it truly, for “who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him” (1Cor. 2:11)? To judge the motives of others as racist without any proof would be never ending and highly divisive, which is what we are seeing currently. Black preacher, Voddie Baucham, has called such a definition of racism “ethnic Gnosticism.” He intends by this phrase to speak of something, a gnosis, or knowledge that is somehow vaguely known by every individual but that no one can finally define. In the early church the Gnostics claimed immediate spiritual knowledge, that is, knowledge that did not need mediation or a mediator, such as an apostle or Scripture or some objective authority. Such a “knowledge” brought great conflict among believers, destroyed churches and was eventually rejected as heresy. Because the current definition of “racism” is so subjective, we face an endless cycle of recrimination, which means that truly racial tensions will never be solved, and our culture will be ruined unless it is checked in time.
The conflict of two black scholars is instructive.
Ta-Nahesi Coates, journalist with the Atlantic, has received many significant awards, and has lived a life of relative ease, but has made the choice to seek political power and use identity politics. He calls for reparations and for the radical denunciation of the white race. With violent prose, he states: “America exists to destroy the black body … The American Dream is the enemy … White America is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies … The problem with the police is not that they are fascists pigs, but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs.”
Jason D. Hill, a black professor of philosophy at DePaul University, with equally strong language, calls into question Coates’s way of thinking. He declares: “…your book, while moving, reads primarily like an American horror story and, I’m sorry to say, a declaration of war against my adopted country.” Hill emigrated from Jamaica with $120 in his hand and never looked back. “I would make but one demand on my new country: that its inhabitants place no obstructions in my path.” Hill went on, unobstructed, to gain a Ph.D. and a key teaching post in a well-recognized university. He calls the civil-rights movement and the momentous passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act the “third Founding of America (taking Lincoln’s promise at Gettysburg as the second), by which he “cultivated a love of humanity.” His condemnation of Coates goes on: “Your book …damn[s] to hell the noblest and most endearing trait of those who come to this country and who love it: the Dream.” The Dream is “the System.”
According to Hill, Coates, by blaming white power, is guilty of dehumanizing blacks by refusing to allow them to take personal responsibility for their own lives, as genuine human beings. “You are trading on black suffering to create a perpetual caste of racial innocents. And the currency of your economic system is white guilt.”
For a number of black scholars, racism has not only dehumanized black citizens but is now used as an excuse to radically change “the system” into various forms of socialism, even Marxism, as promoted by Black Lives Matter. In the light of this evidence, the myth that must be true if the theory of white racism is to stick is the myth of the police genocide of the black population. A system, based on a scandalous untruth, is objectively refuted by many black and white reputable scholars. Alas, apparently the untruth works, since the well-thought-of Ford Foundation recently gave $100m to BLM whose well-known chant, overturning law and order, is: “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want it? Now!”
Five Issues Standing in the Way of a Solution In this period of moral outrage it is difficult to raise the subject of racism. Presently, there are five issues that make one unable to reach a position of biblical wisdom, and, granted the present context, these will doubtless be used as five examples of my “white racism”:
1. The vague definition of racism, which makes it impossible to arrive at any common understanding of the problem, which makes it insoluble and a cause of discord to be used by many power-hungry agendas;
2. The political power grab by extremist-tending Democrat politicians, happy to exploit social tensions;
3. The real agenda of Black Lives Matter which, according to its own founders is a Marxist, LGBT, godless plot whose leaders reject the Christian faith as colonialist, adopt the witchcraft of the Yuruba Ifa religion, and build an ideology based on false data regarding the police. This creates a deep irony—behind BLM’s high-sounding pro-black cause, a Marxist rejection of the nuclear family will perpetuate what black conservatives define as the black community’s enormous and long-term problem, namely the absence of the nuclear family. Such conservatives are working to bring restoration to black families, as is the case for the well-named movement mentioned above, Black Wives Matter;
4. The persistently wrong choice by black communities against the wise advice of many of its own conservative voices—a political choice of victim status for easy financial and cultural gain.
5. The misuse of George Floyd’s death by radical protestors whose intent is to destroy conservative America by seizing on perceived racism to pursue a social revolution. Says one pressure group called Decriminalize Seattle: “We have to start imagining a world without law enforcement.” Racism is simply one part of this radicalism. It serves Identity Politics of all sorts—sexism, homophobia, transphobia, feminism, ableism, etc.—and contributes to neoMarxist ideological and political goals without necessarily promoting genuine human dignity or a sincere concern for fellow black brothers and sisters. It is becoming clear that Black Lives Matter is a massive scam. BLM shows no interest in the 93% of black victims killed by fellow blacks. Instead, it focuses exclusively on the black lives lost to police brutality. Here are the facts. In 2019 there were 19 deaths of unarmed whites and 10 deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of the police. Five of those deaths were adjudged by grand juries to have been legitimate police self-defense incidents. In only five cases were the officers charged with crimes. So only five black lives matter. Millions of knees have bent and multimillions of dollars have poured into the accounts of BLM, a movement that can only justify its opposition to five illegal shootings.
A Thoughtful Christian Response We don’t need dead cops. Rather, we need a thoughtful response to the present state of many in the black culture who are locked in a false view of their situation. A part of the response our culture should bring is a genuine apology for the godless, liberal policies that helped destroy the black family in the 1960s. This was a devastating form of racism, rarely recognized, though black authors are now seeing it. For this we should all lament; for this we should engage to do whatever we can to help restore black (and white!) marriages and families. Whatever our race, we should denounce any form of hatred or superiority. As Christians we must affirm the gospel’s affirmation that we are all one in Christ Jesus; that “we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another” (Rom. 12:5). Practically, we should be led by the wisdom of our conservative black brothers and sisters, to pray to the Lord to show us how we, non-black citizens of all colors, without pride or condescension, can help them emerge from this ungodly victim status, and from any sense of false marginalization, making it possible for all American citizens to join “the system” of fair play for all, reflecting with pride and dignity their God-given image.
Say Their Names: 22 People Killed in the George Floyd Riots
Here’s a handy guide to figuring out who the racists are: if they are always talking about “race”, and view every question in light of “race”, then THOSE are the racists.
George Floyd was a violent career criminal!! NOTHING should be named for him!!!!
So, I guess the young female soldier who was murdered by a black soldier with a hammer doesn’t matter?
I’d be ok if they renamed the USS Harvey Milk to him — and then scrapped it.
“NOTHING should be named for him”
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I dunno about that - there’s the Geo Floyd Riots, Geo Floyd Looting, Geo Floyd Arsons, etc.
The Washington Floyds.
This Just In: Roger Waters just announced that the "Floyd" in "Pink Floyd" is now named for George Floyd, and no longer for bluesman Floyd Council.
“The Washington Floyds.”
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Rename the Wuhan Flu to the “Floyd Flu”.
There’ll be a new Andy Griffith Show reboot with George Floyd The Barber.
That was a very long article, but well thought out and well presented. I think many people won’t read it, but I made the effort to get all the way the through it, and it was one of the best statements of the state of affairs I have seen.
This country was formed without regard to race, as a colorblind nation. It may have been, and is corrupted from time to time by individuals with personal agendas and biases, but the law remains colorblind. That is our plumb line for life as an American citizen, or any governmental or non-governmental organization subject to the laws of the US.
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