Posted on 01/12/2002 10:05:34 AM PST by IronJack
"Black people cannot be racist."
It's been maybe 20 years since the first time I heard some member of the black intelligentsia say that on an afternoon talk show. Naturally, all hell broke loose.
Years later, all hell still awaits repair.
I base that assessment on the response to something I did in a recent column. Namely, I defined racism as "this practice of demeaning and denying based on the darkness of skin."
Man, what'd I want to go and say that for? The flood of letters has been unrelenting, dozens of aggrieved Caucasians wanting your poor, benighted correspondent to know that racism, thank you very much, is also felt by those whose skin is not dark at all. Several folks figured I must be one o' them black folk who considers black folk incapable of racism. One individual went so far as to contend that your truly, like most blacks, hasn't a clue what racism really is.
Well, golly, where to begin?
First, my take on the "blacks can't be racist" argument: Unassailable logic, unfortunate rhetoric.
People who make that argument reason as follows: Yes, blacks can be prejudiced or bigoted, but not "racist," because racism involves systematic oppression -- the wielding of power. As blacks neither wield power nor control the system, the reasoning goes, it's beyond their ability to be racist.
I get impatient with people who make the argument in those terms, terms that seem, frankly, calibrated to produce more confrontation than insight. Most people who hear the point framed in that way are, understandably, unable to get past those first inflammatory words: "Blacks can't be racist."
So let's frame it another way. Let's allow that black folks can, indeed, be racist. Or prejudiced, intolerant, biased, bigoted, or any other word that floats your boat. Blacks people are, after all, members of the human race and, as such, are heir to all the idiocy by which human beings are beset.
But with that established, let's also say this: It's an affront to common sense to suggest there is equivalence between black-on-white bigotry and its opposite. This is the point the black intelligentsia's rhetoric has obscured and people like my correspondents have denied, avoided, and ignored. As an aggregate, bigoted blacks have much less power to injure whites than vice versa. They also have less history of doing so. These are incontrovertible facts that render hollow the yowling demands that the racism of blacks be accorded a place in the national consciousness commensurate with that of white people.
Hey, when you find a black bigot, feel free to censure and ostracize him or her as the circumstance warrants. I don't care. Just don't pretend the transgression is what it is not. Don't claim it represents a significant threat to the quality of life of white Americans at large.
Because if it represents such a threat, then where are the statistics demonstrating how black bias against whites translates to the mass denial of housing, bank loans, education, employment opportunities, voting rights, medical care, or justice? And, please, spare me the anecdote about Jane, who couldn't get into school, or Joe, who lost his job, because of affirmative action.
Not the same. Not even close. There are, inf fact, reams of statistics documenting that racism has fostered generation after generation of Joes and Janes -- not to mention Jamillas, Rasheeds, and Keshias -- in the African-American community. And those numbers come not from the NAACP, the Nation of Islam, the Congressional Black Caucus or any other group with an ax to grind but, rather, from the federal government and from university think tanks. Yet even with those bona fides, some people find evidence of white racism's power dishearteningly easy to ignore.
They have to, I suppose. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to continue pretending an equivalency that does not exist. And somewhere inside, even THEY must recognize that fact.
Put it like this: If given the option of going through life as a white man suffering the effects of black racism or the reverse, I know which one I'd choose.
I bet every one of my correspondents does too.
Blacks HAVE treated whites badly. Not as long, and not as continually, but predatory blacks have stolen millions from the white middle class, both at gun point and by half a century of welfare scams. Add to those predations the disproportionate victimization of whites by blacks in the form of violent crime, and whites become a class of turkeys waiting to be plucked.
Furthermore, our misguided sense of guilt prevents us from even striking back. We're so afraid of being called "racist" that we bear our throats to the vampires and apologize if we're a quart low.
How seriously should whites take black disenfranchisement, when blacks don't seem to take it seriously themselves?
And you are still wrong.
You'd come out ahead by issuing your statement where you can name those who alledgely hate you or any other white person.
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Easy guys.
It all depends on who "us" is.
As a musician I never felt any black performers didn't like me just because I am white.
Having attended several inter-faith conferences attended 50%by black Baptists, I never felt any animosity.
It also depends (from an anecdotal point of view) where you are. Once I traveled through SC and it seemed the blacks hated me because I was white and the whites hated me because I was not "southern". (I'm from Nebraska).
If, however, "us" means conservative, and 85-90% of blacks mysteriously vote RAT, then proud_patriot may have a point.
'white, mothereffing, honky pig'
and not be a racist?
gee, what a lucky guy!
Boy, why am I hungry all of a sudden? Oh, rock lobster sounds good! ;-)
Even worse, how do we go about finding a solution when blacks repeatedly reject any white solutions out of hand, on the presumption that the two races are, and must always remain, enemies? You can't convince me that we couldn't find common ground after a century and a half of emancipation unless there were powers arrayed against such a discovery.
The current power structure isn't interested in solving racial conflicts as much as it is in exploiting a population bloc. That goes for powers on both sides of the racial divide. I suspect that at those levels, that divide is pigmentary only.
Ya got that goin'! I'm a Hoosker too.
That was the most intelligent statement in the article.
The rest of it is him proving just that.
Here's to next week.
He'd change the color of his skin, given the chance. Fascinating! His self-loathing is just too depressing to read. No surprise, though, because this sort of identity politics encouraging nothing but fatalistic self-loathing among the "oppressed" groups it pretends to help.
At the risk of presuming to speak for Mr. Pitts (I have read many of his columns and have met him so I may be able to speak with a little authority here), I'll say that the above statement is not a wish that he was white but a wish that his life could reflect the sum total of white racism vs. the sum total of black racism. A fine distinction, perhaps, but hopefully you understand the difference.
That being said, I wouldn't make the statement myself because some whites I know have suffered much more from black predudice/racism than I have suffered from white prejudice/racism. Besides, I wouldn't trade being black for anything.
I love it. The truth--no matter how sad--is sometimes funny.
Come on over guys, whenever we have a blizzard here in Maine, the lobsters want to come in out of the woods to get warm.
I can hear 'em scratching at the front door now. I'll go let 'em in and we can "warm them up".
Good to know you're from the "Old Country" Proud. I was just out there.
Sorry I'm not a football fan, but the "World of Outlaws" rules (I-80 Raceway), guess I'm a "racing" Republican.
We should start a thread on the Unicameral. (I'll bet Ernie Chambers hates all three of us)
That's an incredibly powerful pair of statements. Care to elaborate?
Also, I've never been robbed, assaulted, or threatened physically due to white bigotry, but a lot of whites have suffered that from blacks. In general, whites don't verbally assault blacks in public the way some blacks do it to some whites. A couple of times I had to tell the black person (they were strangers) that they'd gone way over the top and to stop acting that way.
Remember, though, my experiences are just about me personally- don't take that to mean that all blacks have it "made in the shade" on the race thing these days. We do still carry the effects of being slaves and legal second-class citizens for all but the last 35 years of our existence here.
Affirmative action hurts blacks too ---I have a couple of black friends who are extremely qualified in their jobs, have all the education and then some that the job required but had people assume they only got hired because of that. People saying things like "aren't you thankful for affirmative action" which really burned them because that wasn't how they got the job.
I don't think most white managers are biased against blacks in ways that hurt them either. I think it's time we gave whites more credit than that. Believe it or not, I think most people -- of ALL races -- try to do the right thing. Whites are not composed of our exceptions any more than blacks are, and it's not fair to judge us by that fractured yardstick any more than it's fair to judge all blacks by the wacked-out crackhead who jacks your BMW.
And in a more subtle way, it hurts them by making excuses for them, for enabling their continued failure, for patting them on the heads and saying "There, there. It's okay for you to make all the wrong choices. We'll get you a job anyway. We'll force your way into society at the point of a gun if necessary."
The presumption is that blacks are somehow unable to perform to the same standards as whites, and that this "handicap" can only be overcome with governmental assistance. It is the heart of racism to imply that blacks are so inferior that they can't succeed on their own. Yet that is precisely what "affirmative action" (which is anything but affirmative) does.
Actually, yes, and I'm sure you are right about what Pitts meant by that statement.
The problem is that people like me and people like Pitts are comparing apples and oranges. As I stated in my post, I prefer to speak on the level of individuals. Racist discrimination against an individual is (morally, and often legally) wrong, period, and no single race has a monopoly on it.
In supposed answer to this, by contrast, Mr. Pitts and those like him appear to think only of averages. As you have stated, Pitts is imagining here whether he would like to live life within some kind of mythical sea composed of the "sum total" of white racism versus the "sum total" of black racism, and saying he would prefer to life the Average Life As A White Person Living In A Sea Of Sum-Totalled Black Racism, than the opposite.
This is all well and good and I might even be inclined to agree with him, but it's missing the point completely. There's no such thing as an "Average Life". There are no actual individuals who Live Life Against A Background Of Sum-Totalled White Racism. All there are, is individuals. Individual people and individual events. Some individual white people experience racism at the hands of individual black (or other) people, and some individual black people experience racism at the hands of individual white (or other) people.
Now the reason for this debate, or misunderstanding (as perhaps it should be called), is the following: some of us would like to point out, or remind people, of the fact that Black People Are Capable Of Being Racist. White people do not have a monopoly on racism.
And the problem with a rebuttal like that of Mr. Pitts is that he's not even responding to this statement. He is not refuting it in the slightest. Instead what he does (if only subconsciously) is say "Yes, but ON AVERAGE the overall Sum-Total effect is greater coming from whites than from blacks."
This may or may not be true, but it's totally beside the point which people are trying to make when they say Blacks Can Be Racist Too. He has missed the point entirely and ends up answering a different question than the one which was raised. And the main reason for this is that he can think only of "aggregates" and "sum totals" and "averages", even though that has nothing to do with the basic claim he (thinks he) is responding to. Unless and until he understands this, his refutation of the "blacks can be racist too" claim will continue to be nonsense. Best,
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