Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, Demorats
America is still a place where what you get is directly related to what you are willing to put in.
The progressive intelligentsia informs me at every opportunity that I don’t know what it is like to be a young black man in America.
Well, that much is true. Given that I am 62, white and grew up on a farm, I will never know what that is like – but I do have some observations about the condition and since I grew up dirt poor in northeast Mississippi in the 60’s and 70’s. I probably know a little more about being poor than many of progressive politicians and pundits who are currently offering up reasons why I should give up my white privilege.
I also have traveled extensively around the world, most likely more than most, if not all, of the leaders of the various radical #blacklivesmatter groups and I have seen what it is like to truly be a member of a group that is destined to be oppressed simply by accident of birth.
I’ve been to places in China and India where human life has a value approaching zero. I have visited factories in China where two deaths a year were seen as a great safety record (because they killed five people the prior year). I have seen the caste system at work in India where being born into a certain caste determines not only your future but that of your children – and their children and with no possibility of breaking free…ever.
I have seen the authoritarian states in the Arab world where being in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing, not necessarily even a criminal act, could land you in prison. I have seen political prisons in Myanmar where holding the wrong views can result in you being put in a hole and never coming out. I have seen communist states where police and government authorities operate with true impunity – and when that is combined with a lack of value of human life, it essentially legalizes murder by governments.
I’ve seen true poverty in the slums of New Delhi and Bangkok where people exist on one bowl of rice a day. I have seen how people struggle to live just one more day with no hope or promise of more than the next 24 hours.
I know that because I started poor and white and became relatively successful despite those conditions, I have nothing for which to apologize.
America is still a place where the only limit is the one you place on yourself. If you can make your grades, you can get a college degree and lift yourself out of poverty even if you must borrow money to go. If you pick a degree that is valuable, you can market yourself to employers and pay the loan off. Most of the horror stories are about people who have no clue that spending $150,000 in borrowed money to get a degree in women’s studies or social work at a prestigious university only to land a $30K a year job with limited ability to increase that salary is not a good deal. America is still a place where race is secondary to character, drive and ability. America is still a place where what you get is directly related to what you are willing to put in.
Those in the BLM movement do not realize it but compared 80% of the world (almost anything outside America), what they complain about would be considered true #firstworldproblems. They are conflating and exaggerating issues that are not based in statistical fact to gain political and social advantage because they refuse to achieve on their own. Failing (or simply refusing) to realize how good America truly is and demanding special treatment because your skin is a particular color is their issue, it is not my responsibility to give in to their ridiculous sentiments, especially after I have seen what I have seen. The worst conditions here in America are better by far than some of the best in other countries.
Let me point out some simple facts, facts that exist for all to see. There has been a progression in black America since slavery died with the end of the Civil War, some 156 years ago.
During the Jim Crow era, blacks, primarily black males, were stereotyped as shiftless, ignorant, slothful, morally inferior humans, still enslaved by food and sex.
The fact that poverty rate in America had dropped from 1950 until the “War on Poverty” was declared in the 1960’s seems to be a validation. When both white and black Americans pursued the cultural model of a stable home brought about by marriage, a system of morals taught through religion, a strong work ethic, a reverence for teachers and education and a devotion to self-reliance, both black and white Americans were following a similar trend
But then came the swinging 60’s coupled with a burgeoning welfare state that sought to destroy that cultural model, mostly to satisfy the white guilt of progressive Democrats. A minority of blacks and a smaller majority of whites clung to the former cultural model and only they continued to prosper. It wasn’t as much about race as it was about behaviors.
So, the “War on Poverty” relegated black males back to the stereotypical shiftless, ignorant, slothful, morally inferior humans, enslaved by food and sex – and added the extra element of government dole and drugs.
The commonality in all this is Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, Democrats. More specifically, left wing democrats. The politics of the welfare state and affirmative action are the politics of Jim Crow.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a prominent Democrat, saw this coming and spoke out against the infantilization and enslavement of black Americans through government handouts. In 1965, when he was a Labor Department official, Moynihan raised a national ruckus with a report about single parenthood and the decline of the black family. Of course, he was pilloried by his own party as a racist who blamed victims for their problems. After he made it to the Senate, noted that in the 1990s the trend has worsened among blacks and is affecting whites, as well.
I freely admit that I don’t know what it is like to be a young black man in America, nor will I ever know – but I also know that young black men in America have no idea what it would be like to be them outside America. I can stand back and view history objectively and see how the Democrats’ love of power generated by the welfare state has destroyed so many black Americans and done so completely unnecessarily.
People can be trapped in a bad culture. People can be trapped by lies and operative conditioning brought about through those lies.