Success Has No Color
If any race, creed, or national origin models the behaviors of capitalist western culture, they will succeed.
The issue I have with the Frankfurt School’s Critical Theory and all its variants (including Critical Race Theory) is that all the variants ignore Occam’s Razor.
To accept these theories as a valid and logical process requires the acceptance of their premise as fact first, then filling in the blanks rather than filling in the blanks first to confirm the premise. In real terms, that means accepting the ONLY reason for class warfare is the intransigent selfishness and inherent evil of the bourgeois and the ONLY reason for racial class warfare is that all white people are racists and everything white people have built is constructed from racism.
To accept such up front is to ignore that social, economic and race are all subject to an infinite number of variables and are multi-variate issues, they have neither a single causes nor singular results.
To wit, I relate a discussion I recently had with a supporter of CRT in Utah schools, down to the elementary level, a wealthy, white, suburban female who, for whatever reason, is wracked with white guilt.
I patiently listened as she regaled me with all the reasons America is, has, and will always be, a racist nation if white supremacists’ rule and that blacks are still just as oppressed as they were in the days of slavery due to the resulting institutional and systemic racism of our social, economic, and judicial systems.
After she finished what I’m sure she thought was an overwhelming debate win, I asked one question.
I asked, “Are there any other factors other than racism that could explain the current status of the black community?”
Before she could answer, I continued to point out that recent black African immigrants to the US outperform native born blacks in educational and economic terms and federal government statistics show that as a group, Asians have a higher median family income than whites (by almost $18,000 a year) and people of Indian, Taiwanese, Filipino, people of Australian and Israeli heritage all earn more than Americans of European heritage.
I noted that even as progressives lecture that the slavery of 150 years ago is responsible for the economic situation of contemporary black Americans, even though that conclusion is irreconcilable with the fact that other racial minorities, many who have escaped homelands where slavery and oppression are still common, come to America and find success.
I also mentioned that even in the face of this hard data, Americans are still told that white people are responsible for the plight of, and owe reparations to, the black community due to an institution that was ended a century and a half ago.
So again, I asked her, considering the facts I just provided, could there be any other explanation for the status of American blacks other than the alleged systemic racism of a white supremacist country? Could their own culture have something to do with it? What about the absence of two parent families and fathers in the black community? What about the attitude toward schools? What about racial minorities that succeed within the American systems? How did they escape the hooded night riders and the hangman’s noose?
That’s when her head exploded.
I could see it on her face. It wasn’t that she couldn’t process information that contradicted her deeply held, yet superficial, beliefs, it was that SHE DID NOT WANT TO EVEN CONSIDER THEM. She elected not to think about her theories from any other perspective or to consider that either the simplest answer was the most likely answer or that race was only one factor of many playing into this debate, perhaps even a minor factor.
It has been proven that if any race, creed, or national origin models the behaviors of capitalist western culture, they will succeed.
How can that be?
Apparently, following a cultural model developed by those racist, sexist, heterosexual white males from northern Europe is the path to success – but how can it be “white supremacy” if people of color find success?
The answer is simple. Success, like so many things, doesn’t have a specific race or color. It certainly isn’t limited to “white”.
Success is colorblind, but it does require adherence to a certain set of cultural rules – and by a country mile, western culture has proven to be the best vehicle to attain success for all races and sexes.