It's obvious that blacks and whites will never see eye to eye on these issues. We live in two entirely different realities. I think I'll just stick to the non race, religion or political topics from now on.
Aw, don't do that. The view from your reality is too valuable. But it's not one of two. There are many more, and trying to distill them down to the "white view versus the black view," the "liberal view versus the conservative view," or some other dichotomy only continues to add credibility to something that is in itself artificial, to wit, the notion that there really is some qualitative, organic difference between people of different races.
The fact is that your statement itself is a generalization. There are whites who will agree with you wholeheartedly and support affirmative action and other programs to "level the playing field," and there are blacks who oppose these same programs because they consider them insulting, unnecessary, and likely to diminish the perceived value of their own accomplishments. Again, there are more than two realities.
One reality that is starting to change is that the "playing field" is starting to level itself out, but not in the way that Dr. King hoped for. Take a look at the faces in the crowd at "Occupy" demonstrations. They're mainly young and white; and once you get past their whininess, they do have a point: The opportunities for young people today to take their first steps along the road to the American Dream are indeed fewer than those of previous generations, and part of the reason for this is a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people than at any time, well, ever.
Looking at this wealth shift from a purely pragmatic point of view and putting aside the Left Wing-Right Wing rhetoric for a moment, the top-heavy nature of wealth distribution is problematic for several reasons.
One reason is that it breeds discontent, as was seen during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, when the combined Marxist-Leninist parties were the fastest-growing sector of American politics, and the radical IWW (which favored the overthrow of capitalism) the fastest-growing labor movement.
Another reason is more fundamental. The U.S. is now largely a consumer economy, and an economy that is dependent on consumption cannot long survive when consumers are being systematically impoverished. It will eventually collapse. You can't have a consumer economy without consumers, and you can't be a consumer if you're broke.
So the Occupy protestors actually have a few good points, in my opinion. Where they and I diverge is that they tend to look toward government to fix things, whereas I don't, because I have found government to be a lot better at breaking things than fixing them. To me, looking to government for justice makes as much sense as seeking warmth from an iceberg.
From a race-relations standpoint, the ongoing, systematic impoverishment of the working class can go several ways. The way I would like is that people of different races finally realize that the struggle is and always has been about class, not race; and that as long as they keep propping up artificial walls of skin color and hair texture, they're fighting the enemy's battle.
I have long believed that a General Strike would be a much more immediate and effective means to solving the problem of the impoverishment of the masses than all the government "programs" in the world. Everyone just stay home until both the government and the "one percent," as the Occupy kids call them, are brought to their knees. Everyone. Stay. Home. Black people. White people. Brown people. Yellow people. Red People. Green people. Everyone. Stay. Home. That's the response I'd like to see happen.
The other way it could go is that racial divisions could intensify. I hope that most people today, especially most young people, are smart enough to be able to recognize the idiocy in that; but I'm by no means certain enough of that hope to dismiss the possibility of intensification. Certainly there are enough loudmouthed idiots on all sides who miss the essential point that they're
all being screwed -- and not by each other.
The other question one has to ask is how much blame belongs to "the system," and how much to people who aren't making full use of what opportunities do exist? A lot of the Occupy kids I've spoken to are actually enrolled in College, but are disenchanted by the lack of job opportunities that they anticipate will exist when they graduate. Although I certainly understand their frustration when they look ahead at the rather dismal job market into which they'll soon be dumped, I also wonder if they wouldn't be better off concentrating on their school work for now.
Some years ago, one of my younger brothers took his first teaching job, in a neighborhood in Queens, NY called Springfield Gardens. Pretty early on in his teaching experience there, he noticed that his best-performing students were those who had been born in Africa, or who were first-generation Americans born of parents who had immigrated from Africa.
What these children had that set them apart, according to my brother, was a profound gratitude for the opportunity
to learn -- period. By this he meant that American kids tended to look at education in terms of its potential usefulness to them in the future, whereas African kids valued education in and of itself, for its own worth.
As my brother met the children's parents, he learned that many of them (especially the mothers -- girls are much less likely than boys to attend school in Africa) were illiterate or barely-literate even in their native languages, having been denied the opportunity to attend school in their native countries. They were, in fact, being taught by their children. They eagerly looked forward to their kids coming home from school in the afternoon to teach
them -- the parents -- all the things they'd learned in school that day, and thereby satisfy their own life-long thirst for knowledge.
What I got from my brother's observations was a hypothesis. I wonder if many black kids in America who are descended from the slave trade and all that followed it have inherited a certain hopelessness born of that "reality," to use your words. Could it be that this hopelessness engenders a "why bother?" attitude that devalues even those educational opportunities that do exist?
If that's the case, then again, the playing field seems to be leveling itself. That same hopelessness also is infecting a large number of young white people, if the Occupy movement is any barometer. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on which way they go with it.
-Rich
and I appreciate your honesty. This is how progress in made. It is up to you to expose yourself to reality and put the media BS aside. When you do you realize were all guilty of greed, violence, but we can all also be civil. Next time you see a picture of an angry looking black thug, ask yourself has this man never smiled or laughed at something? Maybe that'll take the edge off as long as you don't start believing that he smiled the last time he saw a dead white man. Fear is a block and fear is what were fed. We do need honesty an communication. It's the only way the fear will be broken down.