Saturday, May 3, 2008

Thomas Sowell and Race. A Black voice not often heard.

Black Americans have nothing in common with Africa.

by StFerdIII



Race trumps all – at least for those willing to use it to divide and conquer, or inflame and impale. As Sowell says, 'Few subjects produce more fallacies than race.' The history of race relations is of course littered with lies, distortions, self-serving fantasies and political manipulation. [One can witness the emptiness and outright nonsense of the Hussein Obama race-baiting campaign for contemporary evidence]. As Sowell relates today we have more inter-marriage between races than ever, yet the cries and screams of race identity are at their fiercest in history. Only a Marxist and a race baiting populist can figure out this contradiction.

Sowell puts the point well, “Racial rates of intermarriage have reduced the biological significance of racial differences, even as its political significance has increased. The intermarriage rate for blacks was just under one percent in 1963 but was 12 percent in 1993.” By 2008 no doubt the rate has risen further to above 15%. Are mixed bloods a certain race? Is Tiger Woods who is mostly Asian really Black? Are blacks with white mothers like Obama authentically 'African-American' and what to make of a Black with little or no connection with Africa born in say England to mixed parentage from Jamaican and white parents? His connection to Africa is minimal but is he an African-Englishman?

African American and other racial terms are meaningless. Black Americans have nothing in common with Africa. Absolutely nothing. It is puerile and sterile identity politics. Should we call white Americans with Van in the last name Dutch-Americans? Or those with icz at the end of their surnames Polish-Americans? If we did many would find it not only distasteful but harmful to creating an American culture and strong sense of identity. Yet Blacks are allowed to do it.

Yes yes, slavery, slavery, slavery. There were 2 million Black slaves in 1860 in the US South. 2 % of US whites owned slaves. Free Blacks also owned Black slaves. No one doubts the immorality, uncultured barbarity and economic fragility of a slave economy. It was in fact Whites, Christians and Northern Americans along with the English Royal Navy who eradicated slavery – the only time in history that any state undertook the destruction of an institution as old as humanity.

Whites were also slaves – some 20 million from Europe were sold over 1000 years into various Arab and Muslim empires to fulfill roles in the military, the court, the bedroom, and the field and mine. Yet not many today shed tears over this slave trade. It was the Blacks and Arabs who sold Blacks to the white slave trading ships along Africa's coast. Yet few today cry that the Blacks and Arabs should pay reparations for this abominal activity.

Race tensions exist for some practical, cultural, social and economic reasons. As Sowell points out, “Black Americans meanwhile, were far better accepted in Northern cities at the end of the nineteenth century than they would be in the first half of the twentieth century, after massive migrations of less assimilated Southern blacks caused a similar backlash that created new restrictions against all blacks.” Newly migrant Blacks brought crime, violence, drinking and societal disruption as well as an indifference to education. As Sowell points out in his book 'Black Rednecks and White Liberals', even middle class Blacks would leave an area which was being populated by these new Black arrivals. Culture is not color specific. The data on this is indisputable.

Yet for many it is only government and 'rights' legislation which dragged Blacks out of poverty, or Hussein's Obama's 'isolation and cynicism' into mainstream American life. This is of course a lie. As Sowell relates the percentage of Black families below the poverty line collapsed from 1940 from 87% to 30% by the mid 1960s. It is the largest reduction in Black poverty in history.

However post the 'rights' movement of 1964-5 the Black family has all but disappeared in the deluge of welfare, affirmative action programs, rights programs and diversity endeavors. Fully 2/3 of Black families don't have a father; 50% of Black kids don't finish high school, and the Black sub-culture is an odious reflection of the White-cracker subculture full of hate, violence, racism and anti-main stream music. Black incomes are still 60-65% of White incomes – a level which has not changed much since 1960 despite billions of dollars in government aid and compassion and unending 'quotas' designed to 'equalise' opportunity.

Instead of understanding the root causes of Black issues and challenges it is easier to engage in identity politics. Whitey keeps me down. The system is against me. If only I had....I could succeed but White America is racist....Life is not fair and I have no chance....These are the sentiments that mindless government interventionism leads to. Simply put, big government programs have failed Blacks.

The failure is manifest in what Sowell calls, 'a pattern of social pathologies.' As he rightly describes, “What lower-class white communities in Britain and black ghettoes in the United States have in common is a pattern of social pathologies that became pronounced in the latter half of the twentieth century, when similar ideas and policies became dominant in both countries. Britain was once one of the most law-abiding nations on earth but, by the early twenty-first century, its crime rate in most categories was higher than that in the United States. In both countries, politicians, activists, and ideologues who claimed to have solutions instead made many problems worse than before.”

This then is the important message. Identity politics is for losers. It distorts or destroys a culture of success. Blacks have demonstrated themselves to be perfectly capable of succeeding at anything they choose to pursue. In fact in some disciplines Black skill dominates the market. But when ideologues and race baiters distort reality, deal in lies and falsehoods, erect welfare programs, and create unnatural discriminatory laws, the unintended consequences are vast.

The effects of racial fallacies are enormous. They lead to social, cultural and economic frictions. They impede integration. They lead to violence and crime which causes poverty. Welfare and distortions are then used to redress grievances. None of these ideas help poor Blacks, Whites, Browns, Yellows or Greens for that matter. They are the politics of destruction.

The sooner Blacks realise this, the sooner they will get on the road to success. And thankfully for
US Blacks, they have nothing in common with Black Africans. The first step to self-healing would be to drop the dumb label of 'African-American'. You are Black.