It wasn’t until after I left the service and ventured into the cities of Buffalo, N.Y., Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.(especially in black ghetto areas), mainly to do security and law enforcement work, that I became painfully aware, firsthand, of the shocking level of sheer depravity, chaos, racial hatred, crime, and mayhem that so many millions of black children are born into. After the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, and after having had numerous horrible experiences with hateful blacks on the streets and even in office workplace settings, I increasingly began to be concerned about what I sensed was an overall problem of a worsening racial situation in our country.
Whites and blacks all along throughout the years have been told that the problems of blacks are the responsibility of white people, for which whites should accept blame, and for which whites should come up with solutions, or at least bear the brunt of whatever remedies are declared, by whoever, to be in order. Simultaneously, outrageous levels of crime and violence done by blacks are to be publicly downplayed by the media and authorities, lest it be implied that black adults, parents, leaders, and so are to be held accountable.
The general approach has been that the overall condition of blacks in America is the result of the actions of whites, and therefore, whites must be the ones to make things better, and right.
Now, Barack Obama is in his second term as president, and has played a key role in aggravating and badly worsening the state of race relations throughout his occupation of that office. Obama entered the national scene fresh from two decades at the feet of Jeremiah Wright, and proceeded to hustle and con his way into the White House, appointing the blatantly race-oriented Eric Holder as his Attorney General.
With Obama’s shamefully divisive exploitation (for the purposes of rousing and rallying key blocs of his voting base) of local events such as the Henry Louis Gates incident and the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman debacle on the national stage, Obama has shown us all that poor leadership has disastrous consequences beyond implications for the overall economy and international intrigues/wars. Many Americans have to go about their daily lives concerned for their physical safety, while those in the highest offices of the land fan the flames of racial animosity and violence.
So what should white people think and do about it all?
If we assume that the races are intrinsically equal, we have to ask about, and expect a resolution to, the issue of whether and when blacks will, overall, ever assimilate to the standards of civilized society–because enough of them haven’t yet, so as to cause a grave alarm. So, what is it that whites must do, anyway? How many programs and apologies and decades of forbearance shall it take? If we are to operate in good faith, it should not be taboo to speculate in such a way.
We’re all familiar with that old saying, “you can’t keep a good man down.” It means, just as is found in the teachings of the ancient religions, that oppression is really only the test of character–and that if someone or something is keeping you down beyond a certain point, then you must not be a good man.
