I never owned a slave, did you?

My wife is a school teacher in Nevada. Yesterday one of her students said it was racist for him to not be able to sit where he wanted. This would be ludicrous, if there were not people living in this country completely willing to take that statement on its face value. The accusation of racism has become a default reaction to any inconvenience whatsoever for a significant portion of black America.

When Katrina devastated the gulf coast, it did so, somehow, because the white administration in Washington was racist. When others began to rebuild their lives on their own, those who cried “racist” sat on the rubble of their houses and did nothing, claiming that the government was supposed to do it for them. When young black thugs are caught committing a crime, they are prosecuted because the cops are racist, even though a good portion of the men and women in uniform wear the same skin tone. It has become a badge of honor among young black men and women to claim illiteracy. Speaking with appropriate diction and being able to read is now acting “white”. Insisting that a black student actually listen in class has become racist, even though Bill Cosby says much the same thing. When the end result of that attitude is unemployment, the prospective employer is racist.

All of this is sheer stupidity, and in most cases it is based on intellectual laziness. Every boy and girl in the United States has the same opportunity to learn from history as any other, regardless of their circumstances. It takes work. Yes, “work” is a four-letter word and to most of those crying racism it is a far more foul expletive than other common curses. The Declaration of Independence says this in its second paragraph, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The fact that slavery existed then, that some of the founders of this country owned slaves, is not applicable to the reality of today. The rights expressed as an ideal during the writing of the declaration in the eighteenth century are solidly established in the twenty-first.

I don’t know about you, but neither I, nor my great grandparents ever owned slaves. I do know that a good number of my Scottish ancestors experienced far more severe oppression than any of the complainers today. I would also suspect that not one black American born in this country was ever enslaved. What is needed is a solid grasp of personal responsibility. Don’t sit on your hands and complain that the government is oppressing you. Learn to read. Become an educated help to those around you. Produce something good, and hopefully get rich honestly. That is how you “stick it to the man”.

A bit of history people like Jesse Jackson choose to ignore is the fact that nearly all the slaves shipped from Africa were captured by competing tribes. The men purchasing them for shipment were in most cases either Dutch traders or Muslim pirates. So, then why the cries of American oppression, why the claims of American racism? Don’t blame people like Gingrich or Reagan. Blame those who depend upon a culture of victimization for their livelihood. Blame Jackson, Sharpton, and the entire black caucus in Washington. Unlike Ronald Reagan, not one of them has done anything of significance to make the good life a reality for all Americans.

Believe it or not, if you only focus your kindness on one race, you are, in fact, being racist.

Racism

Yesterday my radio was flooded with reports about Don Imus' ever-occuring bigotry. I have never liked the personality this raodio host portrays and I wasn't surprised that yet again he stuck his foot into his mouth, cramming it in all the way to his knee. What surprised me was the quality of the debate that followed. I did not hear one mention of Dr. Martin Luthor King. Have we moved along the path of political correctness so far that his words, "by the quality of his character and not the color of his skin" have now vanished over the horizon?

Imus' mouth is only a symptom. If you have skin as pale as mine and you question Obama's lack of a substancial campaign plank, you will be called a racist. If you wonder if Jesse Jackson will ever get a real job, you are accused of bigotry. Character is ceasing to matter and color is in. Well, today's culture could not be more wrong. Character does matter, regardless of your race, regardless of the circumstances you were born into, regardless of your peer group and regardless of your parents, or lack thereof...character matters. How you speak matters. How you treat your neighbors matters. How you add to the lives of the people around you, rather than taking away matters. Color should have to do with art, not politics.