The Discerning Texan

Tom McGuire has gone yard today. Read it all, it is really, really good. (h/t Instapundit)

McGuire has a point: Race either is or is not an important issue to discuss; you can't have it both ways . Obama (and his lackeys in big media outlets like MSNBC and CNN) suddenly talk of the importance of putting a "conversation" about race on the nation's front burner; but only after the Marxist Messiah's 20-year collaboration with an African Nationalist Marxist bigot have been outed by the non-cooperative ABC and Fox News.

But now--just as suddenly--race isn't that important anymore; the Obama campaign has decided that enough is enough on the Reverend Wright, and it is time to talk about "more important" things. Meanwhile CNN and the mindless sheep who watch it (if you don't believe me just read the comments here) gladly follow suit.

So: last week race was a vitally important discussion we must undertake, now that we have a "uniter" (that is, if you happen to be a Socialist...). But this week we are now told that this "important conversation" (an adoring Chris Matthews called it most important speech since 'I Have a Dream'...) is suddenly so....yesterday's news.

Sorry Barack, it doesn't quite work that way. Pandora's Box has been opened.

If all Americans of all races are ever to be truly "united", a much greater truth still needs to become ubiquitous--a truth that the Hispanic community, the Anglo community, the Asian community, the Jewish community, and some middle/upper-class Blacks (who have risen above the bigotry of their "community") understand all too well: Until we as a country get to the point--officially and otherwise--where the only considerations for advancement are one's character, one's intellect, one's work ethic, one's initiative, and one's achievements, we will never have a color-blind society.

Any community that continues to underscore its historic victimization--and whose "leaders" falsely stoke the fires of hatred for demographic "outsiders" in order to assign blame for the plight of their people--is a community that is on a perpetual downward spiral.

Victimization and blame are the same mantras which despots have used for millennia to enslave others (e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez...). These monsters all knew that for others to give you power, there must be an external "enemy" to assign all blame for the shortcomings of the situation. It this sense hate has also been a "uniting" force; just ask the Jews of that 1930's "Socialist utopia", Europe (if you can find any still living)... or the hundreds of millions of victims of China's "Cultural Revolution"... or the present-day populations of Cuba and Venezuela. Or...ask the victims of the KKK. These historical "wrongs" similar in this sense: there had to have been a "bad guy" to blame in the beginning, else they never could have happened.

The "leaders" of Afro-centric nationalism--as that movement exists in American inner cities today--use the very same MO to achieve their own influence and power; they seek to point fingers at "whitey" for all the troubles of black community (real or otherwise), while neglecting to stress the very things which would empower its citizens and enable them to rise above the culture of victimization: self-reliance, work ethic, capital formation, entrepreneurship, initiative, character etc. In order for men like the Reverand Wright (or Farrakhan, or Sharpton, or Jackson) to have any influence whatsoever, there must first exist a belief in the mythology of victimhood. It's in their job description.

The truth hurts: until the African-American community gets past projecting hate for past sins onto others and begins instead to take responsibility for its own success/failure, the vicious cycle will continue.

Now we find ourselves in a Presidential election, and we are told we must ignore Obama's embrace of one of the most outspoken adherents of this form of reverse bigotry--which is a textbook example of why he is exactly the wrong person to bring forward any coherent conversation about race. It's no wonder his campaign now wants to "move on".

The phenomenon of white guilt over past injustices is part and parcel of the same never ending cycle of victimization and hopelessness. I was not alive during slavery and the Civil War--I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. I am competing in the marketplace of ideas and commerce just like every other American citizen. I was only a child during the sixties and had nothing to do with the Civil Rights movement either. Hell, I am glad it happened, finally. So what good does it do anyone to blame me for their problems? To do so is not only factually inaccurate, it also takes the focus off of the role of the individual in assuming responsibility for one's own life. Yet for whatever reason, big media continues to perpetuate the myth that I am responsible for all the ills of the world, simply because I was fortunate enough to have been born Anglo in the United States of America.

Here is the paradox that addicted-to-victimhood African-Americans need to be clear about: millions of people have risked their lives to come here and worked their asses off, because their experience in other countries instructed them as to what an enormous gift and tremendous opportunity America offers. This is just an undeniable truth.

The Vietnamese refugees who came here in the 70's and 80's are a perfect example of this phenomenon. You have people who came here with absolutely nothing and did not even know the language, who now after 20-30 years have built hugely successful businesses and are sending their kids to elite colleges. Leaving the illegal immigration issue aside for the moment, Hispanics are also disproving the notion of "vicitm as destiny". We all know about the millions who have come here over the last 50 years, with no possessions, the desire to work, not a dime in their pocket, no education, and not even speaking the language. Yet a great majority of these have found work and now a great many are thriving here.

So here is a question for the leaders of "the black community": if the same politicians you trust are correct in saying that Hispanics are "doing the jobs that others won't do" (that is a big "if", but let's stipulate...), then my question to your leaders is: why? Cannot the impoverished individuals in your community also take the same opportunities to make something of themselves? And why instead are you preaching that it is my role to subsidize a general unwillingness to go to such lengths?

So much for "the jobs others won't do".

It is not that success for African-Americans is not possible here--it is more possible here in the US than anywhere else on Earth. It is rather that the "community" seems to have become so fixated on blaming others for past sins and its present plight, that it fails to see the forest of opportunity for the trees of race-baited hate. And it is Afro-centric preachers like Wright--and the politicians who pander to them--who continue to stoke these fires of victimization, white hatred, "affirmative" (reverse-discriminative) action and hopelessness, as hypocrites in the media and the Democrat party continue to turn a blind eye to the truth. They continue to call initiative and self-reliance a "myth", even as millions who came to America with absolutely nothing have proven them wrong, over and over again.

The condition of the African-American community thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, despite the occasional voices of hope offered by people like Bill Cosby, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, LaShawn Barber, Clarence Thomas, etc. These voices--rational though they may be--are drowned out by the culture of victimhood promoted by race "opportunists" like Sharpton, Jackson, and Wright. Even left-leaning analysts like Juan Williams can see the tragedy in this, and are speaking out about it.

We can pray that the madness will one day come to an end; but it won't so long as millions are praying to the likes of the Reverend Wright, or pandering to the altar of "false prophets" like Jackson and Sharpton--or Olberman and Matthews. It is a colossal tragedy--for America and for African-Americans. Our country does need to have a conversation on race, and we do need to get beyond the chains of the past--but we do not need more of the conversation that Barack Obama wants to have. When Obama embraces this culture of victimhood and panders to the power brokers in "the community" it is highly instructive: at the heart, Obama is little more than a mediocre Senator with a silver tongue and a neo-Marxist world view. But the false prophets of white guilt in big media still can't bring themselves to say that this Emperor is not wearing clothes.