Let’s have that long overdue Race Dialogue!!! (Cont.)
Let’s have that long overdue Race Dialogue!!! (Cont.)
ByKen Eliasberg
At the outset let’s take this charge of being a racist society head on — on what basis is it made? Is there any evidence that qualified blacks are being deprived of any opportunity in favor of a less qualified member of another race? And that evidence has to be something other than there are more members of another racial group in the position under question. In other words, we are not talking about numbers — i.e. the fact that there are less blacks being accepted — rather we are talking of a concrete demonstration of discrimination based on qualifications. Equal opportunity is not to be confused with, or provide a guaranty of, equal outcome. I submit that blacks cannot furnish any such data. On the contrary, there is plentiful evidence that affirmative action has produced quite the opposite result, i.e. qualified whites (or Asians, or Hispanics, or members of other races or ethnic groups) being rejected in favor of less qualified blacks. Indeed, Obama’s wife is an example of just such an instance of reverse discrimination; by her own admission, she secured admission to 2 of our finest Universities only by virtue of utilizing affirmative action and not as the result of either her grades or her S.A.T. results (by the way, use of quotas is a misapplication of affirmative action as it was originally conceived).
Next, in what other countries — including countries with an overwhelming number of blacks, e.g. countries on the continent of Africa — do blacks have more and better opportunities than they do here? And what country has demonstrated more cases of black success than has America?
Perhaps a good way to frame this discussion, and an excellent expression of my sentiments, is a paragraph from a book of essays entitled The Race Card — White Guilt, Black Resentment, and the Assault on Truth and Justice, edited by David Horowitz and Peter Collier (Forum Publishers, 1997):
“Never have the prospects of black people been better in America, and yet never has there been so much talk of race and racism. Moreover, much of the talk, even at the highest intellectual levels, is disingenuous, involving rhetorical guilt trips, hidden agendas, and verbal muggings. Attempts at candor are shut down by the eternal charge of ‘racism,’ which has become more often a way of invoking cloture on debate rather than a description of psychological pathology.
In this melancholy atmosphere, straight talk is a precious commodity. Rather than being divisive, it can lay the groundwork for a candid dialogue about a problem that shows evidence of getting out of hand. The Race Card, therefore, is an attempt to raise issues some would embargo and to investigate subjects others would avoid.”
By the way, The Race Card is an excellent book, and I wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone — black or white — who is interested in a serious exploration of our racial concerns.
The key to such a discussion — i.e. one that indeed represents a dialogue on race, and not just another black monologue about white racism - is the willingness on the part of both sides to be completely honest; for blacks to stop blaming all of their social and societal ills on either slavery or discrimination - i.e. to acknowledge that civil rights carries with it the corresponding burden of civil responsibilities - and for whites to be completely forthright and stop walking on eggshells and dancing around their real concerns for fear of being called a racist. With that understanding, let’s have that dialogue that Obama is calling for.
And let’s start with Jeremiah Wright to demonstrate quite clearly where the real racism resides in our society, and also to demonstrate more clearly that Obama’s fa