Over at Ace’s,
there’s a commenter who continually tells Ace’s presumably mostly white
readership that it’s pointless to go on about the history of race relations in
this country and that white Americans should simply join the battle which the
Obama Administration and the organized Left are trying to provoke. When I
responded with a condensed version of how black American social and political
allegiance has been manipulated over the past ten decades, he stated that a
people who could be so easily (sic) manipulated must really be inferior.
This man
demonstrates the type of limited perspective that I sketched out in Part One
and, actually, his type could have furnished me with an additional bullet
point; not only is he unable to think strategically, he actually rebukes the
notion that such analysis has any value. Moreover, such a person is blind
to how his own thinking and emotional state have been shaped and molded
by Leftist ideology in a much shorter time span than was so for black
Americans.
In this second
part, my purpose is to detail another tactical weapon of the Left, the purpose
of which has been to instill a set of attitudes in the minds of the American
populace; in this case, the mindset is meant for white Americans.
If the Left has been successful at keeping racial grievance in the forefront of black American agenda—in indoctrinating black Americans into believing that retaining racial anger at whites is inherent in being black and essential for black survival--it has also been successful in later years of producing a certain mindset in white Americans. Actually this seems to be two mindsets, but it is really a singular one—a two-headed beast. The first is guilt-fear and the second is unproductive anger.
From one of my
political progenitors, Shelby Steele:
What is
white guilt? It is not a personal sense of remorse over past wrongs. White
guilt is literally a vacuum of moral authority in matters of race, equality,
and opportunity that comes from the association of mere white skin with America's
historical racism. It is the stigmatization of whites and, more importantly,
American institutions with the sin of racism. Under this stigma white
individuals and American institutions must perpetually prove a negative--that
they are not racist--to gain enough authority to function in matters of race,
equality, and opportunity. If they fail to prove the negative, they will be
seen as racists. Political correctness, diversity policies, and
multiculturalism are forms of deference that give whites and institutions a way
to prove the negative and win reprieve from the racist stigma.
Institutions
especially must be proactive in all this. They must engineer a demonstrable
racial innocence to garner enough authority for simple legitimacy in the
American democracy. No university today, private or public, could admit
students by academic merit alone if that meant no black or brown faces on
campus. Such a university would be seen as racist and shunned accordingly.
White guilt has made social engineering for black and brown representation a
condition of legitimacy.
It’s a “read the whole thing”
kind of essay.
The phenomenon
of white guilt doesn’t merely mean that many white Americans feel guilty for the
actions of pre-CRA America. It also means that all white Americans must
pay for the sins of their fathers and pay for a system from which they are
perceived to still be the beneficiaries and to still have advantages over all other Americans simply due to being white. Stemming from that premise, all
whites are guilty until proven innocent.
Last year, I
didn’t get around to updating my post, “Question for My White Readers,”
in which I asked
Why
are some of you so afraid of being called [labeled] 'racist' when you know that
you aren't?
Little did I comprehend the near mortal terror in
which the white American of goodwill and good-faith lives at being labeled as
racist. What I discovered was that white Americans are being
systematically made to pay if they step outside the ever-shifting boundaries of
Political Correctness. If a given white person does cross one of these
boundaries, he/she is “payed-back,”: often by losing employment which is
usually accompanied by being driven into bankruptcy. Therefore, avoiding
the label of ‘racist’ ( or ‘sexist’ or 'homophobe’) has been a matter of
economic survival for white people—especially for heterosexual men.
Here are excerpts from some of the responses to the "Question"
post. (The comments have been re-opened there, by the way. Also, keep in
mind that the responses were given back in December 2009--before the Tea Party
Movement and before the wanton slinging of the racist label had begun in
earnest. It seems such a long time ago.)
It isn't fear, it's
just a healthy respect for the consequences. If you work for a Fortune 500
company in a right-to-work state, being labeled a racist is going to get you an
unpleasant visit to HR, a poor rating, and the beginnings of the process that
is going to get you fired. These companies have all instituted mandatory
diversity training, and no deviations from the usual company policy of
denigrating white men and elevating blacks, Asians, Hispanics, women, and GLBTs
will be tolerated.
The 'Racist' epithet
and label are being used as a wedge to keep the races at one another's throat,
in my opinion, because harmony threatens the occupations of so many people. And
divisiveness is profitable. So those of us who are clearly not racist will not
speak up as a general rule because the "race card" trumps all others,
in the courts and in the court of public opinion.
The Left, including their
politicians, much of the news and entertainment industries, and much
of academia and the public schools have been in the process for decades of
sedating, dumbing down, and propagandizing the American people.
I lived and worked in Mountain
View, San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Palo Alto for thirty-plus years. I
never bought into the "white guilt" thing, and made no secret of my
non buy-in, and it cost me at least one substantial rise in income…So yes,
being labeled "racist" can cost you.
[A]busive race-mongers
and their disingenuous ideals must be challenged by and removed by their
racial/intellectual peers. Why? Because they are in control of the
conversation. As long as their peers allow them to remain unchallenged in their
control and limning of the innocent, I don't think it will go away[…]Just as
fear breeds resentment, unchallenged abuses breed ever-bolder tyranny.
One person described the labeling
process in the following manner: once the white person has been tarnished with
the racism label, all the others turn away from him rather than come to his
aid—even if they believe he is innocent. (That reminds me of a book; several, in fact.) The reason? Such aid rendered
will result in the defender being tarnished as well. This
makes sense because of the Leftist premise, again: whites are always guilty of racism
or are the beneficiaries of it. Who wouldn’t be afraid knowing the
probable outcome?
(When I suggested that whites en
masse refuse to play the racist game, one rocket scientist imagined
that I was saying that, because white Americans often wouldn’t fight back
when accused of racism, the persecution was their own fault. That sort of
faulty reasoning is a subset of the white guilt-fear-anger axis. It’s
also Rapist “Logic”: “she was asking for it and it was her fault that she was
raped because she didn’t fight back.”)
Individual guilt can be a positive thing: a
motivator to get clean and make restitution to the wronged party. (And
this Christian asserts that the identity of the wronged party is always
the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel [nee Jacob].) However, when group
guilt is the matter at hand, there exists no actual defendant or plaintiff in
reality. Under such a fantasy, the "plaintiff" can never be
made whole and, obviously, the "defendant" can never be made to pay
enough. And that brings us to...
White Anger
Dr. Steele again:
People
often deny [a better verb, I think: disavow] white guilt by
pointing to its irrationality--"I never owned a slave," "My
family got here eighty years after slavery was over." But of course almost
nothing having to do with race is rational. That whites are now stigmatized by
their race is not poetic justice; it is simply another echo of racism's power
to contaminate by mere association.
Persons who use
this cogent logic are exactly right; however, they forget about the Leftist
premise regarding beneficiaries—that even if, say, a Russian immigrant arrived
in 1995, he/she still gets a perceived advantage over the black
American, simply by being white.
Where the anger
comes in should be obvious to anyone who has been on the receiving end of wrath
for acts they have not personally committed, but it goes deeper than
that. The idea of group or generational guilt stems from the biblical
notion that the “sins of the father are visited upon the son.” However,
when the Left builds upon this notion, they are forgetting who the visitor—the
inflictor—is. (Hint: it’s someone in whom much of the Left does not believe.) This should lead us to the conclusion that group or generational
guilt is something that the political Left doesn’t believe in either. Sowing
the need for it and reaping the resultant white guilt-fear-anger is just
a tactic…toward the goal.
The white
person who feels unproductive anger at blacks as a group is in just as
manipulated as the black person who feels this way toward all whites whether
either is justified or not. Why? Because blanket anger toward group
for things which an individual of any group cannot change—such as skin color or
race--leads to the Vicious Circle of un-washable guilt and anger that I've
already described and it gets the Left what it wants—the goal.
Properly
targeted, productive anger, however, is where moral and valuable solutions
lie--not to mention absolution.
A Certain
Justifiable Anger and How the Left Uses It
That Leftist
politicians and shapers of the mainstream media content are labeling the Tea
Party Movement as racist is a fortuitous example
(for them) of how to use the indoctrination which they have implemented.
Oh, they know that the Tea party movement isn’t actually racist in its
foundation, principles or goals. They do, however, know this: in the mind
of the black on-looker who sees the Movement’s mostly white makeup and who does
not recognize that he/she has been indoctrinated with an incomplete view of
American history or that his anger/vengeance is being purposely inflamed, all
the Leftist conditioning will spring up at the first flinging of the
epithet ‘racist.’ As a result, whites who know that their
opposition to the policies of the Obama Administration and the
Democrat-controlled Legislative Branch of government is totally based on
principle are even further angered. The Left uses this conditioning and
the anger of being unjustly accused to paint the Movement as anti-black,
shaping it in their own image as the fruit of the Racial Discord tree
which they have planted and so diligently have fed and watered.
Conclusion
White and all
other Americans—some who are keen observers of the history of Leftism, of
Statism and who understand how and why this country was founded; others who
merely want to provide for their families and live as free as possible--are
easily able to visualize the path on which this country has its footing and are
justifiably angry with those in our government who are purposely leading the
United States of America toward tyranny. This is not “white” anger; this
is American anger.
The tactics
educated into both sets of the American populace are designed to do two things:
1) dis-empower both to the point of believing that their fellow citizens are
their enemies, and 2) inflame negative and violent emotions to the point at
which actual violence will take place. Fear, anger, and--the progenitor of the
two—covetousness; the Left’s long-stoked Race War cannot begin without these.
(I am purposely leaving out the equation of Americans of Hispanic descent and
the illegal alien question; things to address in Part Three.)
The Left sows
and inflames Racial Discord in order to eventually style itself and its chosen
representatives as the solution to the Discord it continues to sow. And
the “solving” of that problem brings us back to my conclusion, stated in Part
One, the Fundamental Transformation.
Power is the Left’s goal; power
over all areas of each individual American life, regard of race creed or color
of the particular American. The good news: the Left has over-played the Race
Card with President Obama’s face on the suit. And it has stirred up
righteous anger of we who recognize that Leftist Ideologues have long been
actively targeting the goal of permanently impeding the Pursuit of Happiness
and depriving all Americans of Liberty, Property and, ultimately, Life.
[To Be Continued]
PREVIOUSLY: The Herding, Part One
