Is “racism” contagious? Or is it ingrained in the heart to be expunged by legislation or shame? It’s difficult to not conflate race and racism. President Biden’s campaign promised to pick a black female to the high court is no longer rhetoric. He touts that such a move would stem the tide of racial divide. Others think it will only fan the flames. Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, a rare Democrat with an ounce of sense, criticized President Biden for promising to choose a High Court nominee who is a Black woman, claiming such a move is harmful “identity politics.” She wasn’t finished. “Biden chose Harris as his VP because of the color of her skin and sex-not qualification. She’s been a disaster,” adding, “Now he promises to choose Supreme Court nominee on the same criteria. Identity politics is destroying our country.” Astute observers think it was the high price for South Carolina’s Democrat James Clyburn’s key endorsement of Biden in February of 2020.
While this savvy Democrat Gabbard was scolding Biden, GOP Senator Lindsay Graham was finding cover behind his safe, “it would make it look more like America,” not affirmative action, as declared earlier in a comment by Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker. Graham is in full support of J. Michelle Childs, of South Carolina, and a graduate of the University of South Carolina, who Biden nominated earlier this month to serve on the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Would that save one black life in the “killing fields” on Southside Chicago? If it was racist to ban blacks from the college basketball courts until the 1960’s, how should one describe the current situation that nearly every collegiate and the NBA teams are dominated by black players today? Anyone discussing that? President Johnson’s landmark 1964, Civil Rights Act, couldn’t legislate the heart. Another example of government prohibition gone awry.
What about Obama’s AG Eric Holder’s remarks, calling us a “nation of cowards” for being unwilling to have a “national conversation” about race. Among the nation’s most dangerous cities are Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, Memphis, Milwaukee, Birmingham, Newark, Cleveland and Philadelphia. Once thriving, they’re in steep economic and moral decline. What these cities have in common is they have large black populations, and they’ve been run by Democrats for nearly a half-century, with blacks wielding significant power. These cities have poorly performing schools, inferior city services, declining populations, and are magnets for drugs and thugs. Each year more than 7,000 blacks are murdered. Blacks are killed at six times the rate of Whites and Hispanics combined. According to the FBI, police kill about 400 people annually. Blacks are about one-third of that number. In Chicago, as of 2021, over 4100 people have been shot, leaving 678 murdered. It’s a similar tale of mayhem in predominately black cities. Heather McDonald’s 2016 book, The War on Cops, is an eye opener. The primary victims of lawlessness are black people, while the Progressive Left and BLM called for less police. A certain elixir for disaster in vulnerable urban dwellings.
Candace Owens continues to challenge blacks to ignore the liberal agenda that fostered this environment of black dependency. Without self-initiative little will be accomplished in these crime ridden havens. The late economist Walter Williams observed, “Black people have the capacity to run criminals out of their neighborhoods,” Williams argued, “Suppose it was the Ku Klux Klan riding through black neighborhoods, murdering 7,000 blacks year after year. How many black people would be willing to wait for the Klansman to behave themselves, or wait for a government program?”
Owens and other black conservatives have called “black self-sabotage” is a warning that all freedom, liberty minded people should heed. Some sobering statistics of the self destruction of recent black culture are eye-opening. First, was weakening the black family. In 1950, only 18% of black female-headed households, as opposed to 68% today. In 1925, in NY City, 85% of black households were two-parent. The black illegitimacy rate is 75%. In 1940’s that rate was about 15%. Second, is not capitulating as victims, exchanging self-reliance, for crippling government mandates, and relying on civil rights leaders, like race hustlers Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton, who’ve spent their existence shaking down corporations for a living. For years black communities endured poverty without relinquishing their historic trust in God, shunning debilitating government entanglement, that enslaved the body and soul. Sadly, as a nation we’ve moved from equality to equity. Dr. Ben Carson in a recent Op-Ed declared, “Moving our focus from equality to equity won’t defeat racism. It’s another kind of racism.” He understands that proponents of equity seen no problem with treating people differently based solely on race, as long as it serves their agenda.
Hating another is sinful. We are complex beings. Some of us grew up in an environment that fostered hating blacks, often unwittingly. That’s no excuse. Whenever favor, power, preference or privilege, granted solely on the basis of skin color, is governmental allocation of advantage. Liberals and progressives claim they want a dialogue on racism. That would be an existential threat to their narrative of pan-racism. Many hope to break the shackles of entrenched liberal, elitist stranglehold on our urban cities and public institutions. Biden has once again, in less than a year, made skin color the great schism. Did the White House dullard listen to Martin Luther King’s message about his four children, “…one day live in a nation where they will be not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?” Apparently not.
The Screwtape Letters counseled Wormwood about his patient, “They still connected thinking with doing, and were prepared to alter that way of life. The devil favors thought over action, and shadow over substance.” Active forgiveness is the trigger to genuine reconciliation. Holy Scripture recognizes only one race-the human race-with language and ethnic differences. Hank Aaron, whose life was threatened daily when he eclipsed Babe Ruth’s career home run record, acknowledged we’ve made major strides in race relations. Are BLM, George Floyd and Colin Kaepernik, who was adopted by a white couple from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, the new faces of reconciliation?
Will the recent shooting of four in a Tennessee Waffle House, by a severely crazed schizophrenic shooter, be a new line of cruel demarcation for drawing lines of racial discord? Don’t be surprised. God help us. What do you think?
Mike Pyatt’s a Natrona County resident. His email’s mikepyatt@gmail.com
