“Once America's evil became poetic (permanently true), the formerly oppressed could make victimization an ongoing feature of their identity- despite the fact that their actual victimization had greatly declined.” – Red, White, and Black
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts”, is a common sentiment attributed to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of the last centrist Democrats in a party long usurped by its radical progressive wing. That capture was never more evident when in 2019, Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times tried to rewrite history with its lackluster, 1619 Project. Despite slavery’s end more than 150 years past, Jones's thesis was to blame the white/black achievement gap on something other than the facts and ensure that every negative experience is seen through the lens of race. A perception that far too many blacks have unfortunately accepted.
In Robert L. Woodson’s 2021 book, “Red, White, and Black”, Woodson compiles a series of essays from prominent black leaders as they respond, in part, to revisionist attempts by the New York Times 1619 project to institutionalize slavery as America’s founding principle. Instead, each contributor provides their unequivocal defense of the American experiment, the best way for blacks to escape decades of supposed victimization and oppression. To them, to succeed in America is to embrace the core values of the Constitution. Rather than discrimination, evidence suggests there are other factors, such as family structure, that have hurt blacks more than racism ever could.
The need to overcome the identity politics of victimhood was first recognized by Booker T. Washington, a former slave, who identified the race hustlers and grievance industries' desire to stymie black advancement, in his 1911 book, “My Larger Education”, when he famously wrote,
“There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
To reverse the erroneous belief that slavery is to blame for the current state of black dystopia, the Robert L. Woodson Center created the 1776 United Project. By gathering the voices of many distinguished scholars, including academics, writers, and entrepreneurs, the alliance hopes to correct the pernicious narrative of the day and return the bane of slavery to its proper perspective in history.
To the purveyors of Critical Race Theory, however, it is the entire institutional and political structure of America that prevents blacks from success because slavery indemnified racism in America. Therefore, the only solution is to completely tear down the foundations and rebuild them using reparations in the form of affirmative action and entitlements to level the playing field. Until then, by developing a collective identity with a common experience, the victim class can blame every negative outcome on slavery and racism. This has led to an oppressed/oppressor vision of America along with an obsession with whiteness, as an omnipotent force impossible to overcome. The unfortunate consequence of these bad actors has been to nurture a culture of despair resulting in hopelessness and violence.
Instead, the 1960s War on Poverty served as a watershed moment for blacks. Progress was replaced with welfare rights and subsequently led to the destruction of marriage and the family, a loss of work ethic, and a perversion of black culture. The ensuing dependence on the government resulted in a 23 trillion expenditure that not only stopped the downward trajectory of poverty but also thrust blacks into a mindset of repression ripe for manipulation. While blacks found ways to thrive in worse conditions early in the century, these new perverse incentives proved to be disastrous.
Yet, two inconvenient truths discredit claims of systemic racism. American blacks continue to outperform foreign blacks in every country, despite widespread slavery here and little to none there, all while the land of opportunity drew a hundred million immigrants to American shores. Backed by a Selig Center for Economic Growth report in 2021, results reveal the economic buying power for blacks at 1.6 trillion, making the black economy in the US one of the top 15 economies globally. Secondly, black immigrants who leave their home countries, and emigrate to the United States, quickly outperform black Americans. A 2015 Nielsen report shows their household median incomes at 30 percent higher than their American counterparts, due, in part, to their high rates of entrepreneurship. An American Community Survey from 2014 also showed that Indian Americans had the highest median household incomes, while another 17 ethnicities outperformed blacks and whites, including Taiwanese, Filipino, Lebanese, and Nigerians.
One of the biggest problems the 1776 United Project found with analyses like the 1619 project, is the inability to recognize and appreciate black achievement in every aspect of American life. The American Dream is alive, well, and available to anyone pursuing it. A century of black excellence already proves it.
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