“I, the white man, got from the Negro the same shriveling treatment I, the Negro, had got from the white man. It was nothing I had done, it was not me, but the color of my skin.”
– Black Like Me
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In 2020, months of race rioting, looting, and protests took place in cities across the United States, resulting in more than 29 deaths. This followed the death of a black man in Minneapolis at the hands of the police. Unfortunately, destructive and deadly rioting is nothing new. In 1919, a week of unrest resulted in 38 deaths following the drowning of a black youth, attacked with stones, after swimming too close to a white beach. Nearly every decade since has resulted in a new batch of racial conflicts.
Ignorant stereotypes, from both sides, needlessly contribute to the breakdown in race relations. Labeling groups based on a warped vision of what we think about someone we don’t know is dangerous. Blacks have been viewed as lazy, and if they are employed, drug dealers. Whites are seen as self-important and nationalistic to the point of excluding all outsiders. Neither is true of the vast majority in either race. In the 1950s, newspapers fed the race bias by playing up black crime. Today, newspapers are reluctant to report on black crime, especially when it is directed towards whites. In both cases, the objective is to force a narrative by distorting the facts, in support of a political viewpoint.
In 1962, the groundbreaking book, “Black Like Me”, by John Howard Griffin, was published. Its story recounts the experience of a white journalist transformed into a black man who traversed racially segregated states in the South. His radical experiment was deemed necessary at a time when “whites only” signs littered the landscape. Griffin sought to expose the truth about the living conditions and treatment of blacks from their own perspective. The results confirmed what he originally presumed, that skin color was the major factor responsible for the gross injustice many blacks endured. But he also found the same was true when he walked as a white man in a black neighborhood. They too only saw color.
Today, there is a mistaken sense of how white men live. The white man with the idyllic life, free from conflict. The alarm goes off, the sun is shining. Always shining! Get in the car, green lights the whole way. Always green lights! Get to work, the boss hands out another raise. Always another raise! Gets home, the spouse is happy. Spouse is always happy! This charmed life fallacy is a serious misrepresentation of reality. And it is being used to keep the racial fires burning.
Race in America has become increasingly political with liberal progressives now viewing everything through its lens. If you are white, you were born a racist and cannot prove your innocence. Unfortunately, there is little incentive to absolve anyone from the label of racist. The same holds true for every other victim group. I can pull out my female victim card at a moment’s notice. It deflects criticism, it deflects responsibility, it deflects whatever I want it to deflect. Power!
In modern times, the black community is in many ways the most favored group in America. We have implemented a vast number of special programs. We have even made it a policy to allow more qualified candidates to be overlooked, in an attempt to atone for past wrongs. These reparations came in the form of affirmative action programs and racial quotas. Billions of dollars were spent on welfare payments, housing allowances, food stamps, medical care, and much, much more. Yet, after fifty years, more ground has been lost than has been gained.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. Real repression leads to unrest and disillusionment and creates instability for everyone in society. No one is safe. We are best served when we seek equality of justice and equality of opportunity for everyone. But this will never lead to equality of outcomes. That can never happen in a free society, and never should.
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