“In reality, the crusade for civil rights ended years ago. The scramble for special privileges, for turf, and for image, is what continues on today under that banner and with that rhetoric.”
– Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
In 1867, Sarah Breedlove, aka Madam C.J. Walker, was born to former slaves in Louisiana. Orphaned at age 7 and widowed by 20, she went on to develop and manufacture a hair elixir sold throughout the United States. This success led to the expansion of beauty schools and factories, all during the decades of Jim Crow. Despite the obvious hurdles, Ms. Walker succeeded beyond all expectations, becoming the first black millionaire in the United States. Her can-do spirit, sadly, would lose much of its luster following the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
While the old Civil Rights movement fought racism following slavery and Jim Crow, by insisting on equal treatment under the law, the New Civil Rights movement went much further, demanding equal outcomes from a quota system based on preferential treatment. In the past, equal opportunity looked at an individual’s personal qualifications; now affirmative action and other such plans are applied exclusively based on race, gender, or other group traits, rendering useless MLK, Jr.’s, famous quote, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
As a result, the new Civil Rights movement deems statistical disparities as discrimination and nothing else, nor do they accept any other explanation for unequal outcomes between individuals who happen to be of different races. Instead, they believe that all inequalities in income, occupation, and education are caused by systemic racism within society. Differences related to demographics, culture, geography, age, family structure, and most notably, personal agency are dismissed outright.
In Thomas Sowell’s 1984 book, “Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?”, Sowell examines the situation for blacks following desegregation in the 1950s and the enactment of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. What he discovered was a serious decline in the gains made by blacks throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The good intention of the early Civil Rights movement has been replaced with one that is comparable in name only. The new movement seeks more than equal treatment; it now demands preference over achievement and equality of results. Unfortunately, the consequences have been most devastating for poor blacks at the bottom.
Since the passage of The Civil Rights Act of 1964, black unemployment has skyrocketed, urban crime has increased, and the number of children born to single mothers has tripled, while the promise of educational parity never materialized. The perverse temptation for blacks to put all their hopes on the government to remedy perceived discrimination has left many diminished.
In any discussion of white/black inequality, one cannot ignore what Sowell called the vanishing Asians. For every bitter complaint about white privilege creating minority oppression, Asian statistics were missing in action. This is likely the result of Asians outperforming whites in almost every conceivable category, notably income, and education. But times are changing, and Asians are becoming a new target of supremacy claims, with an increasing number of articles lamenting the whitening of Asians. If George Zimmerman can be called a “white” Hispanic, how close are we to the dreaded “white” Asian?
Many could argue that today’s reverse racism has now surpassed the antiquated racism of the past. Whites, via diversity training, are being forced to confess their white privilege and prejudice, whether they believe it or not, under a new concept called “Critical Race Theory”. Born in the 1980s, from the warped halls of academia, race is no longer viewed as biological, but as a social and political construct, giving blacks a justification to blame whites for each and every grievance. In 2020, President Trump pulled all funding from federal agencies advancing the deception of white supremacy and anti-white sentiments, calling it un-American and divisive. Unfortunately, America’s new left-wing president has vowed to restore it.
Based on data from Statista, the number of black millionaires in the US in 2020, now stands at nearly 1.5 million, with an additional 7 breaking into the billionaire club. Internationally, black Americans far outpace their peers, despite dissimilar pasts. While black entrepreneurship may be alive and well for some, it has been all but abandoned by far too many still waiting for the civil rights lotto to strike pay dirt. While the Emancipation Proclamation physically freed blacks in 1863, the new Civil Rights movement continues to enslave many black minds.
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