By Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Sometimes I wonder when black people will reject the
patronizing insults of white progressives and their black handmaidens. After
CNN's Piers Morgan's interview with the key witness in the George Zimmerman
trial, he said: "Rachel Jeantel is not uneducated. She's a smart
cookie." That's a remarkable conclusion. Here's a 19-year-old young lady,
still in high school, who cannot read cursive and appears to be barely
literate. Morgan may have meant Jeantel is smart -- for a black person.
Progressives treat blacks as victims in need of kid glove
treatment and special favors, such as racial quotas and preferences. This
approach has been tried in education for decades and has revealed itself a
failure. I say it's time we explore other approaches. One approach is suggested
by sports. Blacks excel -- perhaps dominate is a better word -- in sports such
as basketball, football and boxing to such an extent that blacks are 80 percent
of professional basketball players, are 66 percent of professional football
players and, for decades, have dominated most professional boxing categories.
These outcomes should raise several questions. In sports,
when have you heard a coach explain or excuse a black player's poor performance
by blaming it on a "legacy of slavery" or on that player's being
raised in a single-parent household? When have you heard sports standards
called racist or culturally biased? I have yet to hear a player, much less a
coach, speak such nonsense. In fact, the standards of performance in sports are
just about the most ruthless anywhere. Excuses are not tolerated. Think about
it. What happens to a player, black or white, who doesn't come up to a college
basketball or football coach's standards? He's off the team. Players know this,
and they make every effort to excel. They do so even more if they have
aspirations to be a professional player. By the way, blacks also excel in the entertainment
industry -- another industry in which there's ruthless dog-eat-dog competition.
Seeing as blacks have demonstrated an ability to thrive
in an environment of ruthless competition and demanding standards, there might
be some gains from a similar school environment. Maybe we ought to have some
schools in which youngsters are loaded up with homework, frequent tests and
demanding, top-notch teachers. In such schools, there would be no excuses for
anything. Youngsters cut the mustard, or they're kicked out and put into some
other school. I'm betting that a significant number of black youngsters would
prosper in such an environment, just as they prosper in the highly competitive
sports and entertainment environments.
Progressives' agenda calls for not only excuse-making but
also dependency. Nowhere is this more obvious than it is in their efforts to
get as many Americans as they can to be dependent on food stamps; however, in
this part of their agenda, they offer racial equal opportunity. During President
Barack Obama's years in office, the number of people receiving food stamps has
skyrocketed by 39 percent. Professor Edward Lazear, chairman of the president's
Council of Economic Advisers from 2006-09, wrote in a Wall Street Journal
article titled "The Hidden Jobless Disaster" (June 5, 2013) that
research done by University of Chicago's Casey Mulligan suggests "that
because government benefits are lost when income rises, some people forgo poor
jobs in lieu of government benefits --unemployment insurance, food stamps and
disability benefits among the most obvious." Government handouts probably
go a long way toward explaining the unprecedented number of Americans, close to
90 million, who are no longer looking for work.
This is all a part of the progressive agenda to hook
Americans, particularly black Americans, on government handouts. In future
elections, they will be able to claim that anyone who campaigns on cutting
taxing and spending is a racist. That's what Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said
in denouncing the Republican 1994 call for tax cuts. He said, "It's not
'spic' or 'n****r' anymore. (Instead,) they say, 'Let's cut taxes.'"
When black Americans finally recognize the harm of the
progressive agenda, I'm betting they will be the nation's most conservative
people, for who else has been harmed by progressivism as much?
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