%@ Language=JavaScript %>
Red_State_Blue
Red_State_Blue
Reflections on a House Divided
Celebrate Disaster
It's about CHANGE.
The people who turned poor and struggling minority neighbourhoods into
bottomless sink-holes of desperation, violence and despair
- want your vote.
They have new plans.
Lots of them.
People of an older generation may still remember a time
when in places like Chicago, Milwaukee, Atlanta and LA, people of all races,
colours and creeds moved around the city freely and without fear most of the
time. And when there was fear, it might be that of getting punched in the nose -
not shot and killed. Adults and kids walked and played in the parks,
families - of all kinds - slept safely on rooftops during hot summer nights
before AC was widespread. And, in many neighbourhoods people - of all races -
really did leave their doors unlocked much of the time.
But then things
CHANGED.
There was:
- The creation of welfare assistance programs that went out of their
way to exclude traditional families - those with a father in the household -
from receiving aid.
- The - related - propagation of other attitudes current amongst
liberal
elites at that time in regards to marriage and parenthood. Attitudes to the
effect that - traditional institutions and assumptions related to
families and the rearing of children were merely "social constructs" and
oppressive ones at that
- Which factors - along with a veritable celebration of out-of-wedlock
birth, single-parent families and sexual license generally - did
much to further erode the strength and viability of Afro-American
families - just as those same factors did to many families amongst other
ethnic groups as well - resulting in greater levels of poverty amongst
women and children generally.
- The creation of a welfare system that did little to encourage and assist
recipients in preparation and search for viable employment.
- A blue-print for "urban renewal" based on bulldozing economically
distressed communities. And, in so doing, destroying as well the
residents own social institutions - often very vibrant, creative
and successful - in the process. During which destruction and dislocation,
the former residents of targeted communities were placed - largely - in
high-rise ghettos. One result of which process - in its entirety - being
that the former residents were now dependent on bureaucratic
structures, rather than those of their own creation - and under their own
control - for the purposed of meeting their communal needs in regards to
charity and political expression.
- Encouragement - from the same elites then involved in
promoting radical changes in family structure and sexual mores - for
under-employed young minority men in particular - to adopt the
notions that: members of the "dominant culture" in general - and businessmen
in particular - along with the capitalist system as a whole - were to blame
for all the real or imagined wrongs and personal disappointments
that they, 'other member of their group, or their ancestors, had suffered in
the last few centuries or so. And that - rather than attempting to use the
instruments of education, entrepreneurship, and traditional work
ethic to better their positions in life - it was both their duty and in
their highest self-interest for them to actively engage in a
relentless struggle against those persons and that economic system. And to
do so "by any means necessary." Which attitudes and assumptions worked
against full participation of young minority men in the nations
economy and did so at the very moment that unprecedented
opportunities had opened up for them.
- Promulgation by the same elites of the related notion that -
members of minority groups who adhered to beliefs, perspectives,
methods and practices commonly thought of as being fundamental to western
civilization - e.g. in regards to: science and scholarship,
work ethic, delayed gratification, organization of time,
language/vocabulary, the role of music and visual art in culture,
etc, were "inauthentic" and - in some sense - guilty of betraying
their "real" heritage
- in regards to crime, focus by social scientists and liberal elites on
the disproportionate incarceration rates amongst
minorities - particularly Afro-Americans - rather than
on the equally disproportionate role they play as crime victims. And, in so doing, helping to create a perspective that could
only have had the effect of: undermining efforts to protect the vast
majority of blacks - honest and hard-working folk - from the thugs
in their midst; strengthening the identification of
minority members with thugs in the minds of the rest of the public;
undermining the basis for the natural sympathy that would have otherwise
been likely to have emerged as both blacks and non-blacks struggled against
a common threat; and, the creation - by default - of an image of the Thug -
rather than those who worked to suppress him - as a primary role model for
black kids.
- The poisoning - through insistence by liberal elites on "curative"
measures, such as affirmative action and forced bussing - of the well of
good-will that had accumulated during the civil-rights era.
Measures which made a mockery of the ideals - such as equality under the
law, and the stipulation that persons should be judged through the content
of their own characters, rather than in terms of the population and ethnic
groups into which they happened to have been born. And which, in so doing,
placed the burden of three centuries of oppression squarely on the shoulders
of white working and middle-class families - who were subsequently
stereotyped as - at best - stupid children, or vile racists, if they so much
as questioned the wisdom or justice of such measures. And, which policies
could be said to have - ultimately - had much more to do with the redemptive
fantasies of guilt-ridden liberal elites than with any actual
advancements to be had in regards to justice or reconciliation
among Americans.
- All of which measures, policies and attitudes, having helped to foster
an image of minorities - amongst themselves as well as the population as a
whole - as hapless victims requiring pervasive and persistent paternalistic
aid in order to function - at best - or of incorrigible thugs - at
worst. An image that could not have been more damaging to the cause of
justice and reconciliation then one that had been the product of a
cooperative effort between neo-Nazis and the KKK
And now, of course, we can add the current
financial crisis - caused largely by other failed Democratic polices in the
housing and mortgage markets - to their long list of "accomplishments."
"The Democratic Party and Barak
Obama want to do for America what they've done for minorities, families,
home-owners, relations between races and ethnic groups, freedom of speech, safe streets and
neighbourhoods, individual rights and the idea of personal responsibility,
America can't afford that risk."
Change like that, we don't
need
(C) David Aronin 2008
Please Share this Article: