America’s ongoing crimes against blacks, and what it needs to do to make up for them

Kerry M. writes:

Responding to your article, “We must face the fact of black racist violence against whites,” what seems to be missing in font size 18 point is that white men raped black women, men and children for over 400 years in this Caucasian dominated country. How can you write about something with such precision, yet overlook the blatant fact the white America perpetuated and inflicted this kind of humiliating violation on a people FIRST!

To remind white America of the systematic and physical lynching of the black man since he arrived on these shores and the intentional and mostly successful attempt to destroy the structure of the black family by mentally and/or physically castrating the black man would not only demand that white America be accountable and take responsibility for the monster they have created and now want to go away, but it would also demand white America’s silence.

What really pisses white America off, is that through every attempt they have made to sterilize, kill, imprison, etc., they cannot get rid of the black man and his kind. Black people built this country at the sacrifice of everything they knew to that point of crossing oceans in iron shackles… that debt has never been repaid.. not 1%. White Americans live a life of privilege and nondiscrimination in their day to day.

Amazing how they call out “Injustice” when they experience something that black America has lived with since they involuntarily set foot on American soil. They don’t understand that black people are not the problem. The problem is the self liberty of self entitled white America.

LA replies:

Please tell me what white America could do to pay for this debt.

And are you saying that that the black rape of white women is vengeance for what whites did to blacks?

Kerry M. replies:

Paying for the debt and what to do?

Publicly taking responsibility and giving credit where credit is due for the successful beginning of the building of this country and let’s be real… Reparations. You do realize that black Americans have NEVER had a fair start (financially) as did the white immigrants that polished America during and after WWII? Immigrants were given a fair shake and not held back… black Americans have never been given a fair shake… Need I mention Katrina and New Orleans? Do you see black people in high positions in corporate companies or the Senate?

A president who turned his back on a natural disaster based on who that natural disaster affected. That act has an unconscious repercussion in the minds of Americans… “Oh its just a bunch of poor black people… not important.” The people standing in the path of Katrina were so poor, they could not afford to get out of the hurricane’s way… that is a problem. It is generational and did not just start yesterday. The problem you speak of didn’t just start. It is a progression over time from the seeds sown by white America. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer, but if all had a fair shake at life, you might see people behave differently. But you have an ideology in this country that started out as viewing black people as sub-human, animalistic even or better yet, not even animal status. If you think that ideology has changed, do yourself a favor and read comments on YouTube over video that is racial in its content, oh, lets say Michael Richards at the Laugh Factory, for example. These comments are a gauge. These comments are the pulse of the attitudes of the people in this country. As much time that has passed since slavery, white America is just itching to hurl their hatred at blacks again and I can’t say that your article doesn’t play a part in that attitude in its presentation. When a crime is committed, you always know when the criminal is black, because the reporter will specifically tell you. When the criminal is white, the reporter will never inform you of race, typically gender and vital statistics. your article is reminiscent of this tactic.

This country has clearly kept black people down, consciously. What if the roles were different? A person or group of alike people who have helped make someone else richer or enabled them to have more of anything with no gain of their own from their sacrifice, over time is going to say, “Screw it, if I don’t have and can’t get it from this disadvantaged state that I have always known without reprieve, then I’m just going to take it!” That is not color specific, that is a human condition, created by a people that were too lazy to build their own country, but conscious enough to choose to enslave a people, then stupid enough to free them without any provisions, so that they stay in a state of poverty and despair. You CANNOT enslave a people, have them work to build YOUR world, mistreat, attempt to devastate them (and partially succeed) free them on paper (but not in reality) and then expect that broken soul to behave in a way that is correct… you seem to not understand that black men raping white women is not something that just came out of nowhere… the white slave master showed the slave how to crush a human… to leave them devastated… broken. But of course you would not know that, because what discrimination have you ever been forced to contend with on a day to day?

Do you possess a trigger for discrimination that you cannot hide? No. You may be Jewish, but at the end of the day you have white skin. No one is going to pass judgment on you walking down the street. No white woman is going to clutch her purse tightly or cross the street when she passes you on the street because all she can’t think of is the safety of the contents in her bag and between her legs. That still exists in the year 2007. My feeling is, until you feel the full velocity of what the black race has and does face in this country on a daily basis (requiring you to wake up with brown or darker skin), if and when you present these kinds of issues, present the entire story, all of the facts and influences. Realistically, though, you can’t, because you don’t know first hand what the facts and influences are. Your article clearly speaks that.

I am not saying that black men raping white women is vengeance. Nor am I saying it is right or that the act should go unpunished. But do you ever think about the breaking or boiling point of individuals that can never get to square one in life because they are consistently treated as less than? Mr. Auster, nothing from nothing leaves nothing and when you have nothing and a society says you are everything bad because they fear you, do you really think any human being is not going to lash out in some form? Again, I am not justifying rape.

What is critical though, is the way you present your statistics. In the finger pointing way that most of white America looks at this issue, black men are predators, are angry, have chips on their shoulders, are uneducated, lust after white women, blah, blah, blah. White America never wants to be accountable for creating the situation as it exists today. And that is my problem. Quite honestly, the race problem in this country is not perpetuated by blacks, it is perpetuated by ignorant white America, who have never taken responsibility for any of the indignities it has thrust upon non-white groups, not just blacks. Black people happen to be the group that pushed back the hardest and continues to do so. So no, I do not equate this rape situation as vengeance, but if you’re going to present facts, maybe you need to research your history and use your brain to think of why is that statistic so. You obviously only deal with what’s in front of you and that is VERY dangerous.

LA replies:

Reading Kerry M.’s spectacular racist diatribe against white America, I’ve suddenly realized with a chill that Jefferson’s dark prophecies of murderous black-on-white racial warfare in his Notes on the State of Virginia were not nearly dark enough. After all, the enduring black racial hatred against whites that Jefferson predicted was based solely on the slavery that existed in Jefferson’s time. Jefferson never envisioned 600,00o white men dead and the South destroyed in a war that resulted in the end of slavery. Jefferson never envisioned the 14th Amendment that gave the federal government power to force states to treat blacks equally regarding their basic human rights. Jefferson never envisioned the Incorporation Doctrine, by which the Constitution was turned on its head to eliminate state’s rights. Jefferson never envisioned the creation of a network of black colleges and other institutions devoted to black uplift, all paid for by white philanthropists. Jefferson never envisioned Brown v. Board of Education which required southern white schools to admit blacks. Jefferson never envisioned the Civil Rights movement, in which white America as a whole resolved to change the way blacks were treated and made the overcoming of racial discrimination against blacks into America’s sacred moral cause. Jefferson never envisioned the coming into being of a huge black middle class, unprecedented in history. Jefferson never envisioned 40 years of social pay-offs to blacks in the form of trillions of dollars in welfare payments and other transfer payments. Jefferson never envisioned minority racial preferences, in which millions of blacks throughout this land were awarded with the possession of jobs from which they cannot be fired no matter what their incompetence and misbehavior. Jefferson never envisoned the gutting of America’s moral standards in an effort to remove the standards by which black behavior was found wanting. Jefferson never imagined white America turning on itself in a spasm of self-hatred over its historic sins against blacks. Jefferson never envisioned America delegitimizing itself as a historic country over its past treatment of blacks. Jefferson never envisioned a culture in which blacks would be treated as moral exemplars and heroes and symbols of America, far beyond their actual contributions. Jefferson never envisioned a situation in which black criminals and rapists would prey on whites year after year and this fact would never be mentioned in the press, out of a need of white America to cover up black sins and maintain the illusion of white guilt. Jefferson never envisioned the Wichita massacre and the Knoxville atrocity and the way they would be ignored by white America in order to avoid casting a light on the reality of black anti-white savagery. Jefferson never envisioned a popular culture centered on black-dominated professional athletics in which millions of white men breathlessly follow the exploits of black athletes, many of them criminal thugs, who are paid more for a single game than Jefferson ever possessed in hard cash in his lifetime.

Jefferson never envisioned any of these things that have come to pass. Yet despite all these things, Kerry M. and millions of blacks who think the way he does believe that white America has never done anything for blacks, believe that whites are still oppressing blacks in the most horrible, conscienceless way, and that the black situation in America hasn’t improved at all; they believe that whites are guilty, deeply guilty and deeply deserving of black racial vengeance, because of this ongoing white racial oppression of blacks! Jefferson could not have imagined that white America would turn itself inside out for blacks’ sake, and that blacks would acknowledge none of this but would still be on fire to wreak vengeance on whites, because Jefferson was not insane. Only an insane person could have imagined that such a thing could come about. But it has come about, and an anti-white racist lunatic like Kerry M. goes through life with his head filled with terrible thoughts and endless resentment about the crimes that whites are supposedly still committing against blacks and the terrible price that whites owe to blacks because of this. He thinks, for example, that white America coldly turned its eyes from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, because the people in New Orleans were black. The staggering efforts made by whites across the country for blacks during that crisis do not enter his consciousness. (At the time I said that whites who kept helping blacks in that situation while blacks were heaping abuse on whites’ heads were fools. See quote below.)

Kerry M. is probably black, but whether he’s black or white doesn’t matter, because he bespeaks a mindset that is widespread among blacks and their white leftist apologists. Influential black spokesmen such as Randall Robinson and Andrew Young and Julian Bond and Louis Farrakhan and the pastor of Barak Obama’s church all speak the same language. Their racism is the worst racism that has ever existed on the face of the earth, because no matter how much whites have done for blacks, these racist blacks cannot acknowledge ANYTHING positive that whites have done. All that whites have done for blacks is as NOTHING to these black racists. Meaning that in the eyes of these blacks, whites can NEVER do anything good. Which is the same as saying that whites are inherently evil. Which of course is the explicit teaching of Louis Farrakhan.

I believe that it is in white America’s vital interest to acknowledge the existence of this permanent black hatred of whites, so vastly worse than anything Jefferson imagined, and then to act accordingly. At the moment I have no practical agenda in mind. But if whites at least faced the truth about what many blacks really think about whites and what they want from whites, just as, if whites faced the truth about Muslims and their agenda, and if they faced the truth about Mexicans and their agenda, then whites could start acting in a rational way for their own safety and survival against nonwhite peoples who have an unappeasable hatred of whites and seek their destruction.

* * *

Here is something I wrote in a blog entry entitled “How to fix race relations in America,” September 8, 2005:

So, black America is expecting lots of action—large-scale, very expensive, very onerous action—by whites to help the black victims of the disaster. Yet at the same time the black community as a community (when you have virtually all the leaders plus 66 percent of the grass roots saying the same thing, that represents the community) is putting out this hateful, incendiary, wacko charge that white racism was a major cause of the catastrophic mess in New Orleans.

All of which raises a very obvious question that almost no white person will ask aloud. Under these circumstances, why should whites want to help blacks? Why should they want to come to the assistance of people who regard them as racists? In individual terms, would you put yourself out to help someone who falsely and absurdly and viciously blamed you for the fact that he was in trouble? I wouldn’t. I don’t think any normal person would. But, on a collective, racial level, that’s what whites do.

So, I have a modest proposal. Whites should start saying to blacks: “If you want help from us, then drop the racism charge, now. If you keep calling us racist, if you keep saying that George Bush or the federal government or white America deliberately stranded blacks in the Superdome because they’re blacks, then we’ll have nothing more to do with you. We won’t give you a bare penny beyond what’s needed to keep you alive and get you resettled somewhere. And whatever we do give you, it won’t be in a spirit of generosity, but of cold necessity.”

- end of initial entry -

John B. writes:

I can’t agree with you that Kerry M.’s remarks are a spectacular racist diatribe or that they are chilling. To me, they are like every other Negro attempt at thought: boring.

And if he (or she) is not Negro: even more boring.

James N.writes:

Not only 600,000 dead and 1/3 of the nation wrecked, not only the destruction of the public school system, but since John F. Kennedy’s last federal budget ($99 billion for EVERYTHING), there have been over $7 trillion dollars in transfer payments from whites to blacks for Medicaid, welfare, “community development”, etc—not to mention all the private expenditures for hiring the “Vice President for Community Relations”, the diversity consultants, not to mention the shakedowns and the lawsuits—We may have paid over ten trillion dollars since 1965 in what are essentially reparations.

The question for the Kerry M.’s of the world is, “when is it enough”?

What would they settle for? 20 trillion? 30 trillion?

I would almost pay it if it would stop affirmative action and if schooling could become useful again.

Lion of Zion writes:

When blacks claim oppression, it is useful to study the nature of the charge. Kerry M. cited a litany of acts of white oppression against blacks in America, but their story is not unique. As a Jew, I can wax eloquently about the triumph of my people in the face of a millenium of systematic discrimination, ethnic cleansing, and widespread genocide. Then there are the people of southeastern Europe, who lived under Islamic Ottoman rule for 400 years and were murdered, oppressed, raped, and sold into slavery. Koreans fared no better under the heavy hand of Japanese imperialistic rule. Of course this does not matter to Kerry M., who thinks that blacks are the only ones who have been persecuted throughout the ages.

Oppression is an action of holding back someone or a group of people. The act of “holding back” someone or some group implies that without such force, the oppressed person or group would rise to a level of achievement and prosperity enjoyed by other peoples. Clearly, this is not the case with blacks. Their evolution in a tropical, relatively challenge-free environment has unfortunately kept them at an undeniably low level of intellectual development that has been well documented for nearly 100 years, and is seen throughout history and in every country where blacks live or emigrate to.

Show me one black country, one black population group that has produced what whites and East Asians have, and I will eat my yarmulke. Furthermore, Kerry M. ought to be damn grateful that he has lived under white society, because as an American black, he enjoys a standard of living that is 100 times better than his cousins in Africa and Haiti. Left to their own devices, black people simply do not achieve. In fact, they cannot even maintain what they have been given by the white man—witness the former Rhodesia.

Peter G. writes:

Thomas Sowell said it best: “What, You want live people to pay for what dead people did?”

Mike B. writes:

Kerry M. writes:

Black people built this country at the sacrifice of everything they knew to that point of crossing oceans in iron shackles

Amazing how they call out “Injustice” when they experience something that black America has lived with since they involuntarily set foot on American soil.

From what I have observed, blacks exhibit far more ability to destroy than to build. It is true, however, that they were brought here against their will. In fact, even if blacks wanted to travel to America they lacked the skill to do it. Given that we will never stop hearing this complaint, why not solve the problem by sending them back to their subcontinent against their will in order that they might show how well they can build over there?

Do you see black people in high positions in corporate companies or the Senate?

Think of all the damage done to the shareholders of Meryl Lynch and Time Warner. If blacks cannot even run their own families, with 70% of black children not knowing who their fathers are, why would we want them running our corporations?

Do you possess a trigger for discrimination that you cannot hide? No. You may be Jewish, but at the end of the day you have white skin.

So how do you explain the success of the East Asians and South Asians, many of whom are as dark as a typical African American? Both of these immigrant groups have higher family incomes and lower crime rates than do American whites.

LA replies to Mike B.:

Kerry M. wrote:

Do you possess a trigger for discrimination that you cannot hide? No. You may be Jewish, but at the end of the day you have white skin.

Well if, as Kerry M. says, blacks are simply and forever doomed to be discriminated against because of their conspicuous physical differences from other groups, and if this discrimination is unbearable to blacks and is the occasion for blacks’ eternal hatred against the society that does the discrimination, and if nothing can be done to avoid this discrimination, then the PROBLEM CANNOT BE SOLVED. Therefore the only solution is for blacks to leave (or be made to leave) and form their own, black country somewhere.

In fact, I’ll bet that every single black who feels he’s always being discriminated against is a person who is constantly putting out “feelers” for discrimination and over-reacting every time. I’ll bet that black people who are not preoccupied with their blackness do not experience this constant “discrimination.” Whoopy Goldberg is pretty dark, yet goes through life hardly conscious of race and gets along with whites. I’m not saying I approve of everything about her, but is basically an affable, friendly human being and her race is not a prison for her

But with the blacks who constantly find discriminaton, there’s really nothing you can do with them. They are a walking curse, on themselves and every white person unfortunate enough to encounter them.

Ben W. writes:

VFR is not being helpful at all in the “America’s ongoing crimes against blacks, and what it needs to do to make up for them” thread. All of the correspondents have assumed that the diatribe accusing white society of dreadful behavior against blacks is accurate. However the degree of rape and violence is quantitatively assumed and not empirically proven. Exactly how many rapes were committed by whites against blacks in the period of slavery? Please show me the stats!

Instead all of the correspondents, including yourself, assent to the proposition that white savagery against the blacks was actually done to the degree painted by the original complainant. You, and the others, ask what possible reparation can be done which hasn’t been done already. In this way you subtly agree that reparations had to be done one way or another. Where however are your stats to depict how much violence in fact was enacted against the slaves that needs any degree of reparation whatsoever?

[LA replies: There is nothing to support Ben’s statement that I was accepting the premise of white “savagery” or violence against blacks. All I agreed to was that there had been slavery and Jim Crow and segregation, and for the sake of the discussion I was assuming that this was something that blacks would reasonably see as an injustice. Jefferson, in one of the most famous “racist” passages in American history, took it for granted that blacks would remember a thousand injustices and humiliations by whites and seek revenge for them. I was making a larger point which you have missed: that even accepting the premise that whites have committed injustice to blacks, blacks’ TOTAL RACISM toward whites, as seen in Kerry M.’s remarks, makes any racial settlement impossible.]

What proof and evidence do you or any of your correspondents have that white, southern, Christian society in fact was as violent and rapacious as emotionally claimed by the original complaint? You seem to equate the holding of slaves economically with psychological, emotional and physical violence. [Again, Ben is going over the side of the ship here. Nothing was said by me to support his characterization of my statements to Kerry M.] In this regard VFR fails to uphold white civilization. The south was Christian and I have seen no records supporting empirically the degree of violence claimed by contemporary blacks. Show me the actual writings, the records, the statistics…before you apologetically entertain more emotional rants.

At some point you have to break free of any and all historical guilt WITHOUT APOLOGY. As pointed out earlier by someone else, current black violence and savagery negates any moral claims made against white society. Black immoral behavior makes any current “moral” claims by blacks null and void; an immoral person has no claims on morality against others. No apologetic stance need be proffered to an immoral, savage segment of society.

That VFR should even consider stereotypical pictures of the historical south without any reservations astonishes me! As a southerner, let me ask you why you consider it such a holy event that Lincoln unleashed so much violence and immorality in the following century against the US through the “emancipation” of the black? Which is now the bulwark of the liberalism you so detest through the civil rights fraud perpetrated on America. [LOL. Get this Ben: I’m dealing with the actual history of the United States, and the relatively normative view of that history. I’m not engaged in a paleocon, neo-confederate wishful re-writing or re-construction (if you’ll excuse the word) of American history. I’m been through all that before. I’ve dealt with the neo-confederates at great length at this website (here is one of the exchanges), and I’m not revisiting that issue. I have also criticized Lincoln for giving up on the colonization idea when black Northern leaders rejected it. I’ve repeatedly pointed out how Lincoln moved in an increasingly liberal direction. See my article on Lincoln and the unprincipled exception. At the same time, what happened, happened, and we have to deal with that, not escape into fantasies of what might have been. If it “might” have been other than what it was, it would have been other, but it wasn’t other, it was the way it was. Again, I’m approaching this from a mainstream view of American history, not a paleocon or neoconfederate view.]

Too bad that as blacks were “freed,” the rest of the US became enslaved by and chained to the “guilt” of slavery as foisted upon us by liberal myths and legends of history. It really is time for America to unchain itself from this pervading sense of guilt that infuses both liberal and conservative speech.

Every film I now see shows an angry black man, in some authoritative social position, ordering and intimidating white wimps as if the guilt of the white man is assumed in every psychological situation. It probably is time for the white man to become Nietzschean and assume his “will to power.” Enough with the half-assed apologetic for white society and Western civilization!

LA replies:

Also, maybe Ben was led astray by the title of the entry. The title is describing the original poster’s point of view, not my point of view.

Julien writes:

Some thoughts about your exchange with the unhinged but sadly typical Kerry M. It sometimes occurs to me that the black hatred and resentment towards whites that you describe may be inevitable, especially given the fact, that you rightly emphasize, that race is a basic and natural part of a person’s identity.

I think that most people suspect, deep down, that blacks do not have the same “civilizational capacities” (to use your term) as whites—nowhere near the same. Probably most blacks have this suspicion too. How could they not?

But since race is a basic part of a person’s identity, this means that blacks will have as part of their identity a deep sense of inferiority. Race is basic to your identity. If you know that your own race is obviously and seriously inferior to others in important ways that matter to everyone, that sense of inferiority is also a part of your identity. It doesn’t matter what your achievements or gifts might be as an individual. (Of course, this is made worse by living in a white society, where the vast differences in civilizational achievement are so omnipresent.)

So the problem seems to be this. We can’t make race unimportant (and we shouldn’t). But we also can’t magically make it the case that blackness, in particular, is really a source of pride. But then what attitude could blacks possibly take that would both allow for a positive racial identity and also some degree realism about black capacities? Or, to put the point another way, is there anything that blacks can realistically feel good about with regard to their race? Music, maybe, or sports? Those are pretty slim grounds for a positive racial identity.

So maybe the only thing that _could_ allow blacks to feel good about the racial component of their identity is the victimological fantasy that allows them to feel like a uniquely moral and noble race. Or maybe it’s that fantasy and, paradoxically, their awareness that whites (and others) are afraid of them. If you’ve got nothing else to feel good about, being feared probably props you up a bit. (This is what is so ironic about Kerry M.’s complaint that white women clutch their purses when they see a black coming. So many blacks obviously love being able to create fear in whites; it’s the only way they can feel equal, or in fact superior, to whites.) These things are pretty obviously a part of the explanation of black attitudes.

But does that then mean that any moderately liberal or even just fair minded white society with large numbers of blacks is locked forever into this kind of dynamic? That blacks will always cling to victimological fantasies and hate whites, because that’s the only way they can feel good about their racial identity? I have trouble imagining how it could be otherwise. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.

LA replies:

In reply to Julien, my view is that the racial resentment and blame-whitey syndrome stem from the false belief in racial equality of abilities. People believe that the races are naturally equal in capacities, and therefore if one race is behind it must be the fault of the race that is ahead. Therefore I conclude that the solution to the blame-whitey syndrome is to acknowledge natural racial differences, so that the differences are no longer blamed on whites. Decent racial relations are therefore possible.

Julien takes the opposite view. He says that it’s the true knowledge of natural racial differences that leaves blacks feeling resentful. But if that’s the case, what can make them feel less resentful? Telling them that all races have the same abilities? But that just leads to what we actually have: the egalitarian fiction, the Official Story of liberal society. But the egalitarian fiction, as I’ve just shown, creates racial resentment too. So with Julien’s view there is racial resentment whether we acknowledge racial differences or whether we cover them up.

Julien’s view offers no hope. Mine does. I say that most human beings do not go around comparing themselves enviously to others. I say that people are involved in their own lives, and enjoy their own lives. People of average looks are not thinking resentfully all the time that they are not movie stars. People of average intelligence are not thinking all the time that others are more intelligent than themselves. People of below average intelligence enjoy their lives and are not thinking all the time that others are more intelligent than themselves.

Life, in short, is more like Huxley’s Brave New World than we realize. In Brave New world, the Alphas, who are the smartest, are programmed to think they’re the best, because they’re the smartest. The Betas, who have above average but not top intelligence, are programmed to think that they’re the best because, after all, who would want to be an intellectual like those Alphas and be burdened with all that hard mental work? And the Gammas, who are average, think they’re the best, because being average, neither smart nor stupid, is the best way for a person to be, and so on. I think that’s the way life is. People who enjoy watching game shows don’t WANT to be book readers. They think that’s a drag, and kind of silly. There is a natural economy in human existence whereby the world makes sense from one’s own point of view and one doesn’t want to be someone else. Liberals don’t understand this natural economy, because liberals deny any natural order. Since their only belief is in universal equality, anything that is not equal strikes them as a moral horror. Therefore they are at war with life as it actually is. And Julien’s thinking is liberal in that he believes that anything other than complete equality must be the occasion for endless conflict.

Jeff in England writes:

Have you taken into account the possibility that a majority of American blacks and mixed race (which are now a significant proportion of ‘black’ people) people don’t think the way Kerry M. says black people feel. My gut feeling is that most (not all) black people just want to get on with improving their daily lives and are not concerned about white racism against blacks etc.

I personally doubt that in 2007 most blacks go around thinking how racist whites are. I’d be interested to see recent polls on the subject. The views of Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson may get a lot of media airplay but their views are not necessarily the views of most black people. Note the reluctance of many black people to support Obama (who admittedly is mixed race) over (Hilary) Clinton.

Times have changed since the mid-’90s O.J. Simpson trial where many blacks (tragically) supported Simpson just because he was black.

In his recent legal troubles, O.J. seemed to have little support in the black community. That may show that many blacks are no longer in the mindset that whites are out to get blacks or that blacks are always in the right against white authorities etc.

LA replies:

I have not said that a majority of blacks feel as Kerry M. feels, and I don’t know where Jeff gets the idea that I have. But certainly a significant number feel that way, and the feelings of that group may be decisive, just as only a minority of Muslims may actively believe in and support jihad, yet their beliefs are ultimately decisive for the Muslim umma as a whole.

Ploni Almoni writes:

The question of collective responsibility should be taken seriously by anyone who calls himself a traditionalist. The answer by Thomas Sowell, quoted in this thread, echoes the radical liberal Thomas Paine. It should grate on the ears of any traditional conservative.

If you do accept the idea of group, rather than just individual, responsibility, then European-Americans as a group owe (or owed, past tense) a debt to African-Americans for slavery, Jim Crow, etc., just as they owe a debt to American Indians.

Before blacks and progressives start nodding in agreement, though, there’s a catch: for a group to owe a collective debt, it must be recognized as a group, both by its members and by non-members. That means that for white people in America today to be in some way collectively responsible for slavery, they must identify as white people, and I don’t mean by checking an answer on the census form. And for blacks to make a claim on whites as a group (as opposed to making a claim on the government), blacks must recognize the legitimacy of white group identity, not only in the past, but at the time the claim is made as well.

Then the question becomes whether the debt has been paid. Some African-Americans have believed that the debt is paid in full, e.g. Zora Neale Hurston, “Slavery is the price I paid for civilization.” Whether the debt has been paid is partly a question of behavioral genetics, which is another subject.

LA replies:

Great argument. On this basis, I’m definitely in favor of whites accepting collective white responsibility for black slavery!

Mark J. writes:

I want to second Ben W.”s statement that “It probably is time for the white man to become Nietzschean and assume his “will to power.” Enough with the half-assed apologetic for white society and Western civilization!”

The most repulsive aspect of arguments like Kerry M.”s is the nauseating victimhood. There is no sense that Kerry thinks blacks can take control of their own lives and build prosperity for themselves. They are simply leaves tossed in the irresistible hurricane of white will. Blacks, who have the same number of hours in their days as whites, apparently are prevented from having any constructive thoughts or taking control of their own emotions and behavior to use those hours productively. No, instead they are simply glued to those streetcorners, forced to waste their days watching television, taking drugs, disrupting classrooms, and assaulting people by the all-powerful mental mojo of whites who by their mesmeric powers keep blacks from ever realizing that there is nothing stopping them from going to the library, working hard in school, and building wealth and prosperity regardless of what the opinions of other people happen to be.

Here is how a people with a real core of dignity and strength would think about a past where their ancestors were slaves: they would be ashamed. Ashamed that their ancestors were so weak and feeble that another people could sail to their continent in some ships and simply pluck as many of them away for slaves as they desired, with no consequences or great risk. A people with dignity would resolve never to allow themselves to be so vulnerable again, and would never let the prejudice of others—real or imagined—stop them from achieving all they could.

And we whites disgrace ourselves by taking these victim arguments of blacks seriously. Who cares if they want to whine? As Ben W. says, let’s assume our will to power. We are a great people, arguably the greatest in history. There’s no time or energy to be wasted on whiners. We can’t share a nation with these people; we need to be separated from them. There is no other answer. The only question is how long it will be before that is apparent to enough people for action to occur.

Rachael S. writes:

I don’t think there is any hope for racial relations to get any better. My experiences have taught me that race does matter, and that all races but whites will pick their own side in a fight; so I think separation is the answer. Some anecdotal examples of the futility of reasoning with blacks on racial issues:

• About seven years ago I took my sister and brothers to an amusement park. People had been waiting in line for an hour in the summer heat; and along come three black teenagers cutting in line as far up as they could go. I tried to step in front of them, and a verbal fight ensued. They were defiant, ignorant, and insulting; one of their arguments was that they were only cutting in front of me and I shouldn’t care. When I pointed out that they were also cutting in front of everyone else all attempts at logic left them and they began laughing and taunting me the entire time I was within earshot. Later as we were leaving this stupid ride, a black teenager came up behind us and kicked my little brother in the back of the knees. I have always thought the two incidents were related.

• I worked with an intelligent, successful black woman in my office during the Katrina disaster. She sent me that picture of the two hippies who “stole” a loaf of bread that had floated out of a convenience store, along with the picture of a black man pulling a black garbage bag behind him in the water. The story, if you will remember it, was about the double standard of calling blacks “looters” while not calling whites looters. She apparently wanted me to admit that the white hippies were looting, she couldn’t see the difference between taking food that is floating out of a store, with actively going into a store and looting it.

• My sister goes on vacation with her girlfriends (two Americans of Puerto Rican descent and one American black). About one day into the vacation she wore an Elvis necklace (she loves Elvis) and this offended the black girl. The black girl wouldn’t say why (apparently Elvis did something bad to blacks), a ridiculous fight ensued, and this breakdown in racial relations ruined the rest of my sister’s vacation. The Puerto Ricans were sympathetic to the black girl.

These are relatively trivial examples of how relations can go from benignly bad to actively bad during daily life; what would happen in any of these circumstances if the white person had kept pressing the point instead of leaving off? In the first one, probably a small race riot; in the second, loss of an amicable relationship with a valued co-worker; in the third the outcome was temporary misery and permanent loss of friendship. In reading the Kerry M. rant, I believe he was saying that what whites are getting currently from blacks is payback or deserved by whites (because he says that whenever a white person notices the current racial situation, he should modify his reaction by comparing current events to what supposedly happened to blacks and thereby become paralyzed).

He writes that you only look at the facts in front of you, and that is dangerous. Yes; dangerous to him and his agenda. He is afraid that the facts on the ground will force white people out of their paralytic mental fog.

Steven Warshawsky writes:

First, as Thomas Sowell and others have noted, the degree of personal and social dysfunction among the black community has increased significantly since the 1960s civil right era. The idea that today’s inner city problems, for example, have anything to do with slavery or Jim Crow is illogical. Kerry M. needs to re-think his theory of historical causality.

Second, I cannot disagree more strongly with Ben W. Ben apparently believes that several hundred years of involuntary servitude—slavery—was not a horrible crime committed by whites against blacks. After all, he indignantly demands “stats” showing how much violence and rapes were committed by whites against blacks “in the period of slavery.” That he could so easily gloss over the fact of slavery itself—which was predicated on violence and the ever-present threat of murder—is either insane or depraved. [LA replies: “insane” or “depraved” is too strong. However, I also was surprised by Ben W.’s taking the standard Jared Taylor, neo-confederate view that there was nothing wrong with slavery. There is a contingent of people whose way of dealing with the historic crime of slavery is to deny that it was a crime. Pace the neo-confederates et al., the fact that this crime existed doesn’t mean that the U.S. is evil and that blacks have the right to wreak vengeance on whites.]

And frankly, I was disappointed in LA’s rather tepid response to Ben. Slavery was much worse than merely “something that blacks would reasonably see as an injustice.” American slavery was one of the worst crimes against humanity in Western history. I think Ben deserved to be slapped down a little bit more vigorously on this point. [LA replies: Point taken.]

Now, does that mean that whites today should feel guilty about slavery? No, it doesn’t. To that extent, I agree with Ben. But the notion that acknowledging the evil of slavery—and the lesser but related evil of Jim Crow—is (in Ben’s words) to “fail[] to uphold white civilization” is absurd. White civilization, whatever that term may mean, means a helluva lot more than the twisted civilization of the Confederacy. Apologists for the Confederacy need to let go of their historical grievances no less than blacks, like Kerry M., who obsess about slavery.

Third, there has been a lot of discussion on this blog and others (e.g., Steve Sailer’s blog) about how blacks, as a group, lack the mental and/or cultural prerequisites for building and maintaining a peaceful, orderly, advanced society. As Julien puts it: “most people suspect, deep down, that blacks do not have the same ‘civilizational capacities’ as whites.”

I say this is nonsense. Is it established that blacks, on average, have lower IQs? Yes. Does the historical and statistical evidence also appear to support the view that blacks have lesser “civilization capacities” than whites? Yes. But just as it is unrealistic to believe, as liberals do, that all races are perfectly equal and should achieve at equal rates (whatever that means in practice), so it is equally unrealistic to believe that “blacks” are incapable of living decent, productive, fulfilling lives in this country. This is empirically false. Most blacks lead perfectly respectable lives. [LA replies: that’s a big overstatement, given the 2/3 black illegitimacy rate.] Yet this plainly is what statements like Julien’s are meant to imply.

At the risk of sounding trite, I personally know many black people who are smart, successful, and among the best people I know. Constantly to conflate group averages with individual opportunities/outcomes is illogical and smells of bad faith.

The real problem (at least in this country) is cultural and intellectual. Too many blacks are unsuccessful in this country because they are poisoned, practically from birth, with a way of life and a way of thinking that renders them incapable of pursuing the opportunities that are abundantly available in this country.

And this poison is not coming from the white community, which has been bending over backwards for decades to “prove” to blacks that it is no longer racist. Rather, it is coming from within the black community. From the black nationalist crap that flourished during the 1960s and 1970s and continues to this day. From radical college professors who think they are speaking “truth to power” by criticizing white society (constantly drumming the absurd term “white privilege” into their ignorant students’ heads). From the rappers who distill this poison down to its essence and feed it in hypnotic rhythms to the black (and white) masses. The message is the always the same: White society is implacably racist; the black man is being “kept down”; and blacks do not get a “fair shake” in life. See Kerry M.

Unfortunately, white liberals lack the moral courage to confront and denounce this poison. But conservatives have not been much better. Either they, too, lack the fortitude to stand up to the inevitable charges of racism—or they just want to wash their hands of their black fellow citizens. Yet the idea that black Americans are going to go away is pure fantasy (or perhaps a murderous nightmare). If we want to have a better, healthier society than we have now, we need to change the way that many black Americans think about their place in our society. Focusing on their supposed lack of “civilizational capacities” is not particularly useful to this task.

LA replies:

I take strong exception to Steven Warshawsky’s last point. Almost every time I discuss racial differences, I stress that blacks could do better than they are now doing. But then I add that even if they did much better, they would remain significantly behind whites. It is the “remaining behind whites” in civilizational achievement that is the key point here, not that blacks totally lack civilizational capacities. As long as the differences in civilizational abilities are denied and covered up, the only way to explain blacks’ continuing failure to have outcomes at the level of other groups is that blacks are being kept down by some artificial force. And while this force is defined in various ways, it always comes down in the end to white racism. Thus even the “black anti-intellectual cultural stereotypes” that blacks impose on themselves are ultimately blamed on white society, because white discrimination, by keeping blacks from achieving, gave blacks the idea that they’re mentally unfit, and this idea was then internalized by blacks and became a part of the black culture.

So I disagree 100 percent with Mr. W. on this. The only way to break the power of the anti-white liberalism that is destroying our society is to expose the lie of racial equality of abilities on which the anti-white liberalism is based.

Indian living in the West writes:

It is of course another matter that if the white colonists had not (wrongly in my view) enslaved black Africans, the current descendants of those slaves would be living in such environs as the Congo or Nigeria in “freedom” instead of living in the world’s richest nation with a decent standard of living and having access to far superior health-care than anyone in Africa has access to.

I once spoke to a black African male who lived in America for two years as a student. He said that he found the “chip on the shoulder” attitude of black Americans impossible to fathom. He once said, “they ought to come to Africa sometime to see how people live”.

While this is no justification for slavery, it is a fact that appears easily forgotten by black and white liberal activists.

But I also think we have a vicious circle. Because blacks can never attain absolute equality with whites or even Asians (for a variety of reasons that we have discussed), any such failure to attain absolute equality becomes a punishment worse than living as “free” men and women in the savagery of Africa.

For the white liberals, this is a gift that never stops giving—they can keep demonstrating their superior morality by pointing out this inequality and blacks respond to this by wallowing even more in their condition and assume that nothing can improve their lot because the society in which they live is racist. So for the white libs it is win win—a gift that never stops giving.

The last point I would make is that I always find such accusations by white liberals and black agitators amusing. How does someone whose ancestors came to America as immigrants from Italy or Poland or Ukraine or Russia have any responsibility for what white Southerners (who came from Britain) did before the Civil War? Just because he’s white? I would guess that 90 percent of white Americans have no ancestors who owned black slaves. So what responsibility do they have for it (even assuming for a moment that one could be held responsible for acts committed by one’s ancestors a century before one is born)?

LA replies:

Well, if there is a collective entity of white America, as someone was saying above, then the immigrants and their descendants became a part of that collective entity. If we can speak of white America as a collective entity having a historically continuous cultural identity and achieving certain positive things, then we could also speak logically about white America doing certain negative things.

I’m not necessarily embracing this idea, I’m just saying that it’s not as inherently illogical as ILW is suggesting.

Also, on further thought, the question of whether one is descended from post-Civil War immigrants is entirely irrelevant here. Why should a descendant of turn-of-the-20th-century immigrants have any less responsibility for slavery than a descendant of the Old South? Each person comes into the world as a new individual and is not responsible for the sins of his fathers. So either white America as a whole carries a collective responsibility for slavery, or it doesn’t. The issue of “Older Anglo-Americans” versus “Newer European-Americans” shouldn’t enter into it.

Alec H. writes:

Kerry M.’s claim for reparations—from “this Causasian dominated country”—may be a wasting asset. In 50 years, his grandchildren can pitch it to America’s new Mexican-descended majority and see how it plays. In the meantime, I would support reparations, if accompanied by repatriation. A “claimant” like Kerry, standing apart from the country and throwing rocks at it, necessarily avers that he does not belong to it.

Dimitri K. writes:

Blacks’ endless complaints about slavery resemble a phenomenon which I will explain through the the example of the Russians. Of course, it is not only Russians, but Russians are used to criticism and will not be insulted. Russians always complain that Mongols used to rape them etc. Actually, Mongols have not ruled Russia for about 600 years. However, mentioning Mongols still causes the standard complaints. I explain this phenomenon as follows.

The first known empire on the territory of modern Russia was the Khazar empire. Many towns, including the Russian capital of that time, Kiev, were founded by Khazars. Then the western provinces of that empire were captured by Vikings (Swedes) who probably called themselves “Rus.” That was considered as the birth of Russia. Later, the Mongols, who considered themselves to be the inheritors of the Khazars, captured those lands. They were tolerant rulers and they ruled for about 300 years. However, the population of those lands, or at least the aristocracy and church leaders, already considered themselves to be a different people, Russians. The national self-determination of Russians emerged in the struggle for independence from the Mongols. Though Russians owe a lot to Khazars and Mongols, mentioning those peoples still causes outcry and complaints.

Now, regarding American blacks, they owe a lot to whites. Without whites they even would not have appeared. But now they have started to consider themselves a separate nation. Their national self-consciousness emerged in the struggle with whites. And they will never stop complaining, because it is necessary for their national self-determination.

LA replies:

Yes, I think Dimitri’s basic point is correct, both in general and specifically as related to blacks. But to the extent that it is correct, the conclusion is inescapable that blacks don’t belong in the same country as white Americans and will always be a destructive influence, tearing down, delegitimizing, and demoralizing white America.

By the way, if there’s anyone out there who wants to write, “Auster says that blacks don’t belong in the same country as white Americans,” that’s not what I said. I was following the logic of an argument. If it is indeed the case that a signficant number of blacks share a black national-racial identity that requires them always to be negative toward whites, then that element will always be a hostile element within our country. And at the least we need to recognize that fact. As to what ought to be done about it, I have no agenda. I have never proposed the racial division of America, as many have done, though I do think that residential and social separation at the local level, including school segregation, is probably desirable. My view has always been that in a morally and culturally restored America, in which citizens’ basic rights are protected while the culture and standards are set by a civilized and moral white elite, blacks would cease being the problem they are now. As I said in my 2005 article, “How the 1964 Civil Rights Act Made Racial Group Entitlements Inevitable,” an acceptable racial settlement in America, with basic rights assured for all but without minority preferences and the demonization of whites, is possible only if whites remain (or, rather, become again) the culturally dominant majority.

Jeff in England writes:

My gut feeling is that the number of blacks who are essentially NOT “blaming whites” is increasing daily. You say that you never said that blacks who are in a “blame whites” mindset are in a majority (I never said you did say it), but rather that there is a significant minority in that mindset. Agreed, there has been and we both know significant minorities can be very influential. But what if that “significant minority” continues to decrease by significant amounts, and even becomes a very small minority; how will that change your thinking?

By the way, my view on the changing mindset of blacks (in both America and the UK) in no way means that I don’t think black culture has had a lot to answer for in regard to high crime rates, dysfunctional families, excessive use of drugs and drink etc. It most certainly has. But I do believe, led by the likes of Bill Cosby and Shelby Steele, there is a general trend in the U.S. and UK by black and mixed race people to coming to terms with these issues in a more responsible way (in other words blaming themselves, not white society).

Mark Jaws writes:

Jeff in England may indeed may know some very fine black people who are decent, intelligent, and contributing members to their communities and to English society at large. I know such fine black folks in my northern Virginia community as well, but they are not becoming the prevalent element in the black “community.” In fact, the opposite is occuring. When 70 percent of black children are born without fathers, and the dysgenic effect (dumb people having children while smart ones don’t) is particularly strong with blacks, you cannot possibly anticipate a brighter future. College graduate black women have the lowest birth rates in America. At my last job I became good colleagues with four black professional women, who among them produced one lone child. This means that of the black children being born, more and more of them are coming from the shallow and violent end of the gene pool. Sorry Jeff, look at the big picture and not just your microview.

If we really wanted to raise black IQs within a few generations we would have to take several measures, which are too Draconian for even this hardline fellow to mention.

Van Wijk writes:

Many blacks consider getting something for nothing (being “hustlers”) to be a prime virtue. The modern civil rights movement is nothing more than an elaborate hustle of the white majority. This hustle, like anything else, will cease when it stops being profitable. Since whites will always generate wealth everywhere they go, even if they become a minority in America, the hustle will end…never. The virulent blacks and the educated “professional” blacks are essentially on the same team, and will quickly close ranks when threatened by an outsider. I agree with Rachel and Mark J. that the only solution is complete segregation.

Also, I wonder how many of the “professionals” praised in this thread got to where they are through affirmative action. How would these behave if you suddenly removed AA as every traditionalist advocates?

Re: Mr. Warshawsky’s comment that “American slavery was one of the worst crimes against humanity in Western history.” Slavery has been with us since at least the Neolithic. Slavery is evil, but if you constantly bemoan once instance of slavery then mustn’t you bemoan them all, including black-on-black and white-on-white slavery? If so, such a response would quickly become an endless litany of mea culpas reaching back to before written language. Go back far enough and it is very likely that many of your posters have a slave ancestor.

P.S. Not to split hairs with Dimitri, but it is easy to be a tolerant master after one has slaughtered entire cities. The Mongol invasions were an act of great evil.

A reader who has spent much of his career working closely with blacks in a large organization writes:

Good stuff. Actually, MOST blacks really do feel the way your main correspondent does, if maybe not so vehemently. Your writers who think otherwise don’t associate much with blacks except on a superficial level. Vermonters tend to have high opinions of blacks.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 19, 2007 08:47 PM | Send