Holder’s speech and what blacks want

Leonard D. writes:

I think the key to understanding what blacks want is to adopt the progressive faith for a minute and look at things via its lens. Blacks, like whites, are educated by progressive clerics, in our state school system. But blacks are told by the church that they are good, the victims, whereas whites get a mixed message. Human nature being what it is, I think it’s more likely that blacks uncritically accept the faith they are taught than whites. (Although most of them do too.)

To an ultra progressive, all men are equal. This is literally true, not just figuratively. Not only am I just as “good” as you in the eyes of God, whatever that might mean, but I can do anything you can do (given equal education and opportunity), live as well as you do (given money), etc. Furthermore, not only are all men equal in potential, but they are all equally deserving, of any and everything. To summarize: we are equal in worth, we can be equal in accomplishment, and we should be equal in accomplishment.

The world does not display that pattern, obviously. Blacks are at the bottom of society. How can that appear to the faithful? It must be a plot, a design, against blacks. Thus “racism,” in its modern meaning of “the mysterious cause(s) of black failure.” What do they want, then? They want America to live up to its creed of equality, which is to say, their idea—the progressive idea—of what equality should be. They want to be equal—equally praised, equal in power, equal in wealth, equal in accomplishment, equal in respect, equal in everything. They don’t know how this is to be accomplished, but they are utterly convinced that it can be accomplished, and should be, and will be. Furthermore, they know that it has not been accomplished, and with the progressive’s faith in government they deduce that something new must be tried. Change they can believe in! Probably something very big. Remember that for the progressive, inequality is unjust. Perhaps it feels to them roughly the same way that, say, an unpunished murder feels to you. Thus, fiat justitia, ruat coelum.

That is what Holder was saying. (BTW I wrote all of the above before actually reading his speech other than the small excerpts you and Steve Sailer quoted. I see now that, as expected, Holder is an ultraprogressive.)

LA replies:

This is good. But you’re leaving out another side of it, which is that blacks aren’t just seeking equality with whites, but superiority over them, as is very evident, for example, in Holder’s speech. But maybe the drive for superiority can be reduced to the demand for equality. That is, given that whites are so superior to the blacks in terms of power, wealth, etc., the blacks, to equalize the situation, must lord it over the whites. Which is another way of describing the double standard (though it’s actually a single standard, as I explain in my article, How to Oppose Liberal Intolerance) that is inherent in egalitarianism: the more inferior I am to you, the most unearned benefits must be given to me, and the more unearned disadvantages must be heaped on you, to make us equal. Thus any egalitarian scheme logically requires the unearned superiority of one party over another.

So now let’s take your impressively thorough description of the black demand for equality with whites. The stronger and more comprehensive the demand for equality, the stronger and more comprehensiveis the demand for unearned advantageous treatment, i.e., for superiority.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 23, 2009 10:21 PM | Send