A new way of putting the problem of black-white relations

James N. writes:

Has VFR discussed the topic of black anger?

A lot of “conservatives” either deny that it exists AS A PHENOMENON (while they of course accept that there are individual angry blacks), or blame liberals for miseducating or stirring to anger blacks who would otherwise not be angry.

But it seems to me that wherever blacks are living with whites and without some sort of systematized control mechanism, the result is that a substantial fraction of blacks develop serious and sustained anger. [Emphasis added.]

The stock explanation, “white racism,” is obviously false. You have pointed out recently, “It’s not us, it’s them.”

Do you think that the false promise of “equality” (which most blacks must know is a lie) makes black anger worse?

LA replies:

I think James is on to something. Further comments could expand on what the causes of this black anger may be.

—end of initial entry—

Jonathan W. writes:

I think the anger we see from blacks in every country where they live with whites can be explained by their inherent limitations relative to whites. Many studies have shown that people’s happiness is determined not by their absolute condition, but by their condition relative to everyone else. Since blacks on average will always be below whites in every social indicator, there are going to be a lot of angry blacks as long as whites are better off than they are. It’s the same explanation I attribute to the rude behavior you see from low income service people in places like New York and Los Angeles. When there are more wealthy people in a given area, there is more resentment among the lower classes, even if those lower class people are better off than lower class people elsewhere.

Aditya B. writes:

I have a take on black anger, as does almost any person from India who is honest and half-way intelligent.

Black persons of African origin appear to be angriest, but dark peoples world-wide are always angry. About SOMETHING. And that anger is exacerbated by the presence of whites. I think this is biological.

Of all the invisible borders that separate man from fellow man, the sharpest is the one between black and white. While technology and inter-connectedness makes other differences fade, this is the one difference that only becomes sharper.

Whites have historically had different reactions to blackness: fear, revulsion, pity and sentimentality. Blacks ( and I include my countrymen in this category) have always had one (or two): envy and sexual lust.

I believe that continued exposure to whites and whiteness exacerbates envy and sexual lust and that the flash mobs and similar phenomena are merely symptomatic of this sickness—or derangement, i you prefer—of the soul. The derangement of the white soul is in its determination to allow sentimentality to triumph reason and self-preservation, leading to all manner of grotesqueries, and near-apocalyptic scenarios.

This situation can only be remedied when whites take pride in whiteness and govern according to the time-honored traditions of their forefathers. Not only is that in the best interests of America’s historic majority, it is in the best interests of (fully naturalized now) immigrants such as myself who did want to move to a white, Christian nation, where we can be as eccentric as we please, lead a civilized life and pass our days in peace.

A reader writes:

Jonathan W. is correct that people constantly compare themselves to others, and base their happiness on how the comparison turns out. Many white people that I know get completely bent out of shape when they see others using SNAP (“food stamps”) to pay for expensive cuts of meat, etc. People aren’t just unhappy that others are better off. They are unhappy when other people appear to be getting a better deal. (“They don’t work a lick, and they can afford to eat better than I do!”)

If you get a really good deal on a new car or new stereo, you are happy until you hear that somebody else got an even BETTER deal.

My ex-husband always had to have the very latest gadget on the market, and was happy and proud until a new-and-improved gadget came out, and then he was miserable until he had one of those. Needless to say, we were always hopelessly in debt, with the credit card debt alone eventually being 50 percent larger than our annual household income. Let me say that there is really no cure for immaturity that runs this deep. My ex-husband was envious of the inherited wealth of others, he was envious of the lifestyle of those who out-earned him, he was envious of Europeans because they got to live in Europe, while he could only visit, etc. He was a horrible show-off and braggart, and yet he was consumed with envy. He was lily white, and came from an upper-middle-class background, but his attitude toward money was strictly GHETTO.

Because very few blacks are able to accumulate assets by deferring gratification, the problem cannot be solved. Everybody has air conditioning, a microwave oven, a color TV and a cell phone at this point, and it just isn’t necessary to do anything further for the downtrodden. White people need to start laughing when blacks start their “Woe is me!” nonsense.

Rhona N. writes:

Their violence is sudden and unforgiving. This behavior happens in every society, whether they predominate or are in a minority. It’s not anger, but a manifestation of their sensibility. They can go from being joyful to violent in a flash, no matter the circumstances.

Allen G. writes:

Don’t you feel the joy in this violence, this liberation? Burn, baby, burn.

Robert C. in Nashville writes:

I agree with James, but differences in average intelligence notwithstanding there are important differences that blacks DO have the power to change: values.

Valuing an education and marketable training; Denying immediate pleasures for long term goals, or setting realistic goals to begin with and staying at it. Staying with a job until you can find something better; getting married and taking responsibility for bringing up children; not committing crimes—at least not felonies. In short, taking responsibility for one’s life and actions without looking to blame another group for the consequences of one’s own actions or inaction.

I’m not saying that such value changes would, as a group, put black income as high as that of another group with significantly higher abilities. But not everyone has to be a rocket scientist. Most whites aren’t. But if you learn a skill, vocation or professions, pass values to your children, and shun government dependency, it would make a great difference.

Do blacks also blame whites for those value and behavioral differences?

LA writes:

No one has responded to James N.’s own suggestion as to the cause of the black anger, namely whites’ evangelical insistence that the blacks are equal to the whites in capacities, and therefore that they can and should do as well in life as the whites. Were there ever “compassionate” people who in reality were so cruel—so blind and insensitive to the humanity of others? But that’s what whites are. In their fanatical adherence to the abstract liberal dogma of equality, which they equate with goodness itself, the whites constantly put the blacks down by calling on them to do better than they have it in them to do. Those ever-helpful whites underscore black inferiority, they set black inferiority in a spotlight, by setting expectations and goals for blacks that the blacks cannot possibly meet, and then screaming, “Blacks still lag, blacks still lag! We have to do more—much, much more—to close the gap!” I certainly would hate people that did this to me.

LA continues:

Was there ever a government program designed to produce black racial anger as much as No Child Left Behind, which requires that blacks do as well as whites, and if they don’t succeed, which of course they cannot, designates their schools (many of which are staffed by black teachers and administrators) as “failing” schools and shuts them down?

James N. replies to LA:

Yes, I have thought for a long time that NCLB is unrefined cruelty.

The thing is, I think, the blacks know that they are being patronized. This is, no doubt, infuriating.

But I also think that blacks were, on average, less angry and more successful in 1910-1950 than now. This, of course, violates what “everyone knows.”

But really—when there was a social order, everyone did better, blacks and whites. Blacks in 1940 should have been A LOT angrier than blacks in 2011 according to the Standard Model.

That this is not so is evident. We need to work harder on “why?”

Rhona N. writes:

Using the word “anger” implies that there is some justification for their actions. However, what appears to be anger is just an excuse for an exercise in pure joy. Have you seen the faces of those who loot or gang up on others (be they of any race)? The smiles, the sense of empowerment, the exaltation. The superego is not there, it is pure id.

LA replies:

I don’t think that the word anger necessarily implies a justification for the anger. For example, one of the reasons blacks are angry (there are many possible reasons, as seen in this discussion) is that they live in a society dominated by people who are, to them, the racial Other, people who are better than they are and better off than they are in every way. They’re angry about this. That doesn’t mean the anger is justified.

Paul K. writes:

I think your comments in this entry are strikingly accurate. You wrote some time ago at Front Page Magazine that whites’ inability to face the truth about blacks has, in effect, driven them insane, no longer to draw distinctions between men and women, illegal aliens and legal immigrants, Mexicans and Europeans, Muslims and Christians, heterosexuality and homosexuality, etc.

In the same way that the Big Lie about race has driven whites insane, it must also be driving blacks insane. Imagine knowing, deep down, that nothing the majority culture says about your group is sincere, that depictions of your group in the media are transparently false, that your inability to compete academically is treated as an unsolvable mystery, that even the crimes you commit out of racial hatred are never identified as such, but instead whitewashed. You would think you are living in an insane asylum. [LA replies: Right, and you would grow furious at whites or just contempible of them, because they were constantly ignoring what you actually are. It’s so ironic. A major thrust of the civil rights movement was to recognize the humanity of blacks. But today’s whites systematically and fanatically deny the actual humanity of blacks.]

In the 1980s I read an article in my local paper about an annual parade held in our town to celebrate black achievement. The event’s organizer, a respectable middle-aged black man, said he wanted to highlight the positive aspects of the black community because “If Martians landed here and looked around, they would ask, ‘Why don’t they just kill all these black people?’ ”

I was stunned by that comment, by the fact that someone would feel that way about his own people and actually blurt it out. (I’m surprised it was published and can’t imagine it appearing in print today.) And yet, I think it is the fear of harboring that horrific thought that causes whites to turn a blind eye to racial reality.

Leonard D. writes:

You and I discussed this before at VFR, two and a half years ago. I expect it has come up other times too. I wrote:

To an ultra progressive, all men are equal … 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.

And although I did not say it then since the context was slightly different: blacks are furious about this. This is the source of black anger, which is very, very real. The specific mechanism is, of course, the progressive controlled schools which (a) do not teach race realism, and (b) teach that “oppressed” people have a right to redistribution, and if denied, to rise up with violence.

James N. is off on two points. First, white racism as a cause is not obviously false. Or at least, not when given what progressives would define racism as (see the quoted bit). Second, blacks do not know that equality (of outcome) is a lie. That’s the entire problem.

August 8

Rhona N. replies to LA:

I’m questioning their connection with violence. The violence in Africa is no less than it is in a white-dominated society. Anger doesn’t have to lead to violence. I understand the daily insults that blacks see when they compare themselves to whites, but the violence is not an expression of anger but a joyful experience—the letting loose of the moment. No foresight without any implications. In my opinion, the anger is really that of the middle class who more directly see their inadequacies vis a vis whites. But it is the lower blacks who commit the violence.

A reader writes:

I wish I could remember where I read it, but a year or so ago, somebody posted a letter written by a college-educated black man who held some sort of responsible position within a corporation, and he was very angry and frustrated that the new Chinese boss considered him a worthless Affirmative Action employee and did not take any pains to hide his disdain for blacks. The black man stated that in all of his prior dealings with white bosses and white co-workers, his academic achievements were considered as good as anyone else’s, but that the middle managers being hired from China had no respect for blacks at all, and were openly rude and disrespectful. I don’t think that blacks really want truth. If they can be overpaid, over-praised, and under-worked that is just dandy for nearly all of them. Occasionally, you will see blacks say that they dislike Affirmative Action because it leads to the precise situation of the aforementioned black with the Chinese boss, but I doubt that the principled objectors to AA add up to much more than 1%.

My personal experience with blacks is that they consider their qualifications to be as good as anybody else’s, while generally realizing on some level that they can’t actually perform some aspects of their job description. Their ghetto high school diploma is just as good as somebody else’s suburban diploma, and their bachelor’s degree in sociology or black studies is just as worthwhile as somebody else’s degree in accounting or computer science or mathematics. If, for example, they are required to produce a written report, they have no problem with a white person re-writing it, or writing it in the first place. They will tell you flat out that correct grammar and punctuation don’t mean anything. “Nobody cares about that.” A huge percentage of them are not really suitable for average-level office work. Just recently I read the comments of a black manager in South Africa who said that it pained him to say it, but you needed to have a certain percentage of white employees at your company, because when you were up against a deadline, the whites would knock themselves out to meet it, while blacks would simply go home at quitting time and blow the deadline.

A white man told me that in the military, the blacks were “the bread crumbs in the meatloaf” and that if all of them disappeared overnight, the military would adjust to their absence very quickly. It could be that many blacks DO realize that their contributions to American society are so small that when the Martians arrive they really will wonder why blacks have been allowed to stay. Without Affirmative Action, diversity quotas, and government hiring, there would be little employment in modern society for blacks, which is why they will NEVER let go of any of their racial privileges. Blacks are filled with rage because they know that they are completely expendable.

Bartholomew writes:

Jonathan W. wrote,

“I think the anger we see from blacks in every country where they live with whites can be explained by their inherent limitations relative to whites.”

I think Jonathan means by this that blacks are angry because they aren’t as smart as whites. And I think that’s true, but I also think it goes farther than that.

After all, what about Asians’ anger, who are often as smart or smarter than whites? There have been incidents such as the Virginia Tech Massacre (Korean shooter) and the Wisconsin Hunting Massacre (Hmong shooter) which may indicate a level of Asian hostility to white society as well. Where did that come from?

Back in 1988, Peggy McIntosh published an article now considered foundational to the so-called “whiteness studies” discipline: “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. She lists 26 “privileges” which are enjoyed by white Americans.

When I read and critiqued it back in graduate school, I immediately saw the truth to some of the “privileges” she lists (e.g. #20 “I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.”), and yet I wondered if white Americans were really the only people who enjoy these privileges. Isn’t privilege #20 just as true for, say, the Chinese in China? Isn’t Ms. McIntosh’s “white privilege” therefore more accurately described as majority privilege?

Couldn’t majority privilege explain the inherent anger of any minority, black or otherwise? Understood as reactions against the majority and their privilege, black criminality, Asian mass-shooters, dormant Muslims’ activating (no, this is not a non-Islamic theory of Islamic extremism: this is an explanation of why cultural “Muslims” who never took marching orders from Islam before suddenly decide to do so), and maybe even leftist Jewish anti-Christianity could all be understood as the varying expressions of a core anti-majority animus. Each minority expresses that animus in a way reflective of itself, but the reason for that animus remains the same.

Blacks are angry not just because they aren’t as smart as whites, but because they aren’t white. Everyone wants to see himself in the larger community around him, and that’s not possible in a diverse country. It’s one more reason I think the most merciful solution to the multiracial/cultural/creedal, etc. mess of modernity may be separation.

Bartholomew continues:

Leonard D. wrote,

“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.”

I just wanted to point out the parallel between Leonard’s comment and mine:

“Blacks are angry not just because they aren’t as smart as whites, but because they aren’t white. Everyone wants to see himself in the larger community around him, and that’s not possible in a diverse country.”

I would only add that Leonard’s statement, “Blacks want to be equal,” should be more specific, i.e. “Blacks want to be equal to whites.” This isn’t because whites are necessarily the smartest people on earth. After all, Chinese are a bit smarter, and white Jews are the smartest of all. Blacks want to be equal to whites because whites are the majority, the face of their own larger community, i.e. America. And they, like everyone else, want that face to be their own.

Robert B. writes:

Many of your posters have hit on the periphery of the problem—as I came to see it growing up in the 1960s-’70s and coming from a very different background and perspective. I grew up in an area very similar to Hyde Park in Chicago—actually much nicer. Almost all of the domestics were black, very few whites and only a few Japanese were servants. After the 1967 riots, people began letting them go—the area to the north of us had become a black “ghetto” and crime had become very bad and quite frightening. Famous names began moving out of the city entirely. By famous, I mean names that are national household names—founders of Fortune 500 companies. Others stayed, but every one became wary and very racially conscious. Three blocks north of the governor’s mansion was a no-man’s land—we all just knew not to go there. That area had been a prosperous Jewish neighborhood before the interstate came through—dislodging the blacks from their neighborhood in the process.

I remember very clearly the attitude of the older blacks—that they were being abandoned by their whites. Literally—abandoned by “their whites.” They believed that the existing system, whereby they worked for whites and the whites looked after them, was the societal norm. This included the purchase of birthday/Christmas presents, holiday foods, spare clothing for their children, etc. Blacks routinely bragged about their whites. My Nana even sent the brighter children of domestics to post-high school educational facilities. It wasn’t welfare or white guilt—it was simply understood that most blacks did not have the capacity to plan ahead, so their white employers did it for them. My father would have said that it was not racism and that he was not a racist—not even close. It was simply understanding the limitations of people. My father adored my grandfather’s black horse trainer. Branch was a great person according to my father and I, as a little boy, looked up to one of my father’s handymen—I thought the world of him and marveled at how he could fix things and what not.

Being a relatively small town, it was not hard to see what happened to the children of the these domestics. Some did okay, most did not. Most ended up being casualties of inner city drug wars, prostitution, etc. Their parents—most of them dead now—bemoaning the societal changes. In their heart of hearts, they knew they needed the white man far more than the white man needed them. They genuinely felt abandoned—like children without parents. This is the great disservice that white liberalism has done to these people—the assertion that they are our equals when they know they are not. It is a like a dysfunctional child being cast adrift into a world of adults with no tools to survive in that world as an adult. They really do need someone to look after them—but not in the way modern liberalism does. Modern liberalism expects them to do the impossible. It was quite normal for “Master so and so” (“Master” was the traditional Southern form of “Mister,” thus my mother was “Mastahs John”) to step in and solve problems for the families of his workers—setting a young man right about his need to marry a young woman whose child he had fathered. Making peace with another family and, of course, going to school and Church on Sunday. Whites taught them how to behave and enforced the societal rules. This was to everyone’s benefit, but most of all the black families.

When this system broke down, the black families fell apart. Modern white liberals have no social tools for dealing with this and have no capacity to understand the past system I’m describing, as they are mostly descended from people who never were part of that old patriarchy. They were outsiders looking in and they, with their false socialist views, decided it was “racist” and sought to fix it. Instead, they destroyed a way of life that had formed, of necessity, over hundreds of years. They agitated within the black community for this change—giving false hope to them. These false hopes and expectations led to anger as the black man came to see the reality of his own abilities. Cast adrift on the wide sea of Western capitalism and its meritocracy, he floundered and his world fell apart. The anger? It’s the anger of a child toward an uncaring parent who expects the child to do things it cannot do. They are, in our world, more properly seen as children who need shepherding, guidance, and very strict limitations on permissible behavior—which must be enforced by the traditional white patriarchal society.

Karl D. writes:

I think Robert B. is onto something. He says:

Whites taught them how to behave and enforced the societal rules. This was to everyone’s benefit, but most of all the black families.

I think that is very true. In the past when blacks and whites worked fairly close it was in a mode almost akin to student and pupil. Blacks aspired to be “white” in the sense of being a part of and emulating white European civilization. This was seen as a pinnacle model as whites were the creators of the universe they found themselves in. It makes me think of a barbarian Germanic slave being walked into Rome for the very first time. While still in bondage and woefully ignorant he still must have been in awe and saw something greater then himself or his culture. His next thoughts would probably have been, how can I be a part of this? Today blacks still aspire to be white. It is obvious. But they have lost touch with what that truly means. Now they are only interested in the physical trappings of what it means to be “white.” Why do you think there is such murderous rage let loose when a black man loses his white girlfriend? In a sense she was to him what Robert B. suggests.

James P. writes:

James N. argues that blacks were, on average, less angry and more successful in 1910-1950 than now, and wonders why.

As far as the anger goes, before 1950 blacks were essentially not allowed to express their anger against whites in public, and public disorder was quickly and ruthlessly suppressed. Today, blacks are positively encouraged to express their anger, and public disorder is tolerated. Tolerance for black anger and for its expression readily explains why blacks are more angry now. In my view, the popular idea that “venting” anger is a positive thing that diminishes anger is completely incorrect. In fact, self-control—not expressing the anger one feels—leads one to feel less angry, whereas lack of self-control—expressing anger—leads one to feel more angry. Blacks before 1950 felt less angry because they weren’t allowed to express it. Blacks today feel more angry precisely because they are allowed to express it.

Aditya B. writes:

Robert B. makes an original and interesting argument. But if the anger is that “of a child toward an uncaring parent who expects the child to do things it cannot do,” then what is the solution?

Are whites to treat blacks like children for the entire duration of their earthly sojourn together? Will blacks ever grow up? And how long can the nation be expected to treat its oldest minority like juveniles? Is that even moral?

Also, this line of thinking presupposes that blacks have low esteem due to constant reminders of their inferiority vis-a-vis whites. Nothing could be further than the truth. Our black friends, unlike our vastly more successful Asian friends, have very high self-esteem.

Again, this line of thinking presupposes that blacks share white values and share the same conception of achievement as whites. Again, there is no indication that blacks want to grow to be scientists, lawyers, doctors, Peace Corps volunteers, cellists, etc. like whites. Instead, they all dream of being super-paid (and adored) professional athletes, actors, singers and other kinds of entertainers.

Finally, if Robert B. is right, then whites are truly to blame for all black dysfunction. Since blacks are like children, they cannot be held accountable, only their Guardians can be held accountable. Therefore, this line of thinking is going to damage whites more than anything else. It’s liberalism by another name.

No, Mr. Auster, whites are not to blame for black anger in any meaningful sense of the word. No race, no nation, has dedicated more blood and treasure to the upliftment of the African than the American Nation. And your reward is violence, contempt, hucksterism, billions upon billions lost in waste and fraud, white flight, the decay of once great cities, and a white elite that seems to know no limits to self-abasement.

Laura Wood writes:

Your comments and those of Robert B. on white paternalism are excellent. They explain why, in the South, blacks seem less angry in casual interactions with whites than they do in the Northeast. There are vestiges of that old paternalism in the South that still breed good will.

Whites gave up personal and discriminating responsibility for blacks for the cold oversight of civil rights.

Thomas Bertonneau writes:

A family story. My ancestors on the paternal side were les gens de couleur libres (“free people of color”), the mulattoes, who fled the island of Saint-Domingue early in the nineteenth century after the bloody establishment of the empire or kingdom or republic (it differed, year by year) of Haiti. Les gens were the original French-speaking bourgeoisie of New Orleans (for a time, after 1814, they were called “Jackson’s Whites”). Their pact, quite successful, with white New Orleansian society (they formed three brigades of Confederate “colored infantry” for the defense of their city in 1862) broke down during Reconstruction. Beginning around 1890 they migrated en masse to Los Angeles and environs, where they could pass as white. (They were light-skinned, which made it possible.) The Bertonneaus solved the problem of their negritude quite literally by becoming white. They now number among them many Ph.D.s and professional people—decades ago one of them, Arnold-Louis, was the innovator of the cross-town football game (the “Rose Bowl”) that graces Pasadena’s annual Rose Pageant. My brother was a vice president of the aerospace division of North American Aviation, who supervised the design, construction, and delivery of the moon-rocket engines to NASA.

If I were to recount this story for a liberal audience, that audience would, of course, be appalled; they would regard it as anathema, as evil. Essentially, the Bertonneaus—and others like them—relinquished resentment and embraced rigorous self-reliance; they assimilated. They upheld the norms of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant social order. That was possible one hundred years ago. Nowadays the whole of the establishment militates against it.

Here is the speech given by the ancestral paterfamilias of the Bertonneaus, Arnold Bertonneau (1832-1912), to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1864. (AB was the elder brother of my great-grandfather, Albert Bertonneau.) The speech is full of hope that, alas, has not been fulfilled. Possibly it could not be fulfilled. Notice the emphasis on education near the end of the text. Bertonneau speaks of the compulsory education of the Negro; he lauds it. But twenty-five years later, he had repudiated his spokesman status for the race and was solely concerned with the wellbeing of his family and their quiet integration into the larger society in Southern California.

This is a photo of Arnold Bertonneau’s Colorado Street grocery store in Pasadena early in the first decade of the 20th century. It is a paradigm of order.

Robert B. writes:

Aditya B. does not understand the difference between Noblesse Obligee and Socialism. The former is an age old tradition in the West—in fact, it was something the English brought with them to India and it was what lifted India up from the morass that the English found it in. That way of life in my own family goes back at least 271 years. We were never socialists, rather we were always “capitalist pigs.”

The Western man conquered the entire world with one hand tied behind his back—not once, but many times over the millennia. How else could he see the rest of the world but as children compared to himself? India, for instance, was not conquered by a great empire—it was conquered by a private corporation founded in an English pub. Does anyone really think that India or China could have reversed those roles and conquered England? A tiny island nation, but a people with the heart of a lion. Western man fought horrible wars amongst themselves while conquering the world over the horizon. We built great machines of war, we built great engines of commerce, we built great universities and fantastic forms of government—while the rest of the world wallowed in ignorance and much depravity. Our colonialism was always paternal—whatever misdeeds we may have committed, were far and away negated by the roads and hospitals we built, the schools, the government infrastructures and so on. We gave the world light—literally. The whole world is as children to what we once were.

I am no more responsible for the black man than I am my young adult son—but my son still needs guidance. That’s what a father is for. When I employed men, I felt an obligation to them—that they had work so they could feed their families. That they were paid enough to care properly for those same families. They didn’t need the government to make me do that, I felt it was my responsibility as their boss. They made me money, so I was obligated to see that they were safe in their work, had the proper tools and had a decent life when they went home at the end of the day. That has always been the difference between Western Man and the rest of the world. It is a Christian thing—“do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s the Golden Rule that our civilization was built on.

The blacks who worked for my ancestors worked hard for them. They were loyal. The relationship was a good one that I have a fair amount of pride in as I look back on it. There was no “do-gooding” in it, it is simply the way life was. And it was a good life—one where people could count on the future, take pride in what they did for a living and have a sense of honor.

What honor is left in today’s society? Where is the goodness that was once a part of everyday life here in the West? Where is the honor in the taking of one people’s wealth to benefit another?

Vivek G. writes:

Robert Svoboda quoted his preceptor, aghora teacher Vimalananda: “It is always best to live with Reality, Robby, because when you do not Reality will definitely come to live with you.” Most of the social problems that are mushrooming are a result of denying the truth of reality. The problems appear to be mushrooming from nowhere only to the simpleminded; while even to the novice it is clear that the seeds of this were sown when various Empowering Schemes based on twisted and distorted notions of reality were institutionalized decades ago. And even before these ideas were put into practice, they first clouded the understanding of the people.

Even in the spiritual world there is only equality of opportunity and not of result. Ishwara (God) gives equal opportunity to all to mend their ways but then also gives freedom not to mend one’s ways as well. If we overlook this paradox that individuals (collections) can and do make wrong choices out of freedom and therefore must be held responsible, one is deluding oneself. In a spiritually better enlightened world a less successful person will feel himself to be responsible for his state and strive towards corrective actions with his own efforts while the more successful person empathizes and feels charitable towards the former. Such a relationship is based on spiritual love.

However, in the current and modern world view of liberalism and materialism, it is always the environment that is at fault. And the less successful are told that they are less privileged and indoctrinated to feel entitled, to feel resentment towards the more privileged, while the more successful are heaped with guilt. It is the very antithesis of spiritual wisdom. This is not to condone any crimes that the more successful may commit on the less successful; but it is surely to state that not all (not even most) of the issues causing the underprivileged status of people are a result of the exploitation by the privileged. Unless people learn to feel and be responsible, they can put no claims on freedom.

Aditya B. has an oversimplified view of the facts. Firstly it is a gross mis-characterization of all people. If blacks have it distorted from one side, Aditya seems to be doing it from the opposite side. He wrote: “Whites have historically had different reactions to blackness: fear, revulsion, pity and sentimentality. Blacks (and I include my countrymen in this category) have always had one (or two): envy and sexual lust”, and also said that it was biological. Here, he gives in to the same materialism that has been the genesis of these Empowerment Schemes.

The problem is not lust alone, the problem is that lust is not being seen as a problem, and no effort is made to solve the problem. The white man has no less anger, envy or lust; but he makes effort and learns to control them. This making of effort and learning can not be substituted by anything else. The spiritual confusion of not seeing a problem as a problem, and not making any effort to learn, is to be guarded against. It is embedded in moral-relativism which states in a self contradicting manner: It is wrong to think in terms of right and wrong. Such distortion quickly gets canonized as “It’s nobody’s fault; it is the system’s fault”. This is what, in my opinion, is at the heart and practice. The denial of truth and enshrinement of the false. Once one believes that there is no responsibility and that things must be equal, any inequality is seen as injustice and exploitation, and since there is no cause other than the system, the response is anger against the system. But who makes the system? We believe that the majority makes the system (since we live in democracy); thus it is always seen as the fault of whoever is seen as the majority.

Thus the cause of black anger is this denial of truth, enshrinement of false and an unwillingness to learn. And yes whites (liberals) are responsible for it. For that matter, any majority that buys into liberal falsehoods is responsible for such outcomes. The solution is for blacks to see the truth, and make appropriate efforts. It is within their power, and more importantly their responsibility to strive to improve. Also, as much as they pride themselves in being genetically superior to others in athletics and the likes, they must also accept the uncomfortable possibility that they may be genetically inferior in some other important qualities. Ironically, if everyone was uniformly endowed with all qualities, we would most likely be accusing Ishwara (God) of being anti-diversity!

Mark P. writes:

I think Robert has a good point, but it goes much deeper than that.

We live in a society that is based on hereditary privilege, but it refuses to acknowledge that it is based on hereditary privilege. This is unlike the monarchies of old. People under those systems knew they lived under a system of hereditary privilege. This has the effect of dampening the sting of inequality. No one was a failure because competition was not expected. King George, for example, is a King and Jeeves is a butler because King George made better decisions when picking his parents.

Despite the crude understanding of genetics, the moral understanding of this “luck-of-the-draw” system means every person had a place in society and the elements could work together to build a viable nation. This is why the monarchies lasted for hundreds of years.

The modern meritocracies we live in today fail to acknowledge that success in them depends on … picking your parents. People who are born smart, in stable homes, with intelligent parents, who have money and connections, are just winners in a genetic lottery, only this society demands that we compete with such anomalies in a status-oriented tournament where failure brands one a loser. Instead of anyone acknowledging that Jeeves could not pick his parents, he would instead be someone who is just a lazy, stupid nobody for not achieving what King George achieved. by merit, no less.

Liberals expect blacks to do what they cannot do and, when the blacks fail, they fail because they are losers, not because they did not pick the right parents. The psychological effect of this on whites is pretty hard; it’s probably even harder on blacks.

LA writes:

Unless someone has a comment he thinks is really urgent, I’m going to close this entry to further comments. However, there have been so many angles expressed in this thread, I need to go through the discussion and try to write some kind of coherent summary of what everyone has said, putting the different explanations people have offered in relation to each other.

August 9

LA to Rhona N.:

Your point about joy is very interesting, but needs to be integrated with the other points that people have made. You’ve done that to an extent, with your point that it’s the middle class blacks who are angry, not the lower class blacks who are actually doing the violence.

However, just saying, “They do it because it gives them joy,” is not enough, it’s not a complete explanation of what is happening.

Rhona replies:

The lowest humans in the food chain live much more in the “now.” This is called sensibility, the unmitigated now—little past, little future. As the type of human that is closest to the animal, they enjoy what is happening in the present as whole and undiminished.

As Schopenhauer said in “On the Suffering of the World”:

Animals are much more satisfied that we by mere existence…. It is … because its consciousness is restricted to what is intuitively perceived and so to the present moment … In consequence of this, animals, when compared with us, seem to be really wise in one respect, namely in their calm and undisturbed enjoyment of the present moment.

Whatever sparks may set blacks off, the aftermath of the unmitigated now is not burdened by any type of fear or foresight. They are completely absorbed in the present moment. Here is a more primitive sensibility. A more joyful experience with life that higher man, with his burden of the past and the future, cannot comprehend. This is the essence of group difference that is more important than intelligence.

The angry blacks most likely consist of Africans-Americans with higher intelligence stemming from more white blood. This gives them a sensibility that is closer to whites. It allows them to comprehend both worlds. They often experience shame resulting from mindless black violence, but at the same time a sense of empowerment and joy from these acts of violence and intimidation against whites, with whom they have a conflict-ridden relationship.

August 11

JC writes from Houston:

There does really seem to be something to Rhona N.’s assertion that the rioters in the UK aren’t really angry about anything at all. The talking heads on the MSM all speak of unemployment, cuts to services, racism, etc.

An article linked at the blog OneSTDV says:

“If the Egyptians in Tahrir Square wanted democracy and if the anarchists in Athens wanted more government spending, the hooded men in British streets want 46-inch flat-screen high-definition televisions. They aren’t smashing the headquarters of the Tory Party; they are smashing clothing shops … Someone circulated a text message on Monday night, calling friends to central London for “Pure terror and havoc & Free stuff … just smash shop windows and cart out da stuff u want!”

and another excerpt:

” … they have nothing of substance to champion. They do not support a particular goal or larger objective for society. They merely want to break sh*t, burn sh*t, and steal sh*t.”

So I think Rhona may have a point.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 07, 2011 05:35 PM | Send