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Quote of the Day: Equal Rights or More Rights?
It is impossible to struggle for civil rights, equal rights for blacks, without including whites. Because equal rights, fair play, justice, are all like the air: we all have it, or none of us has it. That is the truth of it. —Maya Angelou
In a time when the term “equal rights” has taken a beating and people feel that equity is the only acceptable goal, I infer from Angelou that equal rights should be ubiquitous. We shouldn’t have to fight over them, or distort them so that some people get more of them than others. Or the term, “fair play.” Today we would use the term “equal opportunity,” even though many people would insist that equal opportunity is unacceptable unless we get equal results, which is impossible to attain. And justice: neither the rich man nor the poor man should have more access to justice just because of their circumstances. Unfortunately, the political Left would turn all these assumptions on their head.
These conditions, in one sense, are always available. But when we try to manipulate or misrepresent them for our own gain, nobody actually wins. As Angelou says, “we all have it, or none of us has it.”
No party earns more of these conditions more than another. No righteous person is more worthy or deserving of equal rights, fair play or justice.
And when we steal them from another person, or cheat in order to create the perception that we are more entitled than anyone else, we all lose.
Published in Group Writing
Amen!
“Rights” makes no sense unless it is derived from a coherent understanding of human nature. Animals and ecosystems do not have rights. There is no right to ketchup or a yacht. If we are defined as consumers of things and sensual pleasures then “justice” is a matter of distribution. We have seen what happens when “rights” consist of that which the rulers permit us to do and have and justice is a matter of ideological fetish.
So very true, OB. In these times, rights and justice are ill-defined and not well-understood. Maybe we on the Right need to do a better job, too, of clarifying their meaning. And then work to maintain them.
I think that Angelou’s quote is simply not true.
In this country, we had equal rights for white people, fair play for white people, and justice for white people even in the bad old days of Jim Crow. It’s perfectly possible to have second-class citizens, or even non-citizens, as part of a polity.
It would be nice if we had equal rights, fair play, and justice for everyone. I’m not opposed to these things. What I observe is that since the triumph of the so-called civil rights movement, whites have been on the receiving end of unequal rights, unfair play, and injustice.
This has not gotten better over the past 50-odd years. It has gotten worse. There’s another post up today about a ludicrous report from San Francisco calling for reparations of $5 million for each black person, in a state and city that never even had slavery.
Why don’t we just do what the blacks and Hispanics do? We could have white identity politics again. They had their chance at a fair society, and they don’t want it. Fine. We can play their game, and play to win.
I suppose that this will get me called a racist, but what the heck, I get called that anyway.
No, Jerry, Martin Luther King, Jr. had it right.
Someone on social media tried to get after me for saying blacks instead of “people of color.” I did as they wish and also talked about “people of white.” The lefty brain can’t compute that response and doesn’t know how to react.
Is this something that the majority of blacks and Hispanics do? Sure, there are angry activists who want a society with an official racial hierarchy with blacks on top, but does that really represent the viewpoint of the average American black? There are certainly white people who think there should be a hierarchy with whites on top, but they don’t represent the majority of white people. I don’t want to be judged for the behavior of the most unreasonable people who share my skin color, I don’t think it’s fair to do that to people of other races.
I just think this is a pessimistic viewpoint, that we cannot live in peace with our neighbors who have demographic differences from us. Some one has to be the oppressor and someone has to be the oppressed.
I don’t think that even MLK preached what you think that he preached. You can conclude that he did, by cherry-picking some of his statements. However, it appears to me that he regularly engaged in racial identity politics, focusing his concern on the well-being of black people, and wanting special privileges for blacks, not equal treatment.
We have a narrative on the political Right, that MLK was an advocate of a wonderful, color-blind society, and that his movement was hijacked after his death. On looking further, I don’t think that this is correct. It seems like a myth, to me.
In any event, I don’t think that there’s any doubt that for the last 50-odd years, a great many groups have engaged in so-called “identity politics” — which seems to mean politics seeking advantage for their group. Blacks do it, and Hispanics, and Orientals, and Jews, and Muslims, and Indians, and others. But for some reason, it’s considered the horror of horrors if whites do what these other groups do.
So I’m starting to think that you, Jim, and many others, believe in a utopian dream of racial and ethnic harmony. I used to believe in it. Now, I’m skeptical. Race relations have become worse, I think, not better.
[Cont’d]
The other issue is multiculturalism. Racial or ethnic or religious identity is often correlated with culture, and when the minority groups get special privileges, their cultures are promoted. The one culture that can’t be promoted in this way is white culture, which is the one that I think is best. Even if we take a non-judgmental approach, it’s the one that I prefer. Why don’t white people get to advocate for, and defend, their own culture?
This is what we used to do, isn’t it? We expected assimilation. That means that immigrants and minorities conform to the norms of the dominant culture, which is white culture — specifically, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. This seemed to work reasonably well for quite a while.
It seems to me that white culture is collapsing, in both America and Europe. I’ve seen many commentators noting this strange, apparent self-hatred of the West, including some who are quite unexpected, like the homosexual atheist Douglas Murray and, at least as to Muslims, the atheist Jew Sam Harris. There’s a surrender to a legal or semi-legal invasion by foreigners, almost uniformly “black and brown” people, whose often degenerate cultures are tolerated. And, of course, anyone objecting is accused of racism or Islamophobia or some similar wrongthink.
It’s difficult, because I’d like to see harmony. I don’t see that.
Another issue is the false attribution of unequal outcomes to racism. This narrative is so strong that the suggestion that there could be innate, biological differences between racial and ethnic groups, in any relevant characteristic, is condemned as racism. It’s so bizarre, because the science demonstrating such differences is overwhelming, yet the truth is called “pseudoscience” by those who are, in fact, pseudoscientists themselves.
Naturally, it’s a one-way objection. If whites typically outperform blacks, as in intellectual pursuits, it’s racism. If blacks outperform whites, as in sports and possibly music, that’s just fine.
The same “reasoning” is applied to sex differences, too. Our supposedly misogynistic, patriarchal tyranny somehow leads to a female predominance in colleges approaching 60-40. Is this identified as a problem of anti-male discrimination? Well, of course not. It’s just a demonstration of natural female superiority, apparently.
It seems to me that the truth is suppressed by some social dynamic. It also seems to me that the MLK narrative, which at best is a bit whitewashed (hah!), at worst a fabrication, is a significant part of that social dynamic. So, I dissent.
Can you refer me to statements where he focused on getting special privileges for blacks?
I was a kid when he was sadly killed. He was admired by my black friends. They were good people so I won’t ever think ill of MLK. Who knows what he truly believed. His image has been molded by each person into what each wants him to be, just as our founders are molded into what each of us now want them to be. Some honor them as wise men while others hone in on their flaws. What matters is what they left us and what we have done with their gift. The left has ruined what great men bequeathed us. The republic and race relations have gotten worse, as the left intended.
Good point. MLK apparently showed an interest in Communism. But as far as I know, he didn’t become a Communist. But why should we get caught up in petty details? [sarcasm off]
Human history teaches us that multiculturalism divides societies. The left knows this. That is why we are experiencing a Marxist cultural revolution that has, after over 100 years, almost reached its endgame. We have allowed it to happen even though they have been openly expressing their critical theory ideas and goals.
Assimilation worked, that is why the left is against it. Importing people faster than they can assimilate is a tactic.
The left only creates disharmony, whether in art, music, or civil society. The left can’t create but only destroy, and destroying gives their miserable lives meaning.
Accusations of racism is a tactic.
The left must destroy all our mediating structures, the family, the church, the Boy Scouts, etc, anything that holds society together. Thus they attack the institution of marriage through everything sexual, through feminism, homosexuality, and things transsexual. They replaced the church with government as the agency that blesses marriage. They replaced God with government as the giver of “rights.” They play god, defying even science itself.
I remember when Angela Merkel of Germany spoke out against multiculturalism. I believe that other countries have done so, too. It only divides, as you say.
“White culture”? Huh? I’m a firm believer in the relative goodness and remarkable achievements of Western Civilization, but I don’t know what this “white culture’ is that you speak of. Well, I do know what “WASP” culture is, but as a Catholic, I’m not interested. But is there something other than that that is “white culture”? I’m for defending Western Civilization, not for focusing on skin color. It’s repugnant to me as a Christian and as an American.
Jerry, I was thinking specifically of King’s speech at the Washington Rally; saying, essentially, that people should be judged by their character, not the color of their skin.
You give the left a lot more competence than I do. I just figure they have no abilities whatsoever to deal rationally with people.
I’m glad you were able to pull some meaning out of Angelou’s statement because it didn’t make a lick of sense to me.
Yet they are winning.
I’m not so sure of that. They have been skating along unscathed for a few years but the backlash has been growing stronger every day. Just look at where the Black Lives Matter movement is today.
They infect every area of society. They own education and have poisoned several generations. They own the culture. Setbacks are just speed bumps. The politicians who make our laws have no clue.
I don’t know about that. Just look at Florida, our third largest State. The left is being eviscerated there. Ohio, where I live, is actually turning very red.
Abortion laws, laws against transgender surgery, elimination of critical race theory in schools, elimination of Covid mandates, are being instituted all across the country. The left is losing most of the court battles, also.
Speed bumps for the left. Meanwhile, their numbers are growing, as are the states that send Dem EC votes to Congress. We control and populate very little of the federal government. Very little of what the left passes in Congress is overturned.