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It’s Complicated
Soon after finally getting racial segregation abolished, black activist groups have started demanding racial segregation – even demanding their own country, in some cases. Many blacks view America as irredeemably racist. Martin Luther King wanted blacks to become full-fledged Americans, but modern black activist groups have adopted distinctly anti-American messages, as evidenced by so many black athletes refusing to stand for the flag before games, and the flag-burning in the picture to the right, and so on.
I find this so very sad. But after seeing pictures from the funeral of famed black civil rights activist John Lewis, I was not only sad but also confused. See if you notice the same thing I did from the picture below:
The black lives matter activists must have been horrified at the pictures of their hero draped in a symbol of racism. Or perhaps they weren’t. If not, then why not? The world must be a very complicated place to such people. Although I suspect many of them haven’t given such things a whole lot of thought.
They like the security, wealth, and traditions of America. They just prefer to be seen as outsiders in a country that they would never leave, because they love it here despite hating it. Or something. Maybe all that makes sense to them. But to me, it seems complicated.
Published in General
If they stop demanding things, the gravy train ends. Then they have to go out and get real jobs.
I suspect that’s the last thing they want. If they got their own country the gravy train would stop. No more white guilt to squeeze for tribute.
Jim Crow was a political problem that could be ended only through political means. Because of its success, the Civil Rights movement became the paradigm for further African American progress.
But politics is not a good path to economic advancement. As Thomas Sowell observed, ethnic groups that attempt to rise through political means are typically much less economically successful than those that largely stayed out of politics. Irish Americans, for example, who were politically active, advanced more slowly than did Jewish and Chinese Americans, who, because of bigotry, were largely excluded from public office.
Government can do little more than redistribute the economic pie; a process limited by the size of the pie. But as someone once said, the market isn’t a pie, it’s a bakery. And there’s no limit to the number of pies a bakery can produce. Anyone can get ahead in America by identifying and supplying others’ needs and wants. Since these are unlimited, there are no limits to the number of people can improve their lives by going into business. No limits, that is, as long as government doesn’t restrict competition with minimum wage laws, occupational licensing, housing restrictions, etc., etc., etc.
Black “leaders” would not remain leaders if African Americans shifted their focus from government to the market. The leaders, then, need a permanent black underclass dependent upon government entitlements – rather than on their own initiative – for survival. The surest path to such entitlements is white guilt. But the white people who were responsible for slavery and Jim Crow are dead. How do you keep white guilt alive when the only legal, systemic discrimination most people have experienced is Affirmative Action?
They’ve chosen to zero in on the (declining) number of black people killed by white police officers and blame all police officers and all white people for the deaths. So far, their technique is working extremely well.
Jinx
I don’t believe the “activists” represent the majority of people they claim to represent. The activists in the news today are Marxists socialists and energy is coming from mostly white people in Leftists cities. I don’t think it is that complicated. Socialists have been around and causing trouble for long time and they will use whatever cause they can drive their agenda. It used to be union activity, then environmentalism, then climate change, and now identity politics. It is anti-American and its extremism is not popular.
Both before and after the Civil War some freed slaves went back to Africa and formed the country of Liberia. They copied the US Constitution almost word for word. The flag is even similar. Things were okay for a time. Now it has the second lowest GDP in the world. A small city in the US would have a higher GDP. Corruption and crime are rife. There has been civil war. Tribalism abounds. Education is almost nonexistent.Murder and rape are routine .Filth and squalor are the norm. American blacks are still welcomed but few chose to go. An American on welfare would be wealthy in Liberia.
I think we should give NFAC the African country of Liberia. They would have to displace the indigenous population of course. I wonder how that would work out.
[Oh. And I thought I could be first to speculate on Liberia.]
“Whose streets? Our streets!”
Prolly also applies to flags.
I like the thought pieces that conjecture on the internal life of BLM rioters as if they weren’t paid mercenaries churning it out for a bit of drug and whore money. The sheer cognitive bankruptcy of an antifamily, antipolice, pro civil disorder policy stance is so transparently hateful and destructive that it is perfectly complimented by the two month rampage in areas where the civil leadership is too feeble to protect its taxpayers against the felony festivals.
Xi is laughing. But he doesn’t need to fund the Insurrection on his own.
Contributors to BLM antifamily, antipolice, pro civil disorder movement according to NBC:
So be sure to show your support for the dissolution of the greatest nation ever today by patronizing these businesses!
Taxpayer’s streets
it’s obviously blatant virtue signaling
I’m sure all the shareholders of these companies want to dismantle capitalism and the nuclear family and defund the police
As a congressman what was John Lewis’s signature achievement?
An ex black panther said Lewis was a sellout (3 years ago on Tucker Carlson).
He said Democrats + Blacks = Poverty
I think the entire congressional black caucus represents districts that have higher rates of poverty than the national median.
Which brings us back to the question of, if it ain’t virtue, what are they actually signaling?
You’re probably right. And if so, then ending poverty would end their political tenure.
That their taxes aren’t high enough.
Don’t forget the Criterion Channel!
A lot of the problem lay in the fact that they’re only about 5% of the population; they’re essentially foreign colonizers.
And you’d be wrong. Prince Georges County, Maryland, was 64.5% black as of the 2010 census, with a median household income of $83,034 and ranks 208th out of 3143 counties in the United States for median income. Their representatives in the Congressional Black Caucus are Anthony G. Brown, a retired Army colonel, and Kweisi Mfume, a Freemason.
Oh no! Say it ain’t so!
Yep.
This assumes that they even know who John Lewis is. I have my doubts.
I think that Montgomery County is not representative of either low-income or black constituencies.
I didn’t mention Montgomery County. Prince Georges County has far lower rates of poverty than the national median and is represented by two Black Caucus members, so the proposition fails on its face.
Sorry. Maybe it was a TIA. Or micro- fit of narcolepsy. It’s in the DC economic orbit, so there’s that. Live and learn.
politically correct and fashionable lies, specifically black lies
Thank you for the correction.
I should change ‘entire’ to ‘almost all’.
Don’t most residents of PGC, Maryland work for the federal government or a lobbyist?
It’s part of the swamp
PGC is an outlier
PG County: 30.1% of all residents over the age of 25 had graduated from college and obtained a bachelor’s degree (17.8%) or professional degree (12.2%). 86.2% of all residents over the age of 25 were high school graduates or higher
For a wealthy county, why is the number of college graduates only 30%?
That’s funny. I debated saying that, myself. But PG County is odd in that it is geographically adjacent to one of the richest counties in the US (Montgomery County), and the source of those riches, the US capitol district itself.
It is part of the swamp. And a lot of the residents work for the federal government, including a lot of military presence as well as civilian and contractor employees. In my personal experience, the highest proportion I encountered was in the military and military related business.
As DC turned into a drug addled kleptocracy under the likes of Mayor Marion Barry, blacks found good jobs and affordable homes in PG. The crime was not as bad and fighting it was not as futile as in DC. PG has to compete with Montgomery County and Fairfax County with their better schools for the doctors and lawyers. Even under one party rule, PG is moving forward and is far more Cosby Show than Sanford and Son.
Agreed.
The other factor to bear in mind is that the better assimilated the black family, the more likely they are to integrate. I have spent hundreds of hours in hospitals and in prisons for different reasons. The hospitals are diverse and people work as one. Residents in prison are much more likely to self-segregate and cooperate “among their own”.
In the prison ministry, we try to establish a Christian network of society and cooperation that they see as also their own. Building bridges. Residents of all colors occasionally comment at the open mic that they were amazed to be seated at integrated tables for days with no attention payed to the ethnic barriers. To them the idea seemed unobtainable.
So successful minorities tend to integrate with other successful people generally, having the same interests with regard to education, taxes, employment opportunities and the rest. They are not as easy to corral into a district to create a Black Caucus member, but even if they were would they see their interests better represented by joining the Black Caucus? I don’t know.