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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

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Racism is the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Tribalism is the behavior and the attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group.

Racism is evil. Tribalism can be problematic, but it can also be positive. I think of the tribalism that exists within the American nation. Love of country is tribalism, yet it is also a powerful force in defense of our nation.

When tribalism and racism mix, which is to say when someone makes a race their tribe, that’s when the wheels come off the bus, and that is, sadly, where we are today with Critical Race Theory.

CRT proponents claim to be teaching history, and indeed, they do teach certain historical truths that many would like to forget, but they also ignore a great deal of history. Many of the historical facts they do use are taken grossly out of context.

CRT is not an accurate telling of history, but a political ideology dressed in the garb of history, and it is nothing more than that. Let’s get real on racism…

It is no secret that the United States has a racist past. With 300 years of slavery and Jim Crow, our country has an unsavory past with regard to race. What is not as well known is that some of the laws that were the most racist are still on the books, and still doing great harm.

Flashback to the decades before 1933. African Americans had been moving north in great numbers to seek better economic opportunities than were available in the South. There were better economic opportunities in the North, but the African Americans moving North to take those opportunities were not as well educated as the Northerners already working those jobs. Mix in the racism that existed at that time (North and South – this being the era of Jim Crow), and African Americans could only take jobs by offering to work for a little less than their white counterparts, even though they were doing the same work, with the same levels of productivity.

Businesses learned quickly that if they hired only African Americans for those jobs that did not require as much of an education, their labor costs were lower than were those of competitors who hired only white workers. In 1933, the African American unemployment rate was lower than that for white Americans, with a workforce participation rate that was higher than that for white Americans. African Americans still made less than white Americans for the same work (which is what drove the higher workforce participation rate and the lower unemployment rate), but the pay gap was closing. The children of African American workers in the North were better educated than their parents had been, and were moving further up in the workforce than their parents had.

Just as many voters today fear that immigration from Central and South America will displace American workers, so too in the early 1930s, white voters in the North were afraid that African Americans migrating North were displacing them from jobs, and reducing their income potential. Political pressure emerged to create something America had never had before: a national minimum wage.

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed America’s first Minimum Wage Act into law, and suddenly, firms found that it was just as expensive to hire African American workers as it was to hire white workers. Racism no longer led to lower profitability compared to competitors who were not racist, and firms began hiring white people first again. The unemployment rate for African Americans immediately shot above that of white Americans, and it has never been the same as, or lower than, the unemployment rate for white Americans again.

Flash forward to South Africa, after World War Two. Black South Africans were dominating many fields, such as construction. Black South Africans, in fact, had a lower unemployment rate in South Africa than did white South Africans, and black South Africans had a higher workforce participation rate than did white South Africans. There was a pay gap between black and white workers doing the same things, but the pay gap was closing. The white labor unions pressed for political reform to address what they considered a major problem.

South Africa passed laws ensuring that black South African schools would always be inferior to white South African schools (it was a segregated society, so this was easy), and passed minimum wage and prevailing wage laws to ensure that black South African workers were just as expensive – but not as well educated – as white South Africans. Just as the minimum wage in America oppressed African American labor, so too these reforms in South Africa oppressed black South African labor. These reforms were a central pillar of the economic side of Apartheid.

Flash forward to the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Inflation had effectively eliminated our minimum wage laws. We still had minimum wages on the books, but they were lower than the market-clearing price of labor, so everyone who wanted a job could find one, and the jobs all paid more than the minimum. The African American unemployment rate and workforce participation rates were approaching the white American rates, and though there was a wage gap, it was closing. Employers were quickly catching on that they could make more money by hiring African American labor first, and this time African Americans were, on average, much better educated than they had been 30 years earlier, and poised to move much further up the income ladder.

The Democrat Party under Lyndon B. Johnson had a problem. African Americans had been voting primarily Democrat since 1934 – ironically, one year after Roosevelt passed the first law specifically aimed to oppress African American labor. Jim Crow was still in effect, and the Democrats had been fighting to keep it, using every trick in the book to block Republicans from passing the Civil Rights Act. Lyndon B. Johnson had spent most of his career in the House of Representatives, and he had a perfect record of voting against the Civil Rights Act. African Americans were on the verge of turning Republican, which Johnson knew would be the death knell of the Democrat Party. At the same time, white Americans wanted African Americans oppressed in the workforce. What was Johnson to do?

First, he flipped on the Civil Rights Act, telling Democrats to pass it so he could sign it. The Civil Rights Act passed (with nearly universal Republican support – Democrat support was split), and was signed into law in 1964.

Had Johnson stopped there, we would have a post-Racist nation today, but Johnson did not stop there. White America wanted white people protected in the workforce, which was still a job for Democrats like Lyndon B. Johnson.

Lyndon B. Johnson created what he called the ‘War on Poverty.’ Milton Friedman looked at the reforms – which were the same reforms South Africa had put in place after World War Two – and called it the ‘War on Black People.’

Lyndon B. Johnson knew that his housing and bussing laws would push, not only white people out of the inner cities, but also wealthy African Americans. ‘White Flight’ drove wealth into the suburbs. In some areas, like Kalamazoo, MI, (where I grew up), the suburbs were in the same school districts as the inner cities. Hence, the educational opportunities for African American and white American children were the same, but in bigger cities, like Detroit, the suburbs were separate cities, with separate educational systems. The suburban schools flourished, and the inner city schools decayed. There were far more people in big cities like Detroit, Chicago, and New York, than there were smaller cities, like Kalamazoo.

Minimum wage and prevailing wage laws ensured that kids graduating from High School all cost the same to hire, regardless of how well educated they were. Since the better-educated kids were in the suburbs (and were white), factories and other businesses that could move, moved to the suburbs. Over time economic opportunities in the inner cities (which were predominately African American) collapsed.

Welfare programs took care of inner-city families, but there was a catch – the father had to leave the home. In 1960, less than 30% of all  African American children were born into single-parent homes. Today, more than 80% are.

A child born into the inner city found himself or herself with no economic opportunities, other than mothers with children, who could get welfare if they were single. Men had no economic opportunities at all. Men in the inner cities found that the only economic opportunities they had were illegal, and the War on Drugs exasperated that. Over time, many inner-city children lost interest in being educated.

Affirmative Action laws were passed to try and, amongst other things, even out educational opportunities. Unfortunately, while affirmative action laws helped minority students get into college, affirmative action did so by putting students into colleges they would never have been able to get into based on SAT scores and other objective measurements. The result was that the drop-out rate for those students who ‘benefited’ from affirmative action went through the roof. As just one example, MIT will take an African American student who is in the 90th percentile in math, but all of the white students getting in are in the 99th percentile. African American students at MIT who are in the 99th percentile in math graduate at the same rates as white students at MIT, but the African American students who are below that level, and who got into MIT because of affirmative action, have sky-high drop-out rates.

Affirmative Action helps white people, who can pat themselves on the back and say, “Look how diverse we are,” but I fail to see the benefit to a 22-year-old African American who now owes $100,000 in student loans to MIT, and who dropped out without a degree. Affirmative Action, far from propping up minority students, has proven to set them up for failure.

In today’s America, African American children born into two-parent households have the same per capita economic opportunities that white children born into two-parent households have. African American children whose parents are college-educated actually do better on a per capita basis than do white children whose parents are college-educated. White children born into the inner cities do just as poorly, in terms of per capita economic outcomes, as do African American children born in the inner cities.

The difference is that only 30% of white children are born into single-parent households, whereas more than 80% of African American children are. The proportion of white families where the parents are college-educated is much higher than the proportion of African American households where the parents are college-educated. The proportion of white children growing up in situations that are conducive to success is higher than the proportion of African American children growing up in situations that are conducive to success.

And we STILL have minimum wage laws, prevailing wage laws, Affirmative Action, and all of the other oppressive laws that were a part of the War on Poverty, on the books, keeping the economic side of our actual modern system of oppression alive and well. Many African Americans are still oppressed by laws specifically designed to put them at a competitive disadvantage in the workforce.

And you can thank Lyndon B. Johnson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

And you can thank the Democrat Party.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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j. bell
j. bell
2 years ago

The real affirmative actions plans were implemented by some stores such as Sears in Chicago and another large retailer on State Street during the 1970s. They brought in and trained literally thousands of Blacks and Puerto Ricans in the computer programming industry.  You either swam, or sank.   This is where I learned Assembler language and JCL skills, that I used daily the next forty years, as a zOS sytems programmer. I saw literally hundreds of Blacks be placed professionally nationwide, through those affirmative action programs 
 
Prior to that training, I walked the streets of East Austin, Texas, waiting for the next racist Austin, Texas policeman to arrest me, for “walking while Black”. 
 
Real learning (affirmative action) comes from on the job training, and what you teach yourself daily. But you need an honest level playing field to have a chance in life.  Until I learned how to read IBM manuals, most which are still poorly written, I was a candidate for the wrong type of ‘affirmative action’, firing.   Most Blacks never had the chance in life that I had.    

To me, and this is just my opinion, ‘integration’ has destroyed Black communities, more than any economic laws on the books. The 1960s and 1970s saw tremendous movement of Blacks and mulattoes out of traditional Black communities, in attempts to ‘integrate’ White communities. 
 
This movement of the Black intelligensia (if there ever was one)  out of the Black community, left open the movement of drugs and guns into the community. The shutting down of traditional Black secondary schools at the crucial moment of integration, in my part of the South, the not bringing many of those traditional Black teachers into the White school systems, had an negative effect on the personal Black youth identity and growth. An effect which   permeates until today. I know at least one highly respected Black educator from the 1950s who told me around 1995, that ‘integration’ was the worst mistake ever made by Blacks.  I think many Black educators of his day agreed. They saw the before Black community, and the after ‘integration’ effects.

 
Our Black teachers and coaches were our ‘police’ before 1965. They would ‘jack up’ and ‘beat the s___’ out of any 17 year old who thought they were ‘adults’, who talked back to teachers, or who brought guns to school. There was not much of that ‘snatch and grab’ mentality in those  days, or I missed it. Excessive freedom (integration), uncontrolled by the early grade school teachers  ‘strap’ and  ‘board’, has nurtured ill considered traits, in later generation Black youths.
 
 
Regarding CRT, recent refusal of some district attorneys to indict for certain crimes such as the 1980s racist crack cocaine laws, 20 years for crack,  probation for powered cocaine, is CRT in the sense of trying to make amends for clearly racist laws from the past. 
 

Regarding immigration, the flooding of America with millions of Hispanics starting at the beginning of the second reconstruction, 1965, (which was not allowed prior to that time),  has been well planned by those in Mexico and the U.S. When you waterdown and dilute economic and workplace gains made by Blacks since 1965, by flooding in legal and illegal immigrants, the economic playing field is no longer level. That immigration has had far more negative impact on Blacks economic welfare, than any LBJ or Roosevelt economic laws. 
 
 
What’s not amazing is that Hispanics have  placed their people in communities in exact proportion to Blacks, in traditionally black secondary schools around the nation. All the schools in Dallas and Fort Worth which were 100% Black in 1995, are now exactly 50% Hispanic.  Uncanny! Check Atlanta Georgia and Charlotte, NC, how these Hispanics know exactly how proportionally which Black communities to move into.    ‘Hispanic and H1 Visa economic growth’ has greatly detracted from, and offset gains made by Blacks since the beginning of the second reconstruction.  LBJ only opened the door for this to happen, Reagan and Herbert Walker Bush were the true architects of this racism.  This is the ‘politics’ of the matter.   
 
CRT is needed from a Black perspective, to keep the many Blacks who don’t make good into professional sports, from becoming  predator super criminals. We are seeing more and more of this type. CRT used in this fashion will help society as a whole.
 
CRT is needed from a Black perspective, to help us do away with future generations of ‘shemmies’, homosexuals, which has always been a big problem in Black neighborhoods, such as East Austin. Blacks need a better personal image. CRT will help provide that image, and this will help society as a whole.
 
CRT should make it mandatory for Blacks aged 15 and 16 years, to visit at least two different African countries. To gain a sense of identity, personal history, and be forever thankful for what they have in the United States. I have been to Africa, and was thankful to make it back home, alive. 
 
Loss of native language and culture by Blacks centuries ago, places them in many ways  behind recent arrivals from Europe, Mexico and South America  who are allowed to maintain their native languages and native cultures, and basically move entire communities and cities from their native lands to America. CRT will help compensate.
CRT will help get rid of negative self-image among many Blacks nutured by by 100 years of Jim Crow, eg, use skin lightners to get rid of your defective Blackness. As well as some TV producers, to convince Blacks to hate Blackness, and produce light skinned progeny, ie, become White mentally.  It is this mindset of many Blacks, that has driven the ‘Black integration impulse’ of the 1950s,  from the beginning. Especially MLK’s attempt to marry a White woman in the 1950s. Young Martin Luther King was falling in love with Betty, the white daughter of a cook at  Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. 
 
“He (Horace Whitaker) listened as King resolved several times over the   next few months to marry Betty, railing out at the silly forces in life that  were keeping two people from doing what they most wanted to do.” —from the book, “Parting the Waters America in the King Years 1954-63”,  by Taylor Branch, p. 89, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1988)
  
This is why you have ‘integration’ today, because of a handful of  ‘Negroes’ like MLK, that had love Jones for White women. Garvey and many others warned against this impulse. CRT is needed to help us keep from producing future MLKs. CRT is needed by Blacks to help us keep from miscegenating our way out of existence. Please help!
 
CRT will help teach black females, no marriage, then no sex. Cut down on black female social and street prostitution. 
 
CRT will help teach Blacks self-respect, to built single family houses in traditional neighborhoods such as southside of Chicago, to built community and stop killing. It’s a win win situation for Whites and Blacks.
 
CRT will help change the hearts of White gentrificationists, to make them understand that the rich making poor people homeless, regardless of race, is sin. 
 

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