I’m all for celebrating the accomplishments of African-Americans, African-Europeans, African-Asians, African-Australians, African-Antarcticians, and African-Africans with a month dedicated to their contributions to society, but it does make me wonder a bit about the writing of our history and modern accomplishments of the race.
For example, are my local television news broadcasts racist? As I watch the nightly news from time to time, I am struck by how one-sided their stories are when it comes to showing the faces of people who are arrested for murder, assault, theft, or drug use. Proportionally, African-Americans account for about 17%[1] of the state population in Florida yet in broadcasting the most egregious crime reports I see about 90% of those reports involve African-Americans. Perhaps this is just my perception but in looking at the FBI analysis[2] it seems to me for a minority population (nationally about 16%) the number of violent crimes they commit seems to far outweigh the other races. In looking at total arrests in 2018 blacks were arrested for about 27% of them with Murder/Manslaughter and Robbery exceeding the other populations. Why is that? Is it the entirety of law enforcement is racists, as the Black Lives Matter organization would have us believe, or is there a systemic failure within the black community?
Have we, the unhyphenated-Americans, done something or failed to do something which may have caused a systemic failure to raise confident and successful young black men? I am unconvinced by the social justice theories regarding Critical Race, or White Privilege, they may speak to specific acts, but for the most part, they attempt to eliminate personal responsibility from those who fail. Accepting the idea that failure is never the individuals' fault flies in the face of over 5,000 years of human history. Those who’ve succeeded in their lives have never accepted that as a reason to not pursue excellence, so why would we as a society?
A lot of people with much larger voices than I have certainly weighed in on this, but as I look at those voices there is always an underlying motive for those opinions. Just as there is with mine. The difference is I seek no power from my opinion while those with the loudest voices certainly do. I will use Al Sharpton[3] as an example. Starting out from his upbringing in Brooklyn he became a Baptist minister and advocate in the race issues of the 1970s and 80s. But history has proven him to be before all else an opportunist who has enriched himself during his campaigns to allegedly help the helpless. The case of Twana Brawley stands out as an example of this.
As I said earlier, I am all for celebrating the accomplishments of successful people of color, but when the career of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is discounted and someone like George Floyd is held up as the reason for the destruction of a city I have to question the legitimacy and value of the month.
1 comment:
I just had some parallel thoughts the other day while out on my walk. Boston just decided to remove their advanced classes in grades 4-6 due to inequality of the program due to lack of minorities. I totally get the frustration on creating programs and being able to find those gems that otherwise would fall through the cracks. And when the policies don't create a higher level courses that reflect the actual population, this seems to be the first thought... trash it, it's racist. My belief is education serves two purposes, to create the required civic minded citizen to allow proper participation in representative process (which we've failed miserable at), and to allow this country to compete with the rest of the world economically(business) and intellectually (science and research). We have advanced courses, starting young, to create an environment to foster these minds to allow us to be the leaders in the world. We can't get rid of them just because certain groups can't compete. They are advanced based on the world wide competition. I'm pretty sure China won't look over here and think, 'Those classes are racist and no fair, we should also dumb down our courses'. No, they will look at that as an opportunity to pass us. World wide competition sets the standards. What needs to be done instead, is figure out why we don't have the equivalent representation in these programs. AS I have looked at the college admission process with my own and the billion dollar industry that has grown up around it, you can really see where the overall system has failed. I have the ability to put my kids into ACT prep courses, college essay writing classes, I can get them in travel sports, and enroll them in summer camps. These are invaluable experience for creating a person that can compete on the world stage. So how do you allow those from areas where these resources don't exist get access to these resources? I'm not sure the dumbing down the requirements is the answer, and play into the current state of many minority heavy areas, which low graduation rates, high crime rates. there are more systemic issues out there, and are not created by government. Many will say that the fact that 62% of black kids grow up in single parent households is a major drivers of the graduation rates and crime, and a vast majority of those are in a female only household. One thing that jumped out at me with college admission statistics are black males have the lowest admissions in college in the US. I think the previous statics really show that. So as you look at these policies that enhance and make everything about race, instead of looking at what it takes to make everyone better to compete, you will find that these policies and the focus on micro-issues and not look at the macro issues, you will find continued failures across the minority communities.
Post a Comment