Systemic Racism?

 

Systemic Racism?

 In the history of our country, various ethnic groups have taken their turn as being the last wave of minoroity -“different”, “dirty foreigners or aliens”, “cheap labor”, “polluting our national DNA”, etc., etc.  We have all seen the nineteenth century signs, “No Irish Need Apply”, and other ethic exclusion signs.

 Immigration of various groups from all over the world, led to ethnic ghettoes in our large cities, ward politics based on ethnicity, and colorful and derogatory ethnic name calling.  (Epithets like “Wop”, “Dago”, “Pollack”, “Mick”, “Hun”, the “N” word, etc., abounded).  These are now all discredited, and rightfully so, particularly the “N” word denigrating black Americans.

 In addition to name-calling, we did not always treat Americans of various ethnic backgrounds very well or very fairly.

 In the 19^th century, the “Chinese Exclusion Act”, and the later “Geary Act” effectively prevented immigration from China, simply because Chinese were different that we Caucasians.

 In the years leading up to and during World War I, the US experienced a wave of anti-German sentiment, fueled by super-patriotism and xenophobia, that resulted in open hostility toward all things German.  Some anecdotal examples, - Hans Kuhnwald, the concertmaster of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was interred, and Robert Prager a Southern Illinois miner, was brutally lynched.

 Perhaps the most egregious abuse of civil rights in the U.S. was FDR’s executive order 9066, which ordered the disenfranchisement and forced internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II.  This action remains a stain on our American government.

 Now to our Americans citizens with African origins. This is from ABHM, America's Black Holocaust Museum:

 “The most comprehensive analysis of shipping records over the course of the slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, edited by professors David Eltis and David Richardson. Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.

 And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage.  In fact, the overwhelming percentage of the African slaves were shipped directly to the Caribbean and South America; Brazil received 4.86 million Africans alone! Some scholars estimate that another 60,000 to 70,000 Africans ended up in the United States after touching down in the Caribbean first, so that would bring the total to approximately 450,000 Africans who arrived in the United States over the course of the slave trade.

 Incredibly, most of the 42 million members of the (U.S.) African-American community descend from this tiny group of less than half a million Africans”.

 There are two obvious differences when one discusses our dark-skinned Americans of African origin.  Firstly, their ancestors were rooted up from Africa, and brought here as slaves, or human cargo.  These black ancestors did not come here of their own free will.  Secondly, a devastating civil war, costing upwards of 700,000, primarily Caucasian, American lives was fought, with abolition of slavery being one key reason for this civil war.  The African slaves were freed and enfranchised, as a result of the Civil War, and the associated 13^th, 14^th and 15^th amendments.

 Human feelings, likes and dislikes and bigotry cannot be simply legislated, left alone, and then, hope for the best.  This is essentially what happened for nearly 100 years in the U.S., while revisionist movements in the South rebounded.  The anti-black KKK ruled in many areas.  States and the federal government mostly turned a blind eye.  This was the era of true systemic racism and white supremacy and privilege.  Black Americans flocked north, where at least they weren’t lynched.

 The progeny of African black Americans were not just another ethnic group to assimilate into mainstream America.  They bore the stigma of slavery, and a debilitating civil war fought on their behalf.  It wasn’t until the economic expansion after WWII and the civil rights movement of Dr. Martin Luther King and others in the 1960’s that the American black community began attaining close to economic and even social equality.

 An excellent Brookings Institution study reports that black American educational, and hence economic, progress stalled during the 1970-80’s onwards.  Cited as probable causes are the spread of drugs and the drug culture, black on black violence in black communities, and the deterioration of academic standards in inner city schools.  https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-progress-how-far-weve-come-and-how-far-we-have-to-go/

 Although not identified per se, it occurs that this stalling of black American progress also coincides with corrupt inner-city democrat party politics and governments, and the resultant welfare state that choked and stifled individual initiative of inner-city black Americans.

 So, although tremendous progress had been made in integrating blacks of African origin into mainstream America, detrimental societal and political factors have caused reverses, leading to discontent and reverse racism in the black community.

 All Americans were appalled and horrified at the media-fed images of George Floyd’s, death in Minneapolis in 2020, after he was restrained by a white cop’s knee and unable to breathe.  Left to deeper research were the facts that George Floyd was a convicted criminal and drug addict, and that he had Fentanyl in his system that already restricted breathing.

 Flashpoint incidents, such as the death of George Floyd, provided avowed activist Marxist groups such as “Black Lives Matter”, with the impetus to incite mostly black mobs to destructive riots across the country. A summer of death and property destruction across our major cities followed.  Adding a Marxist movement to the mix exacerbated the growing racial divide caused by drugs, street gangs, democrat party politics and educational factors.

  

Author and Methodist Minister Osheta Moore is a well-meaning. But apparently somewhat naïve Christian writer that seems to be catering to the “systemic racism” mantra being promulgated for the country by black Marxist social activists.  Osheta references the horrible, brutal, (but anecdotal) race and hate murder of James Byrd Jr. in 1998 and her 17 year old impressions of this gruesome event, as a key factor in her belief that systemic racism is endemic in our country.

She also liberally cites George Floyd’s death as above, in the same vein.

 Osheta Moore has an overall positive Christian message, and not to disparage Ms. Moore’s good intentions, but the impressions of such white on black incidents on a teenager and young woman living in mainstream America, seem hardly sufficient for a long-lasting belief that our whole country is systemically racist, and that Caucasian Americans are white supremacists and racial bigots.  The horrible racial killing of James Byrd in 1998 evoked a visceral fear in young and impressionable Osheta Moore that affected her view of race in America, as did George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

 All violence and crimes, whether white on black, black on white or black on black, should be vigorously condemned and prosecuted by the authorities.  Unfortunately, one result of the Marxist “Black Lives Matter” and “systemic racism” movement has been to weaken law enforcement and the justice system, by “defunding the police” in our large cities, and skewing the courts to not prosecute so called “social justice” offenders.

 Marxist racial justice activists like “Black Lives Matter” have seized upon individual and anecdotal examples of anti-black hate crimes, to foment a movement that they have termed “systemic racism”, and that they claim pervades all levels of white society.  In truth, if you ask any “average” Caucasian American, city or country, North or South, what they think of their black American countrymen, a preponderance of these white folks will these days express acceptance, and not bigotry, about their countrymen of color.

 Most “average Americans have taken Dr. Martin Luther King’s words to heart, judging people by the “content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.”

 Of course, there will be exceptions.  Bigotry is alive and well through-out the world.  But most white Americans do not discriminate against their fellow black Americans.  Also, past affirmative action efforts have made American blacks as employable, if not more so that their white counterparts.  That’s not to say that differences are not noticed, just as it is noticed that many people on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago speak Polish, rather than English. 

 As Marx and Saul Alinsky, and many other Marxist/communist/socialist tacticians have defined, the goal of any Marxist movement, is to tear down the existing society using class as the divisive element, and replace that society with what at first appears to be a more altruistic, more ideal, system of government.  In a relatively wealthy democratic country like the U.S., social class is not an appropriate target for Marxism, but race is, in a country with a 12% black minority.

 So, concepts like “Black Lives Matter”, “systemic racism” and “critical race theory”, are pushed out to the general population with the collaboration of a friendly, left-oriented media, with the goal that these Marxist concepts will be absorbed and implemented by the gullible public.

 It is small wonder, that a well-intentioned Osheta Moore, conditioned by her impressions of the  gruesome James Byrd hate crime, and by the Black Lives Matter and media handling of George Floyd’s death, and after years of being exposed to anti-white propaganda, would, in her naivety, embrace that our country is systemically racist.

 Ray Gruszecki/

October 18, 2021