The Many Colors of Ignorance

It never ceases to astound how people forget the significance of the Tower of Babel. Efforts to eradicate cultural division among races are always doomed to failure. The meaning of diverse, means differences. The fallacy that America is a melting pot has always been know by blacks. So why do so many folks of color go ballistic, when they are told what they already know?

By now we would hope that broad agreement would accept that all people should be equal under the law. However, only the idiot would conclude that all cultures are similar in a desire to integrate and live as neighbors. The entire subject of racism has been defined and constructed within a false paradigm. When will this country mature and allow for a sober and intelligent national dialogue on the roots of racial discontent?

Blacks need to come to grips with their own sins. Slavery in all its ugly forms is a tragedy against all of mankind. But let us not forget - "The past is what makes the present coherent," said Afro-American writer James Baldwin, and the past "will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly."

Most slaves were sold into servitude by Africans. Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave, described in his memoirs published in 1789 how African rulers carried out raids to capture slaves. "When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them, and tempts him with his wares. It is not extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields to the temptation with as little firmness, and accepts the price of his fellow creature's liberty with as little reluctance, as the enlightened merchant. Accordingly, he falls upon his neighbours, and a desperate battle ensues...if he prevails, and takes prisoners, he gratifies his avarice by selling them."

Obviously, we would stipulate that European descent plantation owners blundered in wisdom and morality when they forged their labor intensive economic system, on the backs of enslaved labor. However, indentured servants were not limited to only dark skin captives. It is time to get beyond the obstinate folly over reparations and blame, and address the natural component within all cultures that want to reside with their own.

Trent Lott is a buffoon, not because he harbors bigoted thoughts, but because he is incompetent as a leader. Jesse Jackson and NAACP president Kweisi Mfume both demanded that Lott step down as Republican leader. But both of these hacks have built careers upon cacophony deception and divisiveness. Now Mfume said "His remarks are dangerously divisive and certainly unbefitting a man who is to hold such a highly esteemed leadership role". That’s not only calling the kettle black, but casts new heights on the meaning of sanctimonious duplicity and personal privileged hypocrisy.

Multiculturalism as a goal or objective is the problem. When blacks approvingly set up their own segregated group at colleges, we are supposed to ignore the practice. Well, this is one time that we can agree, but for very different reasons. Minorities are correct when they spontaneously gravitate among their own. There is nothing wrong in wanting to associate and congregate with those who share the same cultural values and aspirations. The discussion should never have a focus on shades of color, but should acknowledge that varied cultures don’t tend; naturally, to blend together. This is true for Oriental cultures even within their own race. So why should anyone be surprised that efforts of forced integration and affirmative action will incur strong rejection, often from all sides?

Sides does not mean we can’t get along. It just means most seek to be respectful and cordial, while not mixing into a homogenized amalgamation of a synthesized common culture. Folks, that is the basic anthropological significance in the Strom Thurmond mindset. The political consequences of State Rights has at its core the freedom for "communities" to select their own course for their own indigenous environments. Tranquil interaction is enhanced, when racial harmony is recognized as a condition of separate and different life styles. Allowing a pitch battle, opening past scars will not serve anyone well.

When Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, says Lott's words were like a "shocking, if you will piercing, voice through the fabric of black America", the correct reply is GET OVER IT.

America has no duty to guarantee that each ethnic community needs to like everyone or every other group. Freedom means the capability to choose, who we call our friends. When the ability to rent to whom one wished was lost, the value in owning property became bound to only owning your own castle. When neighborhoods altered in composition, people moved. And when it was decreed that one no longer could exercise the inherent right to select hired help, many retired from business. Now we are supposed to accept that Lott needed to apologize for remarks that spoke to a reality that tolerance doesn’t mean self-destruction?

If blacks truly want to be treated with transparency, they should heed the advice of Olaudah Equiano. The deficiences within their culture and communities are reflected in their choice of their own leaders. How long will minorities be kept in bondage by their own chiefs, who fashioned chains of enslavement and are all too willing to sell out their own, because of their avarice and lust? The call for Lott’s head would be a small price to pay if it accompanied those who betrayed the Martin Luther King dream.

Segregation and Apartheid have not been discredited, they have just been migrated into a more deceptive and subtle alignment. In the version that the cultural relativists seeks, they paint a seductive face of the same age old game. It’s not about hate - but preference. Why not allow everyone to be free and choose to be with their own? It’s normal so admit it - we won’t call you a racist . . .

SARTRE - December 12, 2002