I wish I could take credit for this but, obviously, I did not write it. I found it a while back and wanted to share it with you:
Confessions of an Honest Black American
My distant cousins in African live in abject poverty, are surrounded by political corruption and exist in a perennial state of health crisis due to AIDS and other endemic diseases.
Yet here am I — as black as they — enjoying the comfort of my modest American home, the owner of two automobiles, and access to the most advanced health care system ever known.
Why the difference?
It can be summed in simple observation: My African kin are the living legacy of our African heritage. I, on the other hand, am the beneficiary of Western European culture.
Granted, that observation smacks of racial betrayal. But it is also a matter of reality. White people, once free from the medieval madness of feudalism, applied themselves to industry and, having learned to bridal social injustice, blessed their cultures – and the rest of the world – with standards of living that would have been the envy of the greatest emperors of antiquity.
It was a matter of fate that my ancestors were snatched from their African village by slave traders. Am I glad they suffered the pain and indignities of slavery? Of course not. But I am fortunate. And I am grateful that they got on that boat!
There are some who call me a fool for ignoring the lingering injustice that our African American community endures. For every dollar earned by white families, they say, we earn 62 cents. Indeed, statistics are cold calculators that cannot be ignored. $31,969 was the medium income for black families in 2008. White families earned more — much more — $50,673!
Families living in Africa, however earned a mere $315.
I ask my black American friends: Where would you rather be? In America earning 62 percent compared to white Americans? Or in Africa, earning 1 percent compared to black Americans?
Do you not understand that our African cousins would need to work 100 years to earn what we earn in one year?
And do I dare mention the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? Shall I mention that, after a career of denouncing our white countrymen, Rev. Wright retired in a white community in a $1.6 million home? Did you know that the annual wages of 5,000 Africans would hardly cover the cost?
No, I am not betraying my race; I am stating my case. The descendants of American slaves are the blessed beneficiaries of Western culture. White people gave us flight, electricity and computers. It was their culture that reached the moon, discovered and unraveled the mysteries of DNA, and probed the depths of human anatomy. They attached contraptions on their buggies and, a generation later, drove the world along Interstate highways. They replaced famine with food so abundant that obesity has become our great health concern. They connected us with terminals for traveling through air at 500 miles per hour and terminals for traveling through cyberspace at the speed of light. We gave them the Motown sound. They gave us the technology to allow that sound to be recorded and heard around the world.
Lecture me on the evils of the white devils if you will. And, for the most part, I will agree. But I will do so here, in America, not Africa. And I will remind you that in America white people elect black leaders. In Africa black people depose white leaders. And for that, their cultures suffer.
How foolish we are in our blind racist rage to destroy the western culture that enriches every aspect of our lives. How foolish to amuses ourselves with grand delusions when, in reality, we are merely regressing to the pathetic lives of our ancient culture.
Western culture is rapidly eroding. When it is gone, where will we go? Back to Africa? Back to bathing our babies in cow urine? Back to subsistence living in grass huts? Back to the witch doctors and grotesque lip plates? Back to the bloated bellies of emaciated children? Back to tribal wars and brutal chieftains? Back to ignorance and high mortality? Do we really want to go back to that Africa?
Yes, I am grateful my ancestors got on that boat. And you should be grateful, too — while it lasts.
Anonymous
Unfortunately, this looks like it was written by a dishonest white person, and doesn’t have much value unless someone can identify its (black) author.
Could be.
I agree with Frank. I would also point out the author of this article trots out the same canard that any disparity in income just has to be the result of discrimination rather than market forces ie productivity. In fact, I’ve read articles from economists suggesting that on average affirmative action costs every white worker 3K and gives blacks an additional 9k. In other words, blacks wouldn’t even make 62 cents if they weren’t subsidized by whites.
Yeah, he’s definitely off base regarding white discrimination against blacks; it’s the other way around.
You seem to imply that the majority blacks got their jobs through affirmative action. Do you have some proof that that is the case? Most employers in America are medium sized businesses. The EEOC doesn’t make sure every business in America hires exactly 12.9% blacks. Affirmative action may be enforced in certain administrative and clerical government jobs as well as for some contractors, but in the private employment market where most Americans work by far, affirmative action is voluntary. The EEOC is just there to ensure that there is no discrimination going on, but it’s not like the EEOC comes along and forces business with no black employees to hire some. You WNs have just blown the affirmative action thing so out of proportion it’s ridiculous.
Keep in mind also that there has been WHITE affirmative action for the better part of the last 400 years. When your ancestors could go to college because they were white and mine couldn’t, you guys got affirmative action. When your ancestors were given millions of acres in land grants while mine were denied the promised 40 acres and a mule after centuries of slavery, YOU guys had affirmative action. This allowed whites to accumulate land and wealth for much longer time than blacks were allowed to. This has implications that take generations to wipe out. The momentum of history and racist practices doesn’t come to a screeching halt because someone signed a bill making discrimination illegal.
Read “The Affirmative Action Hoax” by Steven Farron. We make a big deal out of A.A. because it IS a big deal. It’s a far bigger deal than the media and government want us to believe.
The EEOC does not look only for “discrimination”; it looks for “disparate impact” and “under-representation” of favored minorities as if they are proof of discrimination.
You refer to people who lived 400 years ago as “you guys”. Well I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t even born yet. In fact, my ancestors were not even in America yet.
I can think of quite a few businesses I know of where minorities(or certain minorities anyway) are under-represented. They are not being sued by the EEOC either. Reiterating my point, the EEOC doesn’t sit there monitoring every business in America making sure that its employees are mechanically balanced with the census demographics. If that were the case, they’d literally need a Chinese army of lawyers suing companies. If someone does bring a claim of discrimination, and if there is evidence of it, then the EEOC may file a lawsuit, such as: http://blog.taragana.com/business/2010/02/03/eeoc-calif-hotel-operator-settles-lawsuits-alleging-it-only-hired-chinese-banquet-servers-27587/
The EEOC doesn’t coerce private businesses to enact affirmative action policies. I don’t have the numbers handy but I’m willing to bet that only a fraction of a percent of all companies will ever have an EEOC discrimination case brought against them
This article is totally off base and self-hating!
FOr some reason a lot of race realists do not understand black people, I have seen a lot of race realists assume that black people think like white liberals… but that is just not true. Black people have a lot of different opinions.
Re: Tulio about EEOC. Any medium to large business that does not have enough “minorities” risks being sued. Time and time again, the EEOC has shown that mere “under- representation” is considered “evidence” of discrimination in their eyes. There are plenty of examples but I am not going to sit here and list them within the context of this post; it’s already been done by others and is not difficult to find – assuming you are interested in the truth.
I’ve already cited “The Affirmative Action Hoax”. Another good source is “Lost Rights” by James Bovard:
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Rights-Destruction-American-Liberty/dp/0312123337/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1273974313&sr=1-2
The so-called Black middle class is overwhelmingly dependent upon the government. Something like 40 percent of middle class Black females and 25 percent of Black males are employed in some type of government jobs on the federal, state and local levels. Most of them got those jobs through compulsory affirmative action. Take away those “jobs”, and the Black middle class would virtually disappear over night.
Upper class Blacks are over-represented by professional athletes and entertainers, not businessmen. Had it not been for affirmative action in education, virtually none of those athletes would have gotten into college to play sports and then go on to the professional level. Remove affirmative action in college admissions, and the Black upper class would virtually disappear.
No, Whites have never needed a hand out or a hand up from any other race because we are highly intelligent, competent, self-reliant, tenacious, and extremely hard working. Those qualities conceived of and built Greece, Rome, Europe, and America. Whatever intellectual capacities Blacks have, they certainly aren’t the basis for any advanced civilization that Whites would recognize as deserving admiration, awe, or envy.
It is very true that pro-black government (and quasi-government) programs artificially inflate the number of successful blacks – and then they point at those blacks and say, “See! They are just as capable as anybody else.”
I take any figures from a WN with a grain salt. Why don’t you provide a source for your claim using a reputable and neutral source that proves that 40% of the black middle class works for the government. And btw, what the hell is wrong with working for the government? Are you one of these libertarian crackpots that thinks government is unnecessary save for national defense?
Then you go bringing up athletes. Yeah like what, .0001% of the nation’s population is a professional athlete and you think that has some significant impact on figures for the black middle class? You’re a joke, dude.
Whites have never needed a handout? You kidding me? How the hell do you think Social Security and AFDC got created in the first place?? You think they were created for the purpose of benevolence to blacks?
According to this site:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_new_black_realism.html
… the figure would be 24% total for blacks. I’m not sure what that would translate into for just the black middle class.
“In other words, younger blacks seem willing to believe that America really is a land of opportunity. In the past, blacks often pulled themselves into the middle class through government jobs, and, true, 24 percent of today’s employed blacks work for federal, state, or local government.”
What’s wrong with working for the government? How about the fact that those jobs produce nothing and contribute nothing to the health of our economy. Also, the federal and state governments pay out more in federal retirement benefits than they do on welfare. Government employment, for the most part, is just another form of welfare that Blacks, disproportionately benefit from.
You need to read more carefully. I never said anything about Black professional athletes and the middle class. I said they were over-represented in the Black upper class. And yes, because there are so few of them, the Black upper class is understandably very small.
The government cannot legislate racial equality because there is no such thing, no matter how many handouts and affirmative action laws they enact. And this would not be a country you’d want to live in if all the evil racist White people were replaced by Blacks and Mexicans.