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Racism is Alive and Well in America

It's just a variety of racism that's politically incorrect to discuss because the perpetrators aren't white. Eric Holder was right when he said we're a nation of cowards for refusing to have an open discussion about race. But it's guilt and fear and shame and condescension and politics that keeps us from having this discussion.

GUILT

White people in this country are pathologically guilty about the sins of the past, even though most white people today had nothing to do with lynchings, Jim Crow laws, slavery, institutional discrimination, etc. We are also guilty about the economic disparities between whites and Hispanics and blacks, even though these disparities have far more to do with productivity disparities than racism, which in turn has everything to do with cultural differences and virtually nothing to do with race. Guilt forces white people into only wanting to have discussions about race that adhere to the white oppressor narrative, and eschewing any other.

FEAR

It is part of school curriculum everywhere to spend a lot of time reading, discussing, and watching films about racism in American history. Mississippi Burning, In the Heat of the Night, Separate But Equal, Brother Future, countless documentaries, etc, contribute to the American school student's understanding of what race relations were like in the old days (or at least, we are getting one part of a much larger story). Blacks and possibly Hispanics are seemingly unaware of just how terrified white people are of being called racist, partly as a result of this. Once, when I was working at a drive-through, the kitchen was taking too long to prepare a customer's order (nobody in the kitchen could have a clue what race the drive-through customers were and were not in a position to drag their feet, more to the point we had an racially diverse staff), and as I was finally handing the customer his order, he said "I hope it's not because of my color that it took so long." I was terrified at being associated with lynch-mobs, hood-wearing rednecks, George Wallace, shouting low-life mobs, etc., so I instantly put an extra order of fries in his bag to make up for the wait. Giving the customer a lagniappe is ordinary when the customer had to wait too long or there was some other problem, as a way of keeping customers happy. But what I did with the fries was solely a white guilt move.

After he drove away it occurred to me how powerful white guilt is, and how, if I were black or Hispanic or American Indian, I could exploit the heck out of it for personal gain. And I strongly believe that many many people do exploit white guilt for personal gain. An otherwise unemployable humanities PhD (but I repeat myself) could exploit white guilt to be given a professorship (or a whole studies department) where other humanities PhDs have to settle for working in book shops, for example. I don't see how any good can come about by lessening the incentives for an entire ethnic group to educate itself and become productive. Booker T. Washington was right, and his approach was the approach adopted (not according to any grand plan but due to people following the incentives they faced and adhering to the work ethic they group up in) by Jewish, German, and Chinese immigrants to this country, or to Brazil, or to Argentina, or to South Africa, or to Malaysia, etc. But I'm getting off-track. Many non-whites are also afraid of being called a "race traitor" or some such thing for discussing openly things that need to be addressed, which leads me to.....

SHAME

Here I'm speaking primarily of the shame felt by blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and other economically disparate racial groups about the dysfunctional cultures that have gripped them. To a certain extent, these dysfunctional cultures formed as a reaction to the institutions of society. An entire cultural shift happened in many American Indians groups as a result of forced resettling and segregation onto reservations. An entire culture shift happened as a result of huge masses of blacks resorting to welfare instead of work, making illegitimacy and absentee fathers the norm among blacks where once it was the exception.

The particulars are for a whole other post (indeed I've talked about this before on this blog as the interplay between culture and economics is a favorite subject of mine), but the long and short of it is that many black people feel deep shame about the high crime rate, high illiteracy rate, widespread improvidence, uncouthness, even "loud-talking." It is something that many minority groups do not discuss in front of white people, but only in racially uniform company. And it is shame that keeps people from discussing this dysfunctional culture openly.

CONDESCENSION

This is one you don't hear about much but it was introduced to me by reading a Larry Elder book (The Ten Things You Can't Say In America). It is the concept that whites hold non-whites to lower standards. For example, he tells the story of an attendee of some conference on minorities in film who spoke to the group about how hard it was for him to find work in the industry, and how the attendee (who was a black guy) believe he was the victim of racism from would-be employers. Larry Elder asked a white woman who was in attendance, during the drive home, what she thought of the speaker. Her answer was that she felt sorry for the guy, and that he may have a point about racism. Then Larry asked her what her opinion would be if the guy was white, but said the same things and spoke in the same way. She realized her mistake. She said that if the guy were white, and spoke in the same way, she would say that the guy came across as uneducated, uncouth, and speaking bad English, and that she wouldn't hire a guy like that either. She realized she had two standards, one for black people, one for white people.

For black people, her standards were lower. Her attitude, and the attitude I see from many whites, is verging on subconscious but it goes like this: "I shouldn't really expect black people to speak good English or be all that educated or work hard or have a good job, that would be expecting too much from a black guy." You saw this white condescension on display when Obama ran for President and people couldn't stop talking about how incredibly bright he was because he said "before" instead of "befo" (unless he was speaking to an all-black audience) and because he used proper English and had been to Harvard. It's like how when people say their dog is really smart because it can open a door, when if the brightest thing a human could do is open the door you'd call them mentally retarded.

A lot of white people just have lower expectations for black people or Hispanics and don't even see it as a racist attitude, when it totally is. "Oh, they couldn't learn proper English because it wasn't spoken in their household." That excuse never held back Asian immigrants. I've met more Asian immigrants than I can count whose parents are from another country and who themselves were born elsewhere and grew up in Asian-American communities but who speak flawless English. But people have one standard for one group and another standard for another.

It is this white condescension that prevents people from saying things like "you know, maybe we should stop glorifying rap stars who have been unrepentant gang members, pimps, murderers, thugs, etc." Because white condescension will make white people think "nah, this is normal for black people, in their culture it's okay so we shouldn't say anything." You simply let all of the gangsterism, thuggery, misogyny, crass materialism, criminality, illiteracy, innumeracy, etc. pass because after all, "they're only black."

White people often don't realize they're doing this until it's pointed out to them.

POLITICS

And the last thing that keeps us from having an honest discussion about race is politics, which is another way of saying it's about power, ego, and money. I suppose, since racism was prolonged in this country by politics in the first place it shouldn't be a surprise that because of political reasons, we still haven't sorted all this race stuff out. It was the government that sanctioned slavery as a legal institution and Africans as property, it was the government that put into place keeping blacks from moving into this or that neighborhood, or owning land, or marrying whites, or voting, or using this or that park or public facility, and it was the government that decided to make up for these shameful acts by swapping out black fathers and installing the welfare state instead (don't agree with me? Lyndon Johnson, one of the architects of the modern American welfare state, agreed with me), and it was the government that lessened incentives for underachieving minorities to do better by enacting racial quotas (either real or de facto) in hiring and promotion and subcontracting.

There's a lot of politics invested in the racial status quo, a lot of people in positions of political power or with cushy jobs who might find themselves forced to get a real job if we could move past our obsession/fear/guilt/shame/etc. over race.

I Apologize to Ted Rall: A Clearer Explanation of His Beliefs

Ted Rall (who must have an even slower weekend than I do) feels I misquoted him. He doesn't seem to dispute that the quote I attributed to him (which is actually a caption from a cartoon, not a direct quote) is his actual attitude, but it ruffled his feathers that I presented (and call this a goof-up on my part for not seeing this) it as a direct quote when it technically wasn't.

So let's look at some quotes from interviews and books by Ted Rall so we get a better idea of how he really thinks and feels. I'll provide links too this time.

"I’m all the way on the far left, as far as you can get, so I would like to see a completely leftist proletariat dictatorship"

A war is coming. At stake: our lives, the planet, freedom, living. The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. Are you going to fight back? Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?

Again, I don't have anything personally against Ted Rall. I'd help him change a tire if he were stuck on the side of the road, I'd hold the door open for him if he was coming into a restaurant and I was heading out, I think he can actually be pretty funny sometimes. But I also see him as the victim/member of a cult, which is how I think of all far-leftists, and so I pity them while at the same time being a little unnerved at any political power they wield.

Just like you have to be a brain-washed Scientologist to believe that psychiatry was invented by Nazis or that L. Ron Hubbard actually has a degree in physics, or that you have to be a brain-washed Nation of Islam member to believe that mountains are caused by high-tech bombs or that a UFO built in Japan ages ago will cause the apocalypse of whatever, you also have to be brain-washed to believe that socialism in preferable to free market capitalism, or that forced unionization actually makes workers better off, etc.

I don't use "brain-washed" as a pejorative, but as the closest description I can think of to what could cause a person to ignore reality. Coerced unionization, for example, has been shown time and again to cause a rise in unemployment and in price levels by artificially making labor too expensive. Coerced unionization is great for the lucky few who get in, but it simply creates a barrier to entry to other workers and causes goods and services to cost more, effectively lowering peoples' incomes. This is common knowledge among economists, backed up by study after study as well as basic economic price theory. Yet the idea persists among left-wingers that the way to help workers is to unionize them and to force employers to deal with unions rather than individual workers, and that if you oppose forced unionization then you are anti-worker or pro-rich or whatever.

The reason I advocated free market capitalism is because of my concern for the poor, and for the average worker, not my concern for the wealthy. That is why I say left-wing politics are like a cult or a religion, it requires you to suspend your patronization of reality.

I Was a Smidge Harsh and Perhaps I Should Explain

I talked in my last post about "dedicated leftists," and everything I had to say about leftists in that post is necessarily (but not exclusively) about that subset of leftists. What is a "dedicated leftist"? It's a term I invented cuz I wasn't sure how else to put it. Let me put it this way, I believe left-wing politics of the Michael Moore variety is something that young people are drawn to because it sounds good to them, but that as one matures and learns more about the world, one grows out of. It takes dedication to commit yourself to an ideology that is proven false at every turn. Socialism, social democracy, or whatever you want to call the collectivist statism practiced by the left these days, simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny, which is why it has become a fringe minority among economists and why the Chicago School had so much impact. Theories are all well and good, but real-world track records can demolish any theory, and the real-world track record of free market capitalism and that of centrally-planned economies is very clear to anybody who appreciates facts. To be a dedicated leftist, you have to be the sort of person who only admits certain facts to lodge themselves in their consciousness and ignores others.

Note I'm not letting all right-wingers off the hook, there are plenty of right-wingers who prefer their preconceptions to a reasoned analysis of the facts, and remain willfully blind on issues like war and free trade. But that is not the point of this post or the preceding one.

A recurring theme among many libertarians is that they were once leftists who couldn't help but turn to free market capitalism as a result of their devotion to logic and empirical fact. Thomas Sowell began as a young Marxist economist, until his real world experiences working with the Labor Department (and I think also the State Department) showed him that he could either cling to his beliefs and ignore inconvenient truths, or embrace truth and change his beliefs. His fellow Marxist co-workers chose to ignore the truth, he chose to embrace it. Milton Friedman used to be a New Dealer. John Stossel used to be a liberal. Arnold Kling used to be a socialist. The list goes on. These people were leftists but they clearly were not dedicated leftists because they allowed themselves to be guided by truth to wherever it led them.

There are three basic reactions that anybody with strong opinions can have when faced with an argument or a purported fact which counters their beliefs.

1) The first reaction is to quickly find a counter-argument or counter-fact. The attitude here is like noticing a table is wobbly so you put a folded-up paper towel under it. You ignore the problem with the table but satisfy you were able to make it sturdy again with a makeshift argument or solution.

This is sometimes called grasping at straws, usually when the person reacting has found a weak counter-argument or counter-fact. But it may be the appropriate reaction if the counter-argument or counter-fact outweighs whatever the original argument or fact was.

A frequent example from the left is to say that if we cut education spending, we will actually incur greater costs through societal decay.

2) The second reaction is to deny the argument or the fact. This is done in different ways, it may be that the source of a given fact is untrustworthy or that a given argument has flaws. Or it could be that the person is choosing to ignore reality.

An example is the left refusing to have a serious discussion about abortion and what it actually is. Honestly, ask any "pro-choice" person what an abortion actually does, like what the actual procedure is. See what they say. Inevitably they will say things like "removing tissue to prevent pregnancy" or some such thing. Absolutely no reference to "limbs," or "bones" or "dice" or "baby" will be made.

3) The third reaction comes when the first two aren't working. This is when a person actually says to themselves: perhaps this argument/fact has merit, and if it does, what does that mean then?

I'll give you an example from my own life: when I read more about pornography in Japan and realized I could no longer say that there was a causal relationship between porn consumption and violent crime (you hear this a lot in the church), given that porn is very popular in Japan yet violent crime remains low. I didn't have a "change of heart" about pornography laws, rather I had a change of heart about my own pride after which I decided I would draw conclusions from facts rather than be led by conclusions to whatever facts I could find that supported my conclusion.

Other examples are those leftists courageous enough to admit that they've been on the wrong side of the teachers' union debates. They swallowed their pride first and then looked at the facts again.

And I think this difference in how we react to our own pride is very important. It humbles us about what we really know and what we don't know. And I think pride is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to intellectual honesty the left faces, because unlike, say, American conservatism or Judeo-Christian ethics, which emphasize humility and treating people like equals, left-wing viewpoints tend to sort people into the "enlightened" and....everybody who comes under them. There is a certain smugness you don't see elsewhere. The most patriotic, jingoistic, ex-Marine, GOP-voting Texan doesn't think his pickup truck makes him better than other people the way leftists think their Prius makes them better than other people. Consider this statement (sorry, quotation from a cartoon, which does not IN ANY WAY reflect the actual opinion of Ted Rall, who in fact voted for Bush and come to think of it, doesn't even write a cartoon) from Ted Rall, a very strongly-left-wing political cartoonist:

"Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared."

Or another Rall gem:

"Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don't demand our respect."

Anybody with a basic knowledge of how geography works shouldn't be surprised that coastal areas (I notice he leaves the Gulf Coast and the Alaskan Coast out of this analysis, both of which are far more cosmopolitan than you might think) have greater varieties of food and people. I realize he's being (partly) tongue-in-cheek here, but he's becoming extremely petty when he starts talking about "cooler movies" and "better music." As for knowing what's going on in the world, most conservatives I talk to want to talk a lot about what's going on in the world, not just at home. He probably means that because liberals are so often well-off, they travel more and thus know more about, say, driving in France or hostels in Indonesia. Polls actually show that conservatives know more about basic economic principles and the workings of the government better than liberals.

Isn't that funny? Liberals, who love the government, know less about how it actually works than do conservatives. Most liberals I talk to are unclear about where the government gets its money, how it is spent, what happens as a result of this or that program, etc. They are more concern on goals and "what ought to be" and see government fiat as a way of making those goals happen.

Trying to Get Inside the Mind of the Left

On of my pastimes is to figure out what makes leftists think the way they do. I have plenty of disagreements with conservatives, and as a former-conservative-turned-libertarian I believe I have a very good understanding of how they think, cuz I used to think those thoughts. But leftists can puzzle me, because to be a dedicated leftist, one has to put on all sorts of mental blinders. You have to become like a Scientologist and simply ignore huge swathes of reality because it conflicts with your worldview.

To be a dedicated leftist, you must entirely ignore the unqualified success of free market capitalism and ignore the dismal failures of socialism. You must purposefully not think about the actual effects of the policies you advocate and concentrate only on your intentions. You must put your own preconceptions above the facts.

I'll give you an example: poverty in America. To anybody living in Bangladesh or Guinea, the idea of poverty in America is a joke. What we call "poverty" in this country would be a comfortable middle class life-style over there, because the alleged poor in this country live in such abundance. You simply cannot argue with the facts, that the overwhelming majority of the "poor" in this country have a higher standard of material living than the average upper-middle class person of forty years ago did. The average poor person in this country has air conditioning, cable tv, cell phone service, at least one car, more living space than the average Japanese family, and despite the myths, has ready access to affordable nutritious food.

I have pointed this out to leftists, and while they usually don't deny it, they ignore it and move on. They find other ways in which to distort the truth the poor in America to create the impression that things are worse than they seem. I pointed out to a leftist that his map of "food insecurity" in this country happened to correlate perfectly with a map of obesity. The obvious answer, after a quick look at the facts, is that the "food insecurity" thing is a myth, his answer was to blame obesity on greed and inequality. Huh? You truly have to shut your brain off and drink the Kool Aid to be a leftist.

The thing is, leftists used to have pretentions of being scientific (they sometimes still do, they are always talking about this or that "myth" they have debunked with half-truths and distorted statistics), and they still practice cargo cult science in abundance in such areas as "education research" or "social theory." But for the most part that pretentions seems to have flown out the window. Which explains why they are always so eager to shut down viewpoints other than their own (yes, they do want to get Rush off the air).

It's hard for me to understand how they function, because my instincts are to look at the facts and draw conclusions, theirs are to stick with their conclusions regardless of the facts. I saw that America's immigration and drug policies weren't working and I changed my mind. They see that capitalism is working and invent things to complain about.

Here is an article that is a great example. Let's look at some of the examples of leftist non-thought present:

Gorski wanted Parsons USD 503 teachers Wednesday to grasp that, "The achievement gap is not as much an achievement gap as an opportunity gap. ... By calling it an achievement gap it puts full responsibility on our most disenfranchised, and I think that is problematic."

I hear this repeated all of the time, and there is no denying that different people face different opportunities. That cannot be overcome, one cannot "redistribute opportunities." The wealthy will always exist and they will always have opportunities that the average person will not have. That is not the same thing as saying that the wealthy will always be able to achieve things that ordinary people will never achieve, it just means those achievements will come harder. Despite the obsolete leftist belief that most wealthy people inherited their money, the fact is that most wealthy people actually earned their money, and many if not most of them started off with ordinary family backgrounds. Leftists hate this because it shows how well the free market system works. Due to their religion of collectivism (and yes, I believe that all dedicated leftists belong to that religion and put it ahead of all else--their behavior makes more sense when you think of them that way), they do not want to see meritocracy and individualism working well. So they must poo-poo. Despite the night-and-day difference in track records between collectivism and freedom, they must make faith-based statements like "it's not an achievement gap, it's an opportunity gap." The reason this speaker says we musn't "blame the victim," or however you want to phrase it, is because it conflicts with his religion--collectivism. Moving on:

Culture of poverty, first coined by Oscar Lewis and based on ethnographic studies of a few small Mexican communities, is the idea that poor people share all the same beliefs, values and behaviors -- such as frequent violence. He extrapolated his findings to suggest a universal culture of poverty.

The rest of the article is about how wrong this all is. While the exact details are worth debating, right off the bat the leftists misunderstand/purposefully distort. They present a straw man version of a competing philosophy and then debunk it, a common tactic of the reality-denier. In reality, Lewis wasn't talking about all poor people, which is why if you try to apply this philosophy to all poor people you will fail. Rather, he was talking about cultures which are pathologically inclined towards poverty for the reasons he outlined. Chinese immigrants who came to this country poor but whose descendants became doctors, scientists, engineers, and professionals were not what he was talking about. Poor white southerners, ghetto-dwelling black people, Hispanics, and other groups which have much higher rates of generational poverty, generational criminality, illiteracy, etc. etc. are what Lewis was talking about. Ask anybody who actually lives in such a community and they will agree whole heartedly that such a culture of poverty exists, a culture that glorifies ignorance and slovenliness and a life of crime, and that denigrates education and hard work as being for suckers. Leftists use the fact that not every single member of a poor community fits this mold as a reason to dismiss the theory entirely, when it is the best explanation there is of the generational poverty we see in this country.

Instead, they fall back on the old, old socialist notion that "the system" is to blame, and that education is biased in favor of English speakers and their is a "glass ceiling" preventing non-whites from succeeding, etc. This view falls to pieces when one looks at the history of Chinese immigrants in this country (German and Jewish immigrants are worth looking at too but Chinese were the most discriminated against by "the system" so their success is the best example to use).

Apart from black slaves during the era of slavery, there is probably no ethnic group that was more discriminated against in America than Chinese immigrants. They were restricted in numbers, forced (by law, not by the free market) out of gainful employment and into menial work, exploited, lived in poverty, grouped into ghettos, forbidden to marry whites, the list goes on. Their children grew up in families that did not have access to the mainstream white culture, didn't speak English, etc. Every aspect of "the system" was against them. Today their Chinese-American descendants outperform whites on IQ tests, educational scores, incomes, representation in the professions, science, medicine, etc. How did they do that? Because they didn't have a culture of poverty. The culture of poverty is a real thing. Leftists hate this because it does indeed transfer blame for the achievement gap onto a dysfunctional culture, which there is no government fix for. In fact, government redistribution schemes only make things worse by acting as a massive enabler for illegitimacy, improvidence, laziness, etc.

To believe the poor are poor because of their own shortcomings ignores the impact of rising costs of health care, gasoline, housing, utilities and food.

More blaming the system. There's not doubt that higher price levels affect the poor the worse, but blaming poverty on systemic causes like this doesn't fit the facts. The poor, as I've pointed out, have better housing, utilities, food, etc. than many middle class people in other countries. Many poor people will cut back on medical spending before cutting their cell phone or cable tv service. That is improvidence and an aspect of the culture of poverty, but leftists don't want to talk about it.

Regarding stereotypes of the poor -- they are lazy, live on welfare, are wasteful, abuse drugs and alcohol, are prone to crime and violence and they do not value education -- Gorski said they have all been proven wrong. They are myths perpetuated by parents, police and the media.

Here's another example of how you have to put on mental blinders to be a dedicated leftist. Any astute googler can, in just ten minutes, summon the data which shows that the poor in this country do indeed work fewer hours, tend to subsist on welfare more often (although the rolls declined after welfare reform, which the left hated, and the creation of the American welfare state has not made a dent in American "poverty levels"), they do tend to abuse drugs and alcohol more, they do tend to be over-represented among criminals, and they do tend to value education less. Ask any cop.

But as you might expect, when you put their backs to the wall with facts, the left has an excuse for each one of these. The poor work less because they are discriminated against and so can't find work (in that respect they are actually partially correct, the existence of minimum wage laws ensures that the least productive among us will always be unemployable), or they have to go on welfare because greedy Big Agri/Big Pharma/Big Oil/Big Whatever charges too much (gosh, how did the Chinese ever lift themselves out of poverty?), if they abuse drugs it's because there isn't enough government funding for arts centers and community centers, and (I love this one) if they are over-represented among those being arrested, or prosecuted, or in prison (yes, yes, and yes) it's because the wealthy use the law as a way of keeping down the poor.

This is a hand-me-down of a modified version of one aspect of Marx's philosophy, and in spite of our many disagreements I actually have respect for Marx and do not like to see him distorted. The wealthy do not, in fact, use the law as a political tool to keep the poor down (they do, however, use the law as a political tool to direct customers/subsidies to their businesses, which is an example of statism, not free market capitalism) because keeping the poor down is a waste of their time. The poor keep themselves down, for the most part.

Bad social and cultural habits tend to come in groups. It's not surprising that people whose cultural and family background predisposes them to either improvidence, or crime, or illiteracy, or drunkenness, or something similar, would simultaneously and by extension predispose them to the others. This is why the poor tend to be the most obese among us and the wealthy tend to be fitter. People with bad habits tend to have them in groups, people with good habits (hard-working, values education, provident, etc.) tend to have those habits in groups too.

Leftists shrink from this culture of poverty thing for two big reason, the "blame the system" reason I already talked about (that's where the religion of collectivism comes in) and because it sounds like an old-fashioned, classist viewpoint, when in fact it is in complete disharmony with classism. Classist viewpoints see the socioeconomic classes as static, that poor people beget poor people, rich people beget rich people, middle class people beget middle class people, etc. You will hear (or heard, since this is an archaic viewpoint in western culture) that people were "bred for" a life of servitude, or "bred for" aristocracy, or whatever. This is a disgusting, elitist viewpoint that is the cousin of racism.

The idea of a culture of poverty is entirely different, because it does not begin by saying that poverty is generational, but begins by saying that where poverty is generational, then, ceteris paribus, a culture of poverty is to blame. That is, for those segments of the lower classes that do not ascend over the generations, it is a cultural phenomenon at work. There are cases where "the system" can be blamed for generational poverty, such as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, etc..........

Regarding welfare, the majority who collect welfare are not the poor, but those who work and lose their jobs for a short time. Despite popular notions that so much of the U.S budget is spent on welfare, less than 1 percent goes toward welfare.

Actually more like 15% of GDP is spent on welfare (that's excluding education, including education it's closer to 20%). How can one be a leftist and hold facts in high regard? And notice how leftists, as part of their religion, love to make welfare sound like a program we all take part in, rather than something reserved mainly for the generationally poor, by using statistics that are too broad to really tell you much. In this way they can claim the the idea of the welfare cheat or the single mother who breeds to get welfare is a "myth" that has been "debunked." But anybody who has seriously studied American welfare knows darn well that abuse of the system abounds (though it has been reduced drastically after welfare reform, which, again, the leftists hated, so here they are taking advantage of the good results of a policy they hated, and trying to spit it back in our face as a failure of understanding our part).

False Accusations of Racism

Like most white people, I've been called a racist at least once in my life, and as always, it's not for doing or saying anything racist but for saying something that is taboo for a white person to say in a politically-correct environment. As an example, pointing out the high level of crime among male black youths. It's an innocent little statistical fact, not a smear, and yet for a white male to point it out is like walking across a mine field, you never know what you'll set off. And I'm talking about just pointing it out, not making some kind of white supremacy argument.

This kind of thing has got to stop, but I don't think it will stop until certain ethnic groups more or less achieve economic parity with the majority of the population, and I don't think that will happen without some major cultural shifts. And I don't mean cultural shifts among whites.

If I point out that white southerners (excluding Yankee-fied pockets such as parts of Florida or Texas) on the whole do not earn as much as white Northerners, or that they tend to read less, or do worse in math or reading scores, or tend to attend or complete college less, or when they do get a college degree they tend not to major in STEM, medicine, economics, etc. but in other softer degrees, or that they tend to be fatter, or even such things as pointing out that white southerners are often louder than many white northerners, I would just be reciting a bunch of statistics which point to some aspects of white southern culture that "hold back" the South, for lack of a better term.

Southerners like to pin all of their woes on Northerners, it's common to hear that the South is still suffering from the devastation visited upon it by the North during and especially after the Civil War. And there was plenty of devastation. This mirrors the argument made by many black people that many of their woes (lower than average job earnings, high school graduation rates, college graduation rates, representation in medicine, engineering, science, business, and higher rates of crime and single-mother households) are legacies of slavery.

But past devastation alone cannot account for the earnings and other disparities between rural white Southerners and the majority of the population, or between blacks and the majority of the population, etc. After slavery was abolished, it was actually the Chinese immigrants who faced the worst kind of racism and segregation laws, not the blacks, but these days the Chinese-American population earns more than the averages, learns more than the average, is way over-represented in the sciences, academia, etc. One place they are greatly under-represented is in government.

Likewise, the Jews were almost wiped out by Hitler, but many of them came to America, rebuilt their lives and families, and they too earn and learn more, are over-represented in society's upper-echelons, etc.

The point of this is to illustrate how with the right cultural background, an ethnic group can thrive even after the most extreme oppression possible. As bad as slavery and Jim Crow laws in America were, they were a whisper compared to the Holocaust. Nor can white Southerners just blame Northerners for everything. I suppose I should point out right now that I believe the effect of white racism is a minimal contributor to the economic disparities between blacks and whites, or hispanics and whites, etc. The disparities between Asians and whites certainly aren't a result of Asians being anti-white. I think such disparities exist because, on the whole, blacks and hispanics have not made themselves as productive as the average person--they haven't gone to college as much, or when they do they tend to major in lower-paying degrees, and they tend not to open businesses as much as white people, or Asians for that matter. For lack of a better way to put it I believe these disparities are the outcome of problems in "black culture." Black people are allowed to talk about these problems amongst each other (higher rates of illiteracy, low graduation rates, high crime rates, drug problems, lower rates of savings, lower workforce participation rates, higher illegitimacy rates, low pants, etc.), but it is still taboo for a white person to talk about these things. Even black people will take heat for bringing up these things. Barack Obama and Bill Cosby have both been criticized for comments they've made.

Getting back to the main topic, one wonders why false accusations of racism are so common from certain ethnic groups but not from others. Where is the Chinese-American equivalent of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, immediately flying to any part of the country where an asian guy had his toes stepped on and holding protests, vigils, and threatening to sue unless changes are made to the system? Too busy having a real job, I suppose. I think the reason these false accusations fly from blacks and Hispanics (I'll cover false accusations from white people in a bit) are chiefly because of the existing economic disparities between them and the rest of society, and merely pointing out an tragic truth like the high black crime rate is pouring salt on a wound. Like Zora Neale Hurston said, "my people, my people!"

I think that people in general think of themselves as part of a larger "tribe" and when the tribe has its dirty laundry aired, the shame can instantly metamorphose into anger at the airer of said laundry, and the anger can be confused, by the person who feels it, as justified anger at real racism, or if the airer is black, at being "talked down to" by a guy who "acts white."

Everybody does this. How often did you, as a teenager, react with anger at your parents for them pointing out how you hadn't done your chores or your homework? That was you turning your shame into anger, and you will quickly rationalize the anger you feel however you need to. Events from the past and existing disparities provide a very convenient rationale for the person who wants to call their anger a reaction to racism.

Coming from white people, I think the reason is almost entirely political. Leftists use the word "racist" as a club, and it's got to stop. I think most accusations of "racist!" coming from a white liberal are obvious rhetorical ploys and not expressions of genuine feeling. There is also "definition creep," the way words change on us. There are people using the word "racism" in bizarre ways, ways the word never meant before. Now, if you criticize Welsh people, you're being "racist," as if the Welsh were a race and not just a nationality. McDonald's was criticized as being racist for celebrating black history month and having some kind of advertising campaign centered around this (the accusation I heard came from white conservatives, for what it's worth). There is nothing racist about selling hamburgers to black people, or saying "all Italian men are sluts." The other big way in which "racist" and "racism" is being changed is to apply it to religion. Criticize Jews or Judaism and you're a racist, or criticize Hindus and you're racist. Criticize Muslims and you're definitely racist.

I think part of that has to do with the Holocaust, and people like Hitler making popular the belief that Jews were somehow a race, when there are black Jews, white Jews, Persian Jews, Arab Jews, etc. Jews are defined by their faith, as are Muslims. I find anti-Jewish rhetoric offensive when it is made racist by the people who make it, when the people making the statement adhere to the Jews-as-race belief (either extremist Muslims or extremist white nationalists). But is it racist when the New Testament of the Bible points out that Jews who do not believe in Christ have separated themselves from God and do not have salvation? That is a theological point, not a racial one.

A Serious Question about the Wisconsin Pandemonium

I understand why Democrat politicians and the people who work for them are upset at something that takes away political power from the unions, after all the unions are how the Democrats launder money. I'd expect Republican politicians to be similarly up in arms if the military were suddenly disbanded: a major source of money and political support would have been diminished. And I understand why the actual union members aren't happy about this, they'll lose a lot of their expensive perks and job security. IOW, they'll have to do what everybody else does and actually earn their keep or lose their job. Stay productive or be terminated. Join the real world for once in your lives, union members.

But I don't understand the anger and harshness over what happened in Wisconsin. There are near-riots at the Wisconsin state capitol building, the internet is exploding with left-wing rage, etc. And if you aren't actually a Democrat politican, or somebody who works for them, or an actual union member, you shouldn't be upset at all. Union members are earning above-market-level salaries and benefits at the expense of everybody else. No serious, sober economic analysis of the situation would lead one to think that the lack of competition and efficiency going on among government employees is a good thing. No serious person is going to think "yes, paying too much for labor and going broke by funding golden parachute pensions instead of operating more efficiently and saving the tax-payers money is a good thing."

Which leads me to believe that most of the people who are so angry don't really know much about the actual situation. I think they may be full of misconceptions and half-truths about the situation, but I think if you sat them down and actually hashed out the issues, you'd quickly find that they just don't know much about what's happening. I think many die-hard union supporters who are not actual union members themselves fall into two categories: limousine liberals trying to make a show of how sympathetic they are to "the common man" (as they used to say), and people who don't know much about what enforced unionization actually means.

And the "enforced" is really the nub of the issue. Collective bargaining isn't the problem, really. In effect, a union operates as an employment agency, a subcontractor. But when a business hires an agency to, say, clean the building or do their IT work, there is no government agency forcing them to stick with that particular agency, or to pay them a certain amount, or to prevent them from firing workers who aren't up to snuff, etc. There is truck and barter going on among employers and employees, and through trial and error, guided by the price system, eventually an arrangement will be settled on that is the most efficient one possible.

But enforced unionization prevents this from happening, especially in governments, which are notoriously slow and static anyway. It's probably too subtle a point for the political pundits to go into, and certainly too subtle for headlines, but what is really happening is that the government is foolishly agreeing to hire people for much more than they are actually worth, not fire anybody no matter how incompetent, and go broke paying for top-notch pension and insurance schemes. Leaving aside union politics, this is really just another case of a politically-well-connected special interest seeking rents from the government. The particulars may differ from contractors hired to build public works, or agricultural subsidies, but the economics are the same.

One last point: the slogan I keep hearing is "they're destroying the middle class/working families." I doubt the people saying that have honestly thought about what that means for more than a few seconds, but I'd like to ask them: if de-unionization of government workers means that working families or the middle class are being destroyed, does that mean that the great majority of the working population, which is not unionized, is already destroyed? Why are states which are not heavily unionized thriving economically in comparison to states where unions had free reign?

I happen to think that collective bargaining can actually be a good thing, when unions are not political bodies, do not get special favors or any kind of recognition from the government (such as closed-shop laws, etc.), but when they are honest bodies of workers who have collectively decided to dictate terms of employment to employers. There are times when this has been effective. Where unions go wrong is when they assume that merely be being a union, that they are right and all of their demands are reasonable, and therefore they deserve to have the government force their employers to put up with them. Telling employers what labor to buy and how much to pay for it is exactly the same, in principle, from the government telling you what brand of toothpaste to buy, where to shop, how much to pay, etc.

Unions can be a good thing when they are voluntarily formed and when employers voluntarily abide by union demands, because this is nothing more than a particular mechanism to smooth over the bidding process (Hazlitt).