by Gary Fouse
Several years ago, when I was a part-time teacher at UC Irvine and became involved in activist issues on campus-mostly dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the anti-Semitism that was growing as a result- I became aware of two trends. First was that while Europe was teeming with Jew hatred brought upon by Muslim immigrants, the focal point for the surge in Jew hatred in the US was on our campuses. The second trend I noted was the growing use of the term, “white privilege.” In other words, whites, no matter their inner feelings about race, were inherently privileged and were obligated to surrender that privilege. Terms like, “whiteness” became common on campuses and always used in a pejorative manner. Today, you hear university professors and their indoctrinated students openly talk about the need for the entire white race to disappear from this earth. Where have we heard that kind of rhetoric before?
There is a growing sentiment on the left that whites have nothing to offer to the discussion because of their privilege and their racism, and thus, they are obligated to remain silent while being lectured by “People of Color” (an obnoxious and inaccurate term if there ever was one). Indeed, everything about white, Euro, Western culture was to be denigrated and buried. Out with Shakespeare; in with Paolo Freire.
Over the past ten years, I would say, I have watched this growing demonization of whites on our campuses. Up until a few years ago, I would have told you that Jews were the most endangered people on campus. Now I would say it is whites in general, and Jews are considered to be extra-privileged whites (although Jews come in virtually all colors.)
One might hope that faculty and administrators would have seen the growing demonization of whites and worked to reverse it in favor of bringing students together regardless of their origin or skin color. Isn’t that what we have been trying to do since the 1960s when I was coming of age (the Civil Rights Movement)? Well, sadly, the answer is no because faculty and administrators have actively encouraged this growing division while pushing the narrative that blacks and other minorities (including gays) are all victims of a racist society. In short, our universities are so far to the left, any hope that they would play a constructive role rather than a destructive one has to be considered naive. They are ignoring this growing problem just as they have ignored over 20 years the problem of anti-Semitism on their campuses.
So now we fast forward to today in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis. Was it an outrage? Yes, it was, and our justice system is dealing with it as they should. As a retired law enforcement officer, I know personally that the tactic used on Mr Floyd was wrong. I have no quarrel with those who have protested peacefully demanding justice-which they are getting.
Unfortunately, anarchists of all colors have come together to wreak havoc in most every major city. While many protested, the anarchists rioted, specifically Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM). Looting, burning, and attacks against police and random attacks on whites have shocked the nation.
One would think that the riots and the murders would be condemned by all. Wrong. The media, the Democrats, the universities, and Hollywood have basically turned a blind eye, rationalized, or applauded.
Also lost is the fact that there was a virtual pogrom committed on May 30 against the Los Angeles Jewish community of Fairfax. Synagogues were vandalized, shops were attacked, and night-riders drove down the streets shouting, “F the Jews!” It was the classic case of what the academic left likes to call “intersectionality” which, loosely interpreted, links every problem in the world-including the suffering of American blacks – to Israel. What we have here is the anti-Semites and black nationalists coming together to attack whites and Jews, in the name of Black Lives Matter and the “oppressed” Palestinians. Intersectionality at work.
Now it is time for some truth to be told.
First of all, America is not a racist country. I have said many times that when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, America was racist, and it was systemic. In the South, racism and segregation had the force of law. Today, America is not racist. Two generations of white children have been brought up to believe that all people are equal. Whites who try to discriminate based on race do so at the risk of their reputation, their job, and their future. There are laws on the books to prevent discrimination. There is no white person who can stop any black person from achieving their dreams and being all they can be. Remember Martin Luther King’s words, “Free at last…..?” Black people in America are free. Nobody, no white boogeyman, no white cop, is standing in your way-unless you are breaking the law, in which case, that’s on you.
It is an unfortunate reality that some people in the inner cities were left behind during the Civil Rights era, for a variety of reasons. So there is still poverty, crime, gangs, and drugs in the inner city. Perhaps, most devastatingly, the black nuclear family has been destroyed over the past decades. Out of wedlock births among blacks were about 25% during the darkest days of Jim Crow. Now, it is over 70% and the damage has been severe. Black conservatives like Larry Elder will say that this is the biggest problem facing black America, not white racism, which he ranks at or near the bottom of the list. With good intentions, then President Lyndon Johnson initiated a massive welfare program that served as a disincentive for women and their children to be in a two-parent household.
So here we are again. America must again consider reparations to today’s generation of African-Americans, and we must have a “frank discussion” about race. To that I say we have been having this discussion since I was a teenager in the 1960s. The “discussion” that people like Al Sharpton want to have is just another long recitation of our dark history of slavery and segregation and why little has changed since the 1960s because, after all, white people are inherently racist. Frankly, after 75 years of living through all this, I am burned out.
The fact is that racial relations are, indeed, going backwards, and this constant demonization of white people in general is coming home to roost. Sadly, this will complete the vicious circle because more white people are becoming angry and resentful. They dislike being told they are “privileged.” They dislike being told that they are racist just because of their white genes. They don’t like seeing parts of entire cities being occupied by anarchist thugs (white and black). They don’t like seeing police stations evacuated and sacked as cops retreat. The inevitable result will be the radicalization of more and more whites and the further division of our country. Fifty+ years of progress out the window.
And where are our leaders? In places where the Democrats are in charge, which is pretty much every big city, they are taking the ceremonial knee, reciting, “black lives matter,” and de-funding the police or voting to abolish them as demanded by the mobs. The Republicans are doing nothing, and even Trump seems paralyzed, not knowing what to do. Many people are concluding-especially with police seemingly disappearing from the equation- that the only thing to do is stock up on guns and ammo.
In no way do I consider myself a white nationalist, and I view their growth with alarm, but it is now time – in the year 2020 – to say that the time has passed where all the problems of blacks, whether we are talking about individuals who have experienced setbacks or failures in their lives, or black communities, like South Chicago, where people hunker down behind bars on their windows and doors at night, are to be blamed on the big white racist boogeyman.
When you hear some academic leftists, black or white, talk about the “violence being committed on black and brown bodies,” it is time to point out that over 90% of black murder victims were murdered by other blacks (witness the on-going situation in Chicago). The time when white racists in the South were actually committing violence and murdering blacks has passed – notwithstanding the incident in Brunswick, Georgia, in which three white men have been charged with shooting to death a young black man they thought was trying to burglarize homes. Anecdotal cases will always exist, but they do not represent the norm.
Black Lives Matter doesn’t care a whit about seeing seeing blacks gun each other down in South Chicago. They don’t care a whit about the untold thousands of black babies aborted every year. When others point these things out because they do care, they are simply branded as “racists.” The left, the BLM crowd, and the rioters only care when a black is killed by a white-ignoring the fact that white on black violence is minuscule compared to black on white violence, as we are witnessing today.
The nonsense that has been preached for years on our university campuses has spilled out into the society at large. Issues of “whiteness,” connections between the Palestinian issue and that of blacks in America, and abolishing the police are now being discussed in the media, in city councils, and the halls of government. Those who are charged with protecting us are kneeling, literally and figuratively. The pro-Palestinian lobby, Islamists, the radical left, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter have come together at their mythical “intersection.” The result is more hate, more violence.
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One Response
Good essay. Perhaps explicit condemnation of anti-white racism is becoming more mainstream in light of recent events.