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The American way of bigotry | page 1, 2, 3
The bottom line is this: How can blacks expect justice from whites, if whites cannot expect it from blacks? If one group cannot imagine what it is like to be the other, what is it that they are appealing to in each other when they ask for justice and respect? "There, but for the grace of God, go I," is the fundamental ethical intuition. If we cannot imagine ourselves in the place of another, what sympathy can we have for them? What kinship can we feel? How can we regard them as brothers and sisters under the skin? We can't. And that is the problem that those who employ the separatist argument must confront. There is admittedly at least a kernel of truth in the separatist complaint. Life experiences are different and differences can be important. Existential differences undoubtedly form the basis of many intellectual disagreements, and provide the ground of our pluralistic identity. But the basis of our American identity is an injunction to accept these differences in order to overcome them: e pluribus unum. Out of many cultures and many ethnicities, one. If I show care for you, I probably have the capacity to empathize with your experience and understand who you are. It is your ability to recognize this, and to listen to me as a friend (as well as my ability to listen to you) that forms the basis of our ability to coexist with each other in a democratic framework. If you ignore me and my concerns, on the other hand, you invite a similar response from me. Taking this a step further, if you show hostility to me I probably am not going to care as much about you as I may have, and I might even be tempted to reciprocate that feeling of hostility. A significant amount of the hostility anyone experiences is often self-induced. The hostility that black separatism projects toward non-blacks is, not surprisingly, a proximate cause of the lack of sympathy that is often returned. In recent decades, there has been a palpable decline in the sympathy that other Americans feel for the agendas of the civil rights movement. It should be evident that this is directly related to the growth of separatist feelings and ideas in the African-American community, and the perversion of the communal civil rights movement into separatist agendas. The civil-rights movement Martin Luther King Jr. led was based on the old ethics and the old integrationist philosophy. It was supported by 90 percent majorities in the Congress and the overwhelming majority of the white population. David Horowitz David Horowitz's column appears on the News site every other Monday.
The same cannot be said for the "civil rights" policies of the current African-American leadership. Racial preferences, which are considered the sine qua non of a civil rights loyalty these days, are rejected by almost as large majorities among non- Recognizing this fact, African-Americans have to ask themselves whether this is the result of racist attitudes on the part of whites or whether it is a failure of their own leadership to articulate worthy agendas. If Alice Huber and Jack White want to call someone as committed to civil rights issues as I am a "racist" because I disagree with their assessment of some racial grievances, they must bear responsibility for the decreasing power of the term itself. In fact, the term "racism" has lost a great deal of its sting in recent decades through its abusive use by separatist demagogues. If White, a prime offender in these matters, had written his slander for the Village Voice or the Amsterdam News, no one would have paid any attention or cared. The reason is that those institutions have so abused the term, by applying it frivolously to political opponents, that few people find their rhetoric credible anymore. It is only the authority of Time that gives White's slanders their weight. If Time continues to publish racial rants like his, its own credibility will diminish. Drawing inspiration from the separatist ideas of Malcolm X, the present leaders of the African-American community have squandered the moral capital that Martin Luther King Jr. accumulated, and thereby undermined the civil rights cause they claim to support. Ask yourself which current African-American civil rights leader has any significant respect among communities that are not black or politically leftist? Certainly not Kweisi Mfume, Julian Bond or Jesse Jackson, whose moral authority among most Americans remains virtually nil. Under this kind of "leadership" the African-American community is in danger of isolating itself and reviving its own segregation, a somber thought indeed. That is a lesson to ponder, and not only for Alice Huber and Jack White.
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