A Coward Who WILL Talk About Race

Paul E. Scates

“We could probably be more constructive in facing up to sort of the painful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and discrimination.” – Obama, after a five-second pause (no doubt to think about what would ‘play’ best with the public), when asked if he agreed with his AG’s comments that America is ‘a nation of cowards when it comes to talking about race.’

More constructive? The president, the AG, the heads of both major political parties are black. The black economy, if separated from the U.S., would be the 26th most prosperous nation in the world. And we’re ‘cowards’ because we don’t talk more about race?

What does that make the AG, Eric Holder, and every other ‘black leader,’ then, when the illegitimacy rate for blacks is over 70%, when the high-school drop-out rate for black teens is over 50%, and when black-on-black crime is responsible for 95% of the murders in this country? Are they ‘cowards’ for not confronting the vaunted ‘black community’ more aggressively about their responsibilities to teach moral values to their children? Sixty per cent of prison population is black…is that because we don’t talk more about race, or because race hustlers (like Holder, Jackson, Sharpton, et al) would be out of work if black people started acting more responsibly across the board.

Bill Cosby (Credit: Scott King)

‘Acting white’ in school – i.e., speaking English correctly, instead of using ghetto slang and ‘cool’ gibberish; actually studying and trying to prepare for jobs; etc. – is something for which young blacks are assailed and ostracized by their peers. Which cowardly ‘black leader’ has addressed that with any degree of seriousness (with the exception of Bill Cosby)?

Seems to me that the worst racism existing in the U.S. today is that which blacks hold towards whites. Jim Crow has been gone for half a century, slavery for a century and a half. . . when do blacks stop using that stuff as a crutch to explain what is actually their own laziness and irresponsibility: offered all the opportunities in the world, given special breaks and scholarships, given….’given’ practically everything I and many other poor white people would have loved to have had while growing up … yet all we hear is how ‘unfair’ the system is to blacks, and how we need a new conversation about race.

OK, let the conversation begin with this: Clean up your own act and stop blaming your irresponsibilities on whites. Stop perpetrating most of the crime in this country, although you’re only 13% of the population; expect, no…demand…effort and performance from your children; do what every emigrant group in history has done, with great success: accept and live by the accepted societal mores, standards and values, and then see how your lives turn out.

As long as you glorify punk thugs who wouldn’t work if given a job, who celebrate treating women like pieces of meat, celebrate violence as the solution to every situation where you don’t get what you want (even though you didn’t work for it and don’t deserve it!)…you’ll BE second-class citizens, and rightly so. It’s not ‘acting white’ to adhere to standards of behavior that thousands of years of human history have proven to provide the greatest safety, opportunity and peace…it’s being a decent human being.

Want to talk some more, Mr. Holder?

Formerly a liberal and an atheist, Paul E. Scates served as a Marine in Vietnam and is a lifelong student of American history, politics and culture. A former contributor to national website TooGoodReports.com, he writes his staunchly independent Conservative and informed Christian commentary for his fellow ordinary, working Americans, the “we, the people” who are ultimately responsible for preserving our Constitutional liberties.

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