I frequently reference Nathaniel Branden’s book “The Psychology of Self-Esteem” in attempting to illustrate the immaturity and indeed futility of the sense of Victimization that informs the Woke Left. A recent Prager U. article by Larry Elder wonderfully illustrates how the Myth of Systemic Racism has been used by the Left to exonerate criminals within America’s Black community of any responsibility for behavior which, Elder maintains, is not a result of their “oppression” by White America but of their very own moral failings.
Elder shrewdly begins by quoting Barack Obama who, while never missing a chance to denounce White Supremacy, ironically, at some point in the past, said the following: “We all know the statistics. That children who grow up without a father are Five Times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; Nine Times more likely to drop out of school and 20 Times more likely to end up in prison.”
Ironically, Elder points out, stable nuclear families were far more common within the Black population in the days of Slavery than they are today, his implication clearly being that the dissolution of the Family has less to do with oppressive external factors than the decisions made by Blacks with their ever increasing freedoms. Whereas in 1965, we are told, only 25% of Black kids were born out of wedlock, by 1965 that number had exploded to 73%! The increase within the White community, on the other hand, was from 5 to 25%.
In the mid Sixties Lyndon Johnson famously launched his war on poverty. Since then, Elder says, America has spent approximately 20 trillion dollars on that front. While much of it has no doubt been put to good use by those honestly seeking to better themselves, it has also had the negative effect of rewarding bad behavior. A poll conducted by the L.A. Times in 1985 showed that 64% of the impoverished women questioned admitted they had had extra children simply to cash in on the government benefits!
The syndrome by which young Black men born into fatherless “families” join gangs and ultimately engage in criminal activity is predictable and widespread. In attempting to highlight that it is Character rather than Circumstance that ultimately defines one’s fate, Elder cites his autobiography “Dear Father, Dear Son” in which he celebrates the life of his father who, while growing up in a Jim Crow society that was decidedly racist, never stopped preaching the creed of hard work and moral responsibility, the creed that ultimately led to both his personal success and that of his son.
As I am condemned to repeat out of a very justified paranoia [yes, I know that’s a contradiction of terms], I am not suggesting there are not elements of White Racism still active within our Western Democracies. But that they are far less debilitating than they were 70 years ago, indeed far less debilitating than the hatred that continues to plague much of the non-Western world, is a simple, unequivocal fact. Given the imperfection of Human Nature, elements of xenophobia will perhaps always be with us. But the message of Larry Elder and indeed of Nathaniel Branden who, along with his erstwhile girlfriend Ayn Rand, is one of the informing voices of contemporary “conservatism,” is that all people, both Black and White, are gifted with a capacity for Intelligence and Volition that makes them alone responsible for their existential journey.
The ironically condescending message of the contemporary Left, which never stops trying to exploit the myth of White oppression, is that people of Color have neither the intelligence or character to deal with the sort of difficulties by which every person on the planet is inevitably beset. The inordinately high crime rate within Black inner-city communities, we are asked to believe, is in no way their fault. Of course the morally/intellectually null value of Inclusiveness by which the Left is informed forbids us from commenting on the quality of contemporary Black Urban Culture, even though a host of Black “conservatives” have suggested the degenerate, self-indulgent “values” celebrated by Hip Hop are far more responsible for the conditions in America’s inner cities than any conspiracy perpetrated by their White “oppressors.”