Black civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker inveighed against “gangsta rap” as a cancer devouring the moral fiber of America’s Black urban youth. More recently, “conservative” Brandon Tatum, also a person of color, says he stopped listening to rap when he decided he was no longer interested in shooting people or degrading Women. But in his latest book “How to be an Anti-Racist,” Ibram X. Kendi manifests the crass indifference to morality tolerated and indeed encouraged by contemporary “progressives.” The N.Y. Times’ review of Kendi’s work declares it to be “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” Written by another Black American, Jeffrey C. Stewart, it supports Kendi’s contention that the “assimilationist discourse” of those such as Tucker and Tatum, however well-intentioned, is repulsive because it “implies we are not good enough on our own, but must constantly emulate white people in order to be accepted.” In denouncing the rage, racism and misogyny evident in much rap, they were not, apparently, engaging in rational moral valuations but succumbing to the wills of their White oppressors! But is it not Kendi and Stewart who are the racists, who cannot get beyond their own skin color to see the world with any degree of clarity? Kendi’s language reeks of one driven by resentment, one who has reduced the complexities of history to mere issues of power. Its Black people vs. White people, the latter, unconcerned with Truth and Untruth, Right and Wrong, simply, pathetically, demanding the rest of the world slavishly accept their values. Its a cynical narrative informed by the cynicism implicit in the Left’s informing paradigm; an expression of hatred rooted in the conviction that all others are similarly motivated; the product of a world-view which would seem to ensure a future of never-ending strife based on the superficialities of Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation.
Martin Luther King’s “dream” was of a world where all would be judged by the quality of their character rather than the incidentals of Identity. Yet in our contemporary world it is only Identity that counts. It is an absurdly superficial perspective yet one which has led the bulk of our so-called intellectuals to conclude that the murder of a highly flawed Black man by four Minneapolis cops, two of whom, given their records, should no longer have been cops, is obviously indicative of “systemic white racism” in America. Dr. Voddie Bauchman, a Black man and Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Zambia, on the other hand, states unequivocally that his travels have led him to conclude that “Black people in America are the freest and most prosperous Black people in the world.” It is a self-evident fact, however imperfect the social dynamic of the U.S., but facts are not really important to the members of ANTIA and BLM. Are you aware that Patrisse Cullors, one of the co-founders of BLM, can be seen in a video from 2015 bragging that she is “super versed” in the stratagems of Marxism? The movement’s self-admitted goals, there for anyone to see, are the destruction of the nuclear family and ultimately of the free-market economy itself. Is the prime motive of those on the Left who are encouraging the violence presently underway in the streets of America really the welfare of that country’s Black people or something far more fundamental and indeed ideological?
No one is suggesting that everyone on the Left is equally fanatical in their motivations but the following quote from socialist Herbert Marcuse is fairly clear in its depiction of the sentiment implicit in the agenda of Western “progressivism.”
“The West is guilty of genocidal crimes against every civilization and culture it has encountered. American and Western Civilization are the world’s greatest repositories for racism, sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Fascism, and Nazism. American society is oppressive, evil and undeserving of loyalty.” [Tool for Deconstructing the West]
A member of the Frankfurt School of Theorists forced to flee Germany as WW II approached, Marcuse settled at Columbia University where he became one of the mentors of the Sixties Cultural Revolution. Indeed he coined the phrase “Make love not war.” Repulsed by the “oppressiveness” of Capitalism, by its failure to ensure prosperity for all, he was quite comfortable in supporting the benefits of Communism, this in spite of its totalitarian disdain for the very principle of personal freedom. Such violations of logic riddle “progressive” political discourse. Hence the notion promulgated by most in the consensus media that Trump represents the most serious threat to America’s Democracy, even as those same geniuses continue to exonerate utter disrespect for the Rule of Law, utter disrespect for the lives and property of thousands of Americans who may not have a racist bone in their bodies, who in many cases may in fact be Black, indeed utter disrespect for the principle of Free Speech, anyone who disapproves of their narrative likely to have their reputations if not careers ended by the simple fact of their dissent!
In 2018 slightly over 6000 White Americans were the victims of homicides, slightly over 7000 Blacks, this in spite of the fact that they constitute less than 20% of the population. While 90% of the colored people killed were dispatched by their own kind, the Google page containing these statistics is rife with books and articles offering exonerating explanations. That Blacks wantonly kill other Blacks is a product not of the degenerate moral status of many ghetto residents but simply a matter the close proximity in which they live. That the number of Black victims is grossly out of proportion with their population is simply a result of the abject poverty by which they are beset. And of course that any White person should suggest that “systemic” racism may not be the chief social issue confronting Black Americans is simply a product of their insufferable arrogance. At the same time, honest, open-minded people of color such as Tucker and Tatum are disdainfully dismissed as “Uncle Toms.” The sort of resentment we noted in Kendi has metastasized throughout public discourse, indeed has been granted legitimacy by the dehumanizing paradigm of the Left; the abandonment of a truly moral perspective for the Neo-Marxist, Postmodern notion that “ruling elites” are simply incapable of any genuine empathy for “the other.” While I know of not a single person willing to exonerate George Floyd’s murderers, we Whites are all apparently the carriers of an unconscious though pernicious racial animus! And that, we are asked to accept, is not the product of a grossly simplistic stereotype but an inarguable fact.