1 post tagged “correcting perceptions”

I was doing a little research on another article when I came across this great site.  On it I was acquainted with a video series on YouTube which reveals tolerance training our corporations are subjecting their employees to.  This training series was created in 1968 by a third grade school teacher. (Jane Elliot)  With the exception of including women's rights and homosexuality the training hasn't changed in 40 years.  She subjected her third grade class to this exercise to teach them about racism.  I have no doubt that racism still exists in America today, however, as demonstrated by Reverend Wright in the past month or so, much of today's racism is propagated by blacks.  I had the privilege of living outside this racist society for two years courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and I know the difference between a society that expects little of blacks and places failing programs in their communities with its blacks carrying a chip on their shoulder and believing that most people actively work to victimize them and the society that has blacks integrated into the society.  When I met a black person there, I knew he did not expect me to think less of him than of people from my own heritage.  But there is much more to the story than tolerance training is willing to deal with and therefor tolerance training is an ineffective means by which to address these issues.  In fact, if you watch all twelve segments of the video, you will see this former third grade teacher discount assimilation as meaning "make you like me."  In some ways that is true, but the way it was applied the very idea is to blaspheme the tolerance gods.  Assimilation means to work within the system with the same rights, protections, and benefits as the rest of us, not to make your heritage irrelevant and certainly not to excuse self destructive behaviors or to give special privileges to atone for our racist sins.  This has to be true of all cultures in the melting pot. 

The reason integration is failing is not the responsibility of the white Christian male anymore.  When a white man is 60 times more likely to die at the hands of a black man than a black man is to die at the hands of a white man, fear of blacks is not unreasonable.  This is not xenophobia, phobias by definition are unreasonable fears.  Blacks are much more likely to die at the hands of black men than white and whites are much more likely to die at the hands of whites so we should be more afraid of our own kind than of others.  When crime rates are staggeringly lopsided on race indicators, it is not the broken system to blame for the high representation of blacks in our prisons.  When broken homes and unwed mothers are staggeringly lopsided on race indicators, it is not the white communities debt to blacks that can fix these problems.  Liberals want to do something for blacks, well guess what, Conservatives do too, but I don't want to throw good tax dollars after bad.  I want systems that work, rather than propping up miserable failures.  That's why I'm Republican.  Republicans are the party of ideas that work.  Republicans are the party that worked to free slaves, the party that institutes programs that work the same as we have done in national parks, environmental cleanup programs, and a host of others.  Look at the history of Democrats' programs.  Which one, which single program has helped black people out of oppression?  There isn't one.