By Dr. Harold A. Black
Until a couple of years ago I thought CRT stood for cathode ray tube and BLM stood for Bureau of Land Management. No more. Now its Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter. Elections have consequences. This past one produced a tie in the Senate and a razor thin majority in the House along with a president nominated because he was not Bernie Sanders and elected because he was not Donald Trump. However, the new president is governing as though he was Bernie Sanders. Running throughout all levels of the administration has been an effort to divide Americans through imposing critical race theory on all federal agencies including the military. I have yet to figure out why. I just don’t understand why a president of the United States would keep trying to drive wedges between the races. White folks telling other white folk that they all are racists and are responsible for furthering systemic racism does not seem constructive to me. It insults all the whites – some who paid with their lives – that helped advance the civil rights movement. I am particularly grateful to those brave children of the south who befriended me at the University of Georgia at the expense of being shunned and harassed by other white students. It insults blacks – those who are high achievers and those who are not. It’s ironic being told by Ivy League educated blacks that the reason for low black achievement is racism. The high achievers know that critical race theory is a lie. It also provides an excuse for all those who have been left behind. My feeling is that continuing to emphasize CRT will not bode well for the country. The administration’s emphasis on racial division insults all minorities. Asian-Americans have been discriminated against as well. Japanese Americans were put in prison camps during World War II. Chinese immigrants suffered discrimination and in Los Angeles in 1871 were victims of a racial riot in which their community was burned and 15 were hanged. Both groups now have academic achievements and incomes greater than that of whites. Of course, the CRT mob would say that neither group was enslaved. Then there are the Hispanics (called Latinx by non-Latinos on the left) who should be enraged by CRT and all the emphasis on blacks. Hispanics are the nation’s largest minority and are growing. However, CRT ignores them – except for the pitiful white woman who refuses to teach Spanish because she is not Hispanic. It’s interesting that those on the left who insist that proof that discrimination is evident by looking at percentages ignore that Hispanics make up 19 percent of the population contrasted to 14 percent for blacks Thus, they are underrepresented in Congress having 46 representatives compared to 57 black representatives.. Based on percentages, Hispanics should have 83 seats on Congress while blacks should have 60 seats. There are 6 Hispanic and three black senators. Moreover, other black groups are excluded from the racist rhetoric embodied in CRT. Black immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa do not fit the CRT narrative. Again, these groups are omitted because they were not enslaved in America, although their ancestors may have been enslaved elsewhere. So I guess CRT only applies to the black descendants of the enslaved only in America. But what about the descendants of free blacks? That’s an interesting empirical question. CRT insults those that I regard as America’s greatest generation – the freed slaves. My great-grandparents were slaves. They had no possessions, not even a last name and yet they overcame all that and produced my ancestors, relatives, me and countless other American success stories.
When President Biden spoke in Tulsa, he was looking backward. The speech painted blacks as woefully disadvantaged not even able to employ accountants and lawyers. I guess that applied to black accountants and lawyers as well. He did not even acknowledge the efforts of Tulsa’s black population to rebuild their community. Those that came before me made incredible progress against unbelievable odds. My father’s mother was a domestic and would not let her three girls do any housework for fear of training another generation of women who cleaned white folks’ houses. Instead she insisted that they study hard and go to college. All did. All graduated. All were school teachers. If my aunts and uncles could achieve against the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow, then blacks can triumph over the efforts of the left to keep them wards of the state. The incentives not to escape the government’s welfare state are daunting. It’s little wonder why the overall well-being of American native blacks has deteriorated with the advent of government paternalism.