March 21, 2008
What if we agree with Pastor Wright?
Bookworm performs a thought experiment: what if we agree with Pastor Wright's diagnosis of America as irredeemably racist? What then do blacks want? A sample:
[As for] the same laws that Obama continues to demand we pass, Wright and other African-Americans have concluded that we've failed dismally in all these efforts. No matter what we do, we're so deeply tainted and racist that nothing changes.I do not understand why the black community, having weighed us (white America) and found us wanting, continues to demand that we save it. Even conceding that everything wrong with the black community is indeed our fault, it's become pretty apparent that we (that is, white Americans) are not fixing the problems. The profound irony, of course, is that the lack of fixes doesn't affect us very much at all - but it affects black Americans terribly.If things are as bad as Wright and his fellow travelers say, African Americans should be rejecting the Obama message of more government, rather than embracing it. After all, by their own testimony, the government is a failure. It has not done what it set out to do. African Americans should be demanding an entirely new approach, rather than more of the same. That they're not making such demands can lead us to a couple of entirely different conclusions. The first is that, when it comes to the subject of government programs and race, African Americans fall within the jocular definition of insanity, which has one doing the same thing over and over, but expecting a different result. The second, alternative conclusion, is that things have, in fact, improved under the government's aegis, and that African Americans are worried that, if they concede that this is true, white America will say "Great, the job is done," and then turn off the spigot.