Ran a 5k today....anyway...
As you will recall, Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. is the Harvard professor who g
ot arrested by
Cambridge Police a month or so ago.
Fred Reed was a police reporter
for one of the large Washington newspapers.
He now writes a column
which can be googled ~ "Fred on Everything."
Fred published a
weekly online column in which he got to say the things
his editors
would never, ever have let him write in the paper. His stuff is
iconoclastic and various articles have probably offended everyone . .
.
Regardless of political orientation. So, with the warning that "This
is
definitely not politically correct," here comes Fred . . .
The following is an essay regarding the failings of a system and a
culture.
Please note that he elegantly describes the mood of
many Americans and he
does so without prejudice.
Slavery
Reparations ..........by Fred Reed!
On the Web I find that
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of
Afro-American Studies at
Harvard, is demanding that whites pay reparations to blacks.
It's
because of slavery, see. He is joined in this endeavor by a gaggle of
other professional blacks. I guess he'll send me a bill, huh?
I
feel like saying, "Let me get this straight, Hank. I'm slow. Be
patient.
You want free money because of slavery, right? I don't
blame you." I'd
like free money too. Tell you what. I believe in
justice.
I'll give you a million dollars for every
slave I own,
and another million for every year you were a
slave.
Fair enough?
But tell me, how many slaves do you
suppose I have?
In round numbers, I mean...say to the nearest dozen.
And how long were you
a slave?
Oh. In other words,
I
owe you reparations for something that I didn't do and didn't happen to
you.
That makes sense. Like lug nuts on a birthday
cake.
Personally, I think you owe me reparations for things you
didn't do and
never happened to me.
I've never been coated in Dutch
chocolate and
thrown from the Eiffel Tower . I'll bet you've never
done it to anyone. I
want reparations. Kind of silly, isn't
it?
But if we're going to talk about reparations, that's a
street that runs in
two directions. You want money from me for what
some other whites did to
some other blacks in another
century?
How about you guys paying whites reparations for
current expenses caused
by blacks? Not long ago blacks burned down
half of Los Angeles , a city in
my country.
Cities are expensive,
Hank. Build one sometime and you'll see
what I mean. Whites had to pay
taxes to repair Los Angeles for you. You
can send me a
check.
Now, yes, I know you burned LA because you didn't like
the verdict in the
trial of those police officers.
Well, I didn't
like the verdict in the Simpson trial.
But I didn't burn my house and
loot Korean grocers, or burn down a city.
Over the years blacks
have burned a lot of American cities: Newark ,
Detroit , Watts , on
and on. Now add in the fantastic cost over the years
of welfare in all
its forms,
the cost of all of those police calls people had to make,
for cells and
jails and security systems in department
stores.
I can't live in the capital city of my own country because
of crime
committed by blacks. Toss in the cultural cost of lowering
standards in
everything for the benefit of blacks. See what I
mean?
Now, I'd view things differently if you said to me, "Fred,
blacks can't
get anywhere in a modern country without education. We
know that. We need
better schools, smarter teachers, harder courses,
books with smaller pictures
and bigger words. Can you help
us?"
I'd say, "Hallelujah! Hoo-ahh! Not just yes, but hell yes.
Let's sell an
aircraft carrier and get these folks some real schools
and get them into
the economic main-stream.' I'd say It partly because
it would be the right
thing to do, and partly because I'd like to add
you guys to the tax base.
The current custodial state is expensive.
I'd just love for blacks to
study and learn to compete and stop
burning places. But is it going to happen?
You may not believe it, but
I, and most whites, don't like seeing blacks
as miserable and screwed
up as they are.
I spend a fair amount of time in the projects.
Those places are ugly. It's
no fun watching perfectly good kids turn
into semi-literate dope dealers
who barely speak English. It just
plain ain't right. But, Hank, what am I
supposed to do about it? I
can't do your children's homework. At some point,
people have to do
things for themselves, or they don't get done. Maybe it's
time.
I'll tell you what I see out in the world, Hank... I
think blacks are too
accustomed to getting anything they want by just
demanding it. True, it
has worked for over half a century. Get a few
hundred people in the street,
implicitly threaten to loot and burn, hol ler
about slavery, and sadly the
Great White Cash Spigot turns
on.
Thing is, whites don't much buy it any longer. Most recognize
that what
once was a civil-rights movement has become a shakedown
game. Few people
still feel responsible for the failings and
inadequacies of blacks. Political
correctness keeps the lid on -- but
everyone knows the score. Whichscares
me, Hank.
On one hand,
blacks hate whites and incline toward looting and burning.
(The whites
you hate are the ones who marched in the civil-rights movement.
Ever
think about that?)
On the other hand, whites quietly grow wearier
and wearier of it. Not
good, Hank.
On the third hand (allow me
three hands, for rhetorical convenience),
blacks keep demanding
things. As I write, you demand reparations for slavery.
Blacks in
Oklahoma (I think it was) want money for some ancient race
riot.
Other blacks reject the Declaration of Independence. Blacks
in New York
hint broadly at burning and looting over a trial, yet more
demand the
elimination of the Confederate flag, and the federal equal
opportunity apparatus,
which means blacks want to sue Silicon Valley
for not hiring nonexistent
black engineers. 20That's a lot of
demanding for one month,Hank.
What happens if whites ever say,
"No"?
Now, how about you? You've got a cushy job up there at
Harvard, and you
can hoot and holler about what swine and bandits
whites are. I guess it's
lots of fun, and you get a salary for it to
boot. But don't you think you might
do blacks more good if you told
them to complain less and study more?
For example, if you want
blacks to work in Silicon Gulch, the best
approach might be to find
some really smart black guys, and get them to study
digital design ~ not
Black Studies (as you teach). That's how everybody else
does it. It
works. Then blacks wouldn't feel left out, and racial tensions
would
decline. Sound like a plan?
Just out of curiosity, how many hours a
week do professors of
Afro-American Studies spend in the projects,
encouraging poor black kids to study
real-life sho-nuf
subjects?