If You Must Talk About Race

Rodney Stevens is a life-coach and writer who had a column titled "If You Must talk About Race, Be Gracious" published recently in the Wall Street Journal. In the column, he says this:

I grew up black in the 1960s in a small South Carolina town. Trust me, today’s America is nothing like it was then. And even under segregation, the marginalization was not total. My father was a plumber, my mother a school librarian. We were treated kindly. The local shopkeepers wanted our business, but they also wanted to avoid trouble from the few who believed wholeheartedly in racial segregation.

The segregation wasn’t uniform. One doctor had a separate waiting room; the other didn’t. Ditto for the town’s two dentists. Once the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed separate facilities, things opened up very quickly.

Many of the authors, commentators and journalists who spend all their energy thinking and talking about race today fail to acknowledge how much has improved with regard to race in this country. There are countless successful black Americans today—doctors and lawyers, entrepreneurs and academics, journalists and artists, compassionate politicians and famous Hollywood actors.

I'm going to return to this last sentence in a bit, but first Stevens is confident that the numbers of these successful black Americans will keep growing as long as we keep in mind certain facts. He goes on to list and explain six of those facts that'd be helpful for anyone, black or white, to remember when participating in a discussion of race in America:

First, every life matters. Mine is not one cell more or less valuable than anyone else’s. That this idea has to be debated or defended is lunacy.

Second, racism still exists, but it is no longer systemic. Those who claim that racism is everywhere today are delusional. Third, we tend to think too highly of our individuality. My color, weight, sex and sexual orientation are four of the least interesting things about me.

Fourth, policemen have to be held accountable for their actions, as is being done more and more.

Fifth, do what law enforcement officers ask you to do. Obviously that won’t solve every problem because policemen are humans, not angels. But that’s part of life. Simply doing what the people in blue ask you to do would drastically reduce needless confrontations, injuries and deaths.

Sixth, if you must talk about race, be gracious and respectful. Discussions about it shouldn’t be antagonistic—one’s race isn’t a choice, after all—but for some reason many popular figures insist on making the subject as unpleasant as possible.

It's excellent advice and also an excellent suggestion for a New Year's resolution.

An example of the "countless successful black Americans today—doctors and lawyers, entrepreneurs and academics, journalists and artists, compassionate politicians and famous Hollywood actors" that Stevens mentions is Brown University professor Glenn Loury who claims in a tweet that the “anti-racism” activists are bluffing us.

In a two minute interview he dares say about the relative lag in progress of black Americans what it seems few are willing to say in public.

According to Loury there's "an equilibrium of tacit agreements" under which crucial issues like black on black crime, the status of the black family, underperformance of black students are minimized or ignored while insisting that "white privilege" and "systemic racism" explain everything that ails the black community.

He's right about the reluctance of both whites and blacks to talk about these dysfunctions. At one time this reluctance was perhaps justified by the concern that emphasizing these problems would contribute to black feelings of inferiority and fuel racist prejudices, but shifting the onus onto whites and an illusory "systemic racism" - a phenomenon that we're assured exists everywhere in society and which is so deeply embedded and insidious that no one can actually see it - not only fails to address the real problems but strips blacks of their dignity as masters of their own lives.

The bluff, according to Loury, is based on the belief by the race hustlers like Ibram X. Kendi that nobody will break these agreements, hold black Americans accountable for their successes and failures and treat them as responsible agents. There's more money to be made by these "anti-racism activists" by churning out books and lectures that make whites feel guilty about being white, for working hard and being successful, and by convincing whites that, whether they're aware of it or not, they and their whole white culture are permeated with racism.

Here's Loury:

Here I explain my idea of the "bluffing equilibrium" that stifles public discussion in America about persistent racial inequality. For more of the same, follow us at https://t.co/Wy8KpOFZx9 pic.twitter.com/x4a9DuccwE

— Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) December 29, 2020