This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more information.
Are black Americans being oppressed by The Man?
The position taken here is no.
Are black Americans struggling socially and financially?
Yes. But the position taken here is that black Americans aren’t struggling socially and financially because of “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.” Nope, the position taken here is that black Americans are struggling socially and financially because of poor decision-making, and that decision-making is actually being reinforced by progressive supremacy.
I will now attempt to defend the above positions, beginning with the very topical subject of police killings.
Do Police Kill Blacks More than They Kill Non-Blacks?
If we look at police killings by population numbers alone, it does appear that our police are more lethal toward black Americans than they are toward white, Hispanic, and Asian Americans. Black Americans are 12 percent of the population but account for slightly more than 26 percent of the people killed by police annually.
| Race or Ethnicity | Percent of Population | Percent of Police Killings |
|---|---|---|
| White | 61.0% | 50.3% |
| Hispanic | 18.0% | 18.7% |
| Black | 12.0% | 26.4% |
| Asian | 5.0% | 2.0% |
Source: Socialogy Toolbox
Those above numbers look bad. But here’s the rub. Our police aren’t going around randomly shooting innocent civilians who are just walking down the street. Police killings invariably take place within the context of official police activity. Police either witness a crime or are called to investigate a crime and a confrontation takes place between them and a suspect.
So maybe black Americans suffer police killings disproportionately more than other groups, not because of their skin color, but because they interact with police disproportionately more than other groups. In other words, it’s a numbers game. Take enough emotionally-charged situations fraught with uncertainty, add testosterone and guns, and a civilian is inevitably going to wind up dead—regardless of what the civilian’s skin color might be.
To test this theory, I calculated the number of police killings per 100,000 arrests for our four groups. Here are the results.
| Race or Ethnicity | Killed by Police | Arrested by Police | Killed Per 100,000 Arrests |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | 517 | 4,271,280* | 12.1 |
| Hispanic | 192 | 1,191,334 | 16.1 |
| Black | 271 | 1,972,421* | 13.7 |
| Asian | 21 | 92,737 | 22.6 |
Sources: Sociology Toolbox, Reuters, FBI Crime Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau
Now, if arrest data are a good proxy for group interaction with police, anti-black bias by the police almost completely disappears. Black Americans only suffer 1.6 more police killings per 100,000 arrests than white Americans. The groups that have a beef here are actually Hispanic and Asian Americans.
But let’s take this further. I could be wrong, of course, but I got to believe that violent criminals are more likely to resist their arrests with fists and gunfire than non-violent criminals. If that’s the case, and our police are anti-black, black Americans should suffer considerably more police killings when we control for police killings based on violent crime arrests. Surprisingly, however, this isn’t the case. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Black Americans suffer considerably FEWER police killings.
| Race or Ethnicity | Killed by Police | Arrested by Police for a Violent Crime | Killed Per 100,000 Violent Crime Arrests |
|---|---|---|---|
| White | 517 | 156,871* | 329.6 |
| Hispanic | 192 | 83,441 | 230.1 |
| Black | 271 | 136,721* | 198.2 |
| Asian | 21 | 6,102 | 344.1 |
Sources: Sociology Toolbox, Reuters, FBI Crime Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau
By no means am I suggesting that our police don’t need to improve. For every 100,000 arrests, our police kill 13.3 civilians. That may represent an ominous trend. Or it may not. Regardless, better training and tactics—and better efforts to identify and weed out rogue cops—will surely lower that kill ratio.
But make no mistake, if we’re basing police attitudes toward black Americans on the number of police killings per 100,000 arrests, I can happily report that our police are hardly anti-black.
So how do we reduce the number of black Americans killed by the police? Having better police would help a little, of course. But an even better way to reduce the number of black Americans killed by the police is to reduce the number of interactions black Americans have with the police. And this can be accomplished in two ways.
First, our politicians can help matters by reducing the number of bullshit laws. Remember Eric Garner? Eric Garner died in a confrontation with police that he escalated by resisting arrest. What was he being arrested for? Selling loosies. What are loosies? Single cigarettes. And why would people buy loosies from Mr. Garner on the street and not from a shopkeeper? Because New York City made it illegal for shopkeepers to sell loosies. If loosies were legal, Mr. Garner would have never created his black market for loosies, and the police would have never arrested him for selling loosies.
Second, black Americans can help matters by becoming more lawful. I know this is a radical concept, but if black Americans committed fewer crimes, they would have fewer interactions with the police, and they would suffer fewer deaths at the hands of the police. And the best part about this option is that it doesn’t require help from others. The police don’t have to change, and our politicians don’t have to change.
Check it out. If the black arrest rate merely equaled the white arrest rate, the number of blacks killed annually by the police would drop a whopping 58 percent.
| Race or Ethnicity | Population Count | Arrest Count | Arrests Per Million | Black Lives Saved Annually If Black Arrest Rate Equaled This Group’s Arrest Rate | Percentage Drop |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | 200,080,000 | 4,271,280* | 21,348 | 156 | 58% |
| Hispanic | 59,040,000 | 1,191,334 | 20,178 | 162 | 60% |
| Black | 39,360,000 | 1,972,421* | 50,112 | NA | NA |
| Asian | 16,400,000 | 92,737 | 5,655 | 241 | 89% |
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau and FBI Crime Statistics
Leading Indicators of Societal Oppression
Black Americans are surely victimized by criminal cops. Black Americans are also surely victimized by criminal non-cops. And some of the crime black Americans suffer is no doubt racially motivated.
But the same can be said for any group. White Americans are also victimized by criminal cops. White Americans are also victimized by criminal non-cops. And some of the crime that white Americans suffer is also racially motivated.
Being the victim of a crime—whether it’s racially motivated or not—doesn’t automatically mean you’re being oppressed. Oppression is a little more complicated than that.
To show what I mean, I devised 11 benchmarks for oppression. For each benchmark a group finds itself on the wrong side of, its members must contend with an undeserved hurdle or double-standard that has been artificially imposed and makes their path to self-actualization more difficult (i.e., they’re less free). I then applied my benchmarks to three groups—black and white Americans in America today and Jews in Nazi Germany. Black and white Americans thus represent the experimental groups in my exercise and Jews represent the control group (i.e., they categorically define what yes/no answer puts a group on the wrong side of a benchmark). Here are the results.
| Blacks in America Today | Whites in America Today | Jews in Nazi Germany | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Can be legally discriminated against? | No | Yes | Yes |
| 2. Are giving preferential treatment to artificially boost their representation in the country’s most influential schools, institutions, businesses, and legislative bodies? | Yes | No | No |
| 3. Commit more violent crimes against their historic foe than vice versa? | Yes | No | No |
| 4. Benefit from immigration laws and policies that turbo-charge their population growth and thus enhance their political and cultural power? | Yes | No | No |
| 5. Are the official villain of big education, big journalism, and big entertainment? | No | Yes | Yes |
| 6. Can be called out in mainstream society for their self-destructive behaviors? | No | Yes | Yes |
| 7. Can be called out in mainstream society for their socially unacceptable attitudes, particularly racism? | No | Yes | Yes |
| 8. Are morally obligated to have the same passion for the rights of other groups as they do for their own? | No | Yes | Yes |
| 9. Can legally start and run any lawful business, providing they abide by all applicable laws and regulations? | Yes | Yes | No |
| 10. Can legally pursue and perform any lawful trade or profession, providing they acquire and maintain the applicable certifications or licenses? | Yes | Yes | No |
| 11. Can be stripped of citizenship and sent to death camps because they have the wrong skin color or practice the wrong religion? | No | No | Yes |
Now, assuming for the moment that my chosen indicators of societal oppression are fair, a neutral observer of life in the United States today would rightly conclude that white Americans are the ones being oppressed, not black Americans.
Do I think white Americans are being oppressed? No. Being on the wrong side of indicators one through eight is troubling and could easily metastasize into something far worse if we’re not careful. But the reverse-Jim Crow, or better yet, Progressive Crow practiced in America today is largely self-imposed (i.e., it’s whites hurting whites) and nowhere near as harsh as the Jim Crow practiced in America prior to 1970 and the Nazi Crow practiced during Hitler’s reign. Moreover, being on the right side of indicators nine through eleven means a lot. It means that white Americans are still in control of their destinies. Any white American who thus takes care of his or her own poop and abides by my self-governance checklist (see below) is going to do fine.
The Self-Governance Checklist
- Shower
- Make your bed
- Exercise
- Work—either to garner more money or to garner more knowledge and wisdom
- Save—either by funding an important saving goal, reducing debt, or honing your frugality muscles
- Don’t smoke
- Avoid self-sabotage—don’t take education for granted, don’t procreate irresponsibly, don’t commit crimes, and don’t fool with drugs or marinate your liver in alcohol
- Avoid refined carbs and sugar
- Be kind to strangers
- Be loving to family and friends
Now a question. If white Americans—who are on the wrong side of eight out of eleven indicators—aren’t being oppressed, are black Americans—who are on the wrong side of zero out of eleven indicators—being oppressed? I don’t see how. And that’s the point of this exercise. Black Americans suffer far less “oppression” than our misguided (or corrupt) professors, journalists, entertainers, corporate CEOs, and politicians would have you believe. And just like white Americans, black Americans are surely in control of their destinies.
No one is stopping black Americans from doing anything socially or financially constructive. The sad truth is that black Americans do less well than white Americans—and Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans—because far too many black Americans have embraced a subprime culture (i.e., they don’t take care of their poop and don’t abide by my self-governance checklist). And when you embrace a subprime culture—whether you’re black or not—you’re going to experience subprime results. You’re going to struggle socially and financially.
Quick aside: Two great books that prove culture is more important than “oppression” are The Unheavenly City Revisited and Wealth and Poverty. The former was published in 1970 and the latter was published in 1981 and they’re the only books I remember that make a distinction between census data and comparable data when comparing group income results. Census data are just the sum of incomes of a particular group’s members divided by that group’s household count. Progressives love census data because they prove that black Americans are being “oppressed.” After all, according to census data, black households make less than half of what white households make.
But census data don’t account for a group’s behaviors. Comparable data on the other hand do. And when the authors of the above books compared black household income to white household income and controlled for just three variables—age, education, and marital status—the gap between black household income and white household income almost disappeared. In other words, a black married couple in which both spouses were 30 years old and high-school educated made the same household income as a white married couple in which both spouses were 30 years old and high-school educated. And this happy phenomenon is alive and well today in the form of Nigerian Americans (see here, here, and here). Yep, when you take care of your poop and abide by my self-governance checklist it doesn’t matter what color you are. You’re going to kick ass in America.
Progressive Supremacy
The biggest impediment to black advancement other than black people themselves is progressive supremacy.
For the purposes of this post, progressive supremacy is defined as follows:
Progressives dominate the five most influential culture-shaping institutions in American life: big education, big journalism, big entertainment, big tech, and big business. And through this dominance, they tell Americans which thoughts and behaviors are permissible and which aren’t. And anyone who dares challenge this progressive hegemony isn’t just wrong; he or she is evil and worthy of social and economic destruction. Finally, our progressive overlords enforce their hegemony in two very effective ways. First, they demand ideological purity at the institutional level (see James Damore). No uppity conservative will ever be welcome in their workplace. Second, they have loosed on the general public the fiercest defenders of party dogma since Mao’s Red Guard: the college-educated SJW. And this merry band of non-binaries relishes the task of bringing ruin to the perpetrators of wrongthink.
Okay, we have our foil, but in what way do progressives keep so many black Americans mired in a subprime culture?
First, as already noted above, progressives have wrongly identified the root cause of black problems. It’s not systemic racism and white supremacy; it’s the same problem that afflicts just about every single struggling non-black in pre-pandemic America: bad decisions chronically made over many, many years.
Second, progressives have propagated three very powerful mental diseases that make it all but impossible for the typical black American to stop tilting at windmills (i.e., white supremacy) and focus instead on the true cause of his or her woes: the guy or gal in the mirror.
Here are those three mental diseases.
The Disease of One-Quarterism
When you’re judging the quality of a group’s environment and the opportunity afforded to that group, you need to consider four things:
- The amount of mistreatment the group receives from other groups.
- The amount of mistreatment the group does to itself (i.e., self-sabotage).
- The amount of mistreatment the group directs at other groups.
- And, finally, the amount of kindness the group receives from other groups.
Let’s now look at these four variables in the context of black America.
1. Are black Americans mistreated by non-black Americans?
Without a doubt. There are roughly 288 million non-blacks in America. Not one of them is an angel. And every now and then, one of these fallen souls will fail to control his or her inner demons—and black America will be the worse for it. Here’s one horrific example:
Dylann Roof Is Sentenced to Death in Charleston Church Massacre
2. Do black Americans engage in self-sabotage?
Yep. Roughly 70 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers. The average black SAT score is 290 points below the average Asian SAT score and 181 points below the average white SAT score. Black Americans are 12 percent of the population but commit 50 percent of the murders. These three things—procreating irresponsibly, taking education for granted, and committing a ghastly amount of crime—are serious roadblocks to black advancement. And they’re all self-inflicted wounds. No one is stopping black Americans from delaying childbearing until they’re emotionally, culturally, and financially strong. No one is stopping black kids from opening an algebra book or creating a Khan Academy account. And no one is stopping black Americans from treating their fellow Americans with respect.
3. Do black Americans mistreat non-black Americans?
Yep. There are some 40 million blacks in America. Not one of them is an angel. And every now and then, one of these fallen souls will fail to control his or her inner demons—and white, Hispanic, or Asian America will be the worse for it. Here’s one horrific example:
Murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom
4. Do black Americans benefit from the kindness of non-black Americans?
You bet your sweet bippy. Here’s an example from personal experience.
When I was a public servant, I had a black co-worker who I’ll call Mike. Now, for reasons I won’t get into here, Mike’s only ride to work was his brother-in-law. When Mike’s brother-in-law took time off, Mike was stranded and he would have to use his own PTO (i.e., vacation time, personal time, or sick time). And if Mike didn’t have any PTO left, which was sadly quite commonplace, he would lose pay.
When I got word of Mike’s situation, it bothered me. I knew he had issues. But I also knew he was trying to turn his life around, and losing any pay would make that struggle even harder. So I graciously volunteered to become Mike’s back-up ride.
But here’s the rub. Whenever I became Mike’s ride, it added an hour to both my morning commute and my evening commute. More importantly, it also jeopardized my company car. I was only allowed to use my company car to commute back and forth to work and to facilitate any official municipality business that required travel. I wasn’t allowed to use my company car as a benevolent taxi service. If I got caught using my company car for an unauthorized purpose, I would have lost a benefit that easily saved me a couple of thousand dollars annually in gas and maintenance expenses.
Putting my company car on the line for Mike was the opposite of a hate crime. It was something I like to call a love legality—an act of being kind to someone of a different race or ethnicity.
My guess is that for every anti-black hate crime in this country, there are at least 1,000 pro-black love legalities. But tragically, this happy state of affairs is something very few black Americans are cognizant of. For reasons we’ll discuss shortly, they’re acutely aware of all the hate crimes they suffer but wantonly ignorant of all the love legalities they reap.
Black Americans are also wantonly ignorant of all the systemic kindness they reap. Yep, they know all about “systemic racism,” but if you asked them to name one example of systemic kindness, they’d be dumbfounded. They, like all Americans, just aren’t conditioned to think of something such as universal public education as an example of systemic kindness. But make no mistake, systemic kindness is very real, very widespread, and very much due to the efforts of white Americans.
To show what I mean, I spent a few minutes contemplating all the white-created programs and policies that provide assistance to black Americans, whether directly or indirectly. Here are the results:
- Every elite college in the country has lower admission requirements for black applicants.
- Every elite college in the country spends millions annually to make their black students feel welcome.
- Every S&P 500 company has diversity programs and policies designed to hire and promote more black Americans.
- Publicly funded K-12 education
- Pell Grants
- Student loans
- Minimum wage laws
- Roth IRAs
- An IRS standard deduction of $12,400 for single tax filers and $24,800 for married tax filers
- Earned Income Tax Credit
- Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
- Public Housing
- Medicaid
- Medicare
- Obamacare
- Social Security
Now I have some questions for you.
First, how do progressives approach the above four variables regarding black America—especially those progressives found in big education, big journalism, and big entertainment?
If you answered they harp on variable one and downplay or ignore variables two through four, you get a gold star.
Second, if you aren’t black, how do you suppose you’d feel if you were and you were fed a constant information diet of one-quarterism (i.e., variable one)?
- Every time you consume news and there’s a story about racism, the perpetrator is white and the victim is black.
- Every time you consume news and there’s a story about black underachievement, the cause of that underachievement is never self-sabotage. It’s always discrimination.
- Every time you consume news and there’s a story about a black person mistreating a non-black person, the races of the people involved are never mentioned. And if an explanation for the mistreatment of the non-black person is ever given, it’s never racism. It’s always poverty or mental illness.
- And every time you consume news and there’s a story about something cheerful, it’s never about interracial comity. You never get to see the countless examples of white people going out of their way to help black people.
I could be wrong, of course, but I got to believe that a black person fed a constant information diet of one-quarterism would eventually catch the disease of one-quarterism—that is, he or she would suffer a severe lack of trust, self-awareness, humility, and optimism. I mean, how could it be otherwise? Every day our progressive overlords tell him or her that black people are saintly and whitey is out to make their lives miserable.
One-quarterism leaves far too many black Americans with a severe case of hopelessness. This isn’t good. No group mired in hopelessness is apt to be big on self-improvement, and no group lacking a fondness for self-improvement is apt to discard its self-destructive ways.
Quick aside: I categorically reject the progressive definition of systemic racism. For example, government employees who go out of their way to mistreat black Americans aren’t following official agency policies or guidelines. They’re not behaving badly by design. They’re failing to control their inner demons and going rogue, committing serious offenses if not crimes. There’s nothing “systemic” about their actions.
Labeling crimes committed by government employees as “systemic” is an affront to logic. To better understand why, let’s consider some government employees who behave badly other than cops. Every year, over 500 school employees commit sexual crimes against students. And those are the ones we know about. I imagine we would recoil in horror if we knew the actual number of sex crimes committed annually by school employees against students. But would any progressive describe these crimes as “systemic rapism” and demand that our schools be defunded? Of course, they wouldn’t. And for good reason. No school board in the country says it’s alright for administrators, teachers, and staffers to sleep with students. Using the term “systemic rapism” when discussing, say, sexually abusive teachers would be highly unfair and highly inflammatory. So why are progressives so level-headed when it comes to criminal teachers but so hyperbolic when it comes to criminal cops? Is it because progressives are bigoted against cops?
The Disease of Privilege Envy Syndrome
Progressives are great at making the non-guilty feel guilty and the guilty feel self-righteous. One ingenious technique they use to bring about these twisted outcomes is as follows:
Define a crime in such a way that everyone is guilty of it and then only prosecute the people you don’t like.
To show how this technique works, let’s consider the crime of “privilege.”
Progressives define privilege as follows:
Any unearned advantage a person receives.
Okay, based on this definition, who in America doesn’t have some form of “privilege?” Being born with great looks or great athletic ability is an unearned advantage. Being born into a two-parent household is also an unearned advantage. Heck, being a black-owned business in a neighborhood designated for sacking by the BLM crowd is an unearned advantage as well.
Defining privilege as any unearned advantage not only makes everyone guilty of it but also muddies our moral compass. Real privilege is an unearned advantage that comes at the expense of someone else’s rights. A perfect example of this is affirmative action. Colleges have lower admission standards for black, Hispanic, and legacy applicants than they do for white, Asian, and non-legacy applicants. Yet, according to our progressive overlords, we shouldn’t make any distinction between a rich black kid who got into Harvard because of his or her skin color and a working-class white kid who came from a two-parent household and got into Harvard because he or she got a perfect SAT score. They both have “privilege.”
But of course our progressive overlords would never smear a black kid who got into Harvard because of his or her skin color as “privileged.” Nope, the privilege smear is rather selectively used. It’s only reserved for white people or men.
I completely understand why progressives find their twisted definition of privilege so appealing. It allows them to torment the groups they have little regard for—white people and men. And it allows them to be the final arbiter of which white people and men are good and which aren’t. White people and men who renounce their “privilege” and grovel for forgiveness are good. White people and men who tell progressives to shove it are bad.
But in what way does their twisted definition of privilege help black America?
Well, if black America wants nothing more than to torment white America, the progressive definition of privilege helps black America a lot.
However, if black America wants to do something a little more noble than tormenting whitey and finally rid itself of the rampant dysfunction in its homes, schools, and communities, the progressive definition of privilege is a curse.
How so?
Simply put, the progressive definition of privilege engenders a lot of privilege envy syndrome in the black community. And lest you aren’t familiar with this blog and have never come across the term privilege envy syndrome before, here’s the definition:
When a person is so rattled by the fact others have more that he or she becomes blind to the fact that he or she has enough, he or she is afflicted with privilege envy syndrome.
Black America has all the resources and talent it needs to build a wonderful success story. But it’s never going to realize that wonderful success story until it resolves to take advantage of its good fortune.
A people steeped in privilege envy syndrome, however, are unlikely to muster the resolve necessary to take advantage of their good fortune. After all, taking advantage of good fortune requires focus, and that focus is lost when you’re fretting over another group’s allegedly better fortune.
Nope, a people steeped in privilege envy syndrome will direct too much effort toward securing government-help and too little effort toward habituating self-help. And here’s a dirty little secret that our progressive overlords don’t want you to know:
Trickle-down government is just as ineffective at spreading wealth as trickle-down economics.
Black America is free, of course, to seek a government solution to the scourge of “privilege.” But how exactly is the government supposed to reduce the privilege gap? Cap the number of white couples who can marry and thus increase the white out-of-wedlock birth rate? Force Google to block any educational content from reaching the browsers in white households? Enlarge the footprint of progressive crow and forbid white Americans from opening a Roth IRA?
And let’s suppose that the government miraculously manages to reduce the privilege gap in a constitutionally lawful manner. How does a greater number of self-destructive white Americans help black America? Will struggling black Americans suddenly find child-rearing, school, and the labor market considerably less demanding?
If black America wants to advance, it need only do two things: make sure more black Americans 1) take care of their own poop, and 2) abide by my self-governance checklist. It’s as simple as that. Tilting at “privilege” is nothing but an exercise in extreme folly.
The Disease of ATES
Ever argue with a progressive?
It’s tough. Progressives have the answer to everything. Consider black Americans and education. Here’s how an argument with a progressive typically goes.
Progressive: We need education reform. Our public schools are shortchanging students of color, particularly black students.
Naive Schmuck: How so?
Progressive: School funding for one. Studies show that states devote a smaller percentage of their budgets to education than they did a generation ago. And this lack of investment in education is hurting black students the most.
Naive Schmuck: I’m confused. Just because states devote a smaller percentage of their budgets to education doesn’t mean they’re spending less on education. The feds devote a smaller percentage of its budget to defense than it did a generation ago and it’s spending more on defense than ever. Are states really starving our public schools?
Progressive: They are—once you consider all the added burdens they’ve placed on schools. A lot of our schools are now food banks, mental health clinics, and after-school daycare centers. And don’t forget, state spending on education gives you the macro picture. When we turn to the micro picture, things are even worse. Did you know that majority-black schools have less to spend per pupil than majority-white schools?
Naive Schmuck: My understanding is that the funding disparity is relatively small, around 10 percent. Is spending $1,500 less per pupil really enough to tank black learning outcomes? And how does that funding disparity explain the group differences within school districts? Why do Asians in majority-black schools do better than their black classmates, and often do better than their white counterparts in majority-white schools? The lack of funding doesn’t appear to be holding them back.
Progressive: It’s complicated. You gotta also consider things like how schools discipline students. Black students are twice as likely as white students to be suspended or expelled.
Naive Schmuck: That’s not good. Are black students committing more egregious offenses than their white counterparts? And didn’t the Obama administration issue new guidelines to fix the disparate impact of school disciplinary measures on black students?
Progressive: First, studies show that even when you control for the severity of the offense black students are still suspended and expelled more often than white students. Second, the Obama administration did issue new guidelines on school disciplinary measures and those new guidelines have helped. But here’s the problem. The majority of public school teachers are white women and white women just can’t relate to black students. They see the normal rambunctious behavior of the typical black student as a threat—to both their persons and their authority. White women have a lot of implicit bias.
Naive Schmuck: So maybe the answer is for black students to be more proactive and not leave their education entirely up to the schools. The internet is a wonderful resource and the Khan Academy is free.
Progressive: That’s problematic. Many black families lack the money to buy computers and internet service.
Naive Schmuck: Why?
Progressive: Too many single mothers. Single mothers just have enough money for the basics—if they’re lucky. Expecting them to augment the efforts of our public schools is terribly misguided and cruel.
Naive Schmuck: So maybe black Americans need to reconsider marriage. A household with two working adults will have more money to spend on computers and internet service than a household with one working adult.
Progressive: That’s very judgmental and racist. I have a good mind to expose you on Twitter and get you fired from your job.
Yep, our progressive friends have a severe case of ATES—the Answer To Everything Syndrome. It allows them to win every argument (yea!) but solve nothing (oh, well). And that’s why we’ve been fretting over the achievement gap between black and white students for at least 56 years now (see the Coleman Report).
But wait, it gets worse. Not only have our progressive friends succumbed to ATES but they have also managed to infect a majority of black Americans with ATES. And why is this bad? Think about it. In what way are struggling black Americans helped when 1) they’re supplied with an ample number of ready-made answers (i.e., excuses) for their bad decisions, and 2) they’re encouraged to reach for those ready-made answers whenever their bad decision-making is challenged?
If you answered that struggling black Americans aren’t helped at all, go straight to the head of the class.
ATES is the bane of self-improvement. After all, if you can explain away any culpability you might have for your dismal circumstances, how likely are you to take on the arduous task of changing your behaviors and attitudes? Simply put, ATES gives way too much comfort to the lazy and fearful. It condemns those with a subprime culture to always having a subprime culture.
Final Thoughts
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. If you’re a normal person, I would love to hear your feedback—whether you agree with me or not. And if you’re an SJW, feel free to commence with your Two Minutes Hate. Twitter greatly appreciates your formulaic spasms of outrage. REEEEEEE…
* Hispanics aren’t a race, of course. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, roughly 88 percent of Hispanics are white. The remaining 12 percent are mostly black. This posed a little bit of a problem because FBI crime statistics don’t disaggregate Hispanic white and black arrestees from non-Hispanic white and black arrestees. In other words, the white and black arrest data include a lot of Hispanic arrestees. To get a reasonably accurate arrest count for our four groups, then, I subtracted 88 percent of the Hispanic arrest count from the white arrest count and 12 percent of the Hispanic arrest count from the black arrest count. Oh, and just so you know, if we don’t disaggregate Hispanic white and black arrestees from non-Hispanic white and black arrestees, the small disparity between black and white police killings per 100,000 arrests becomes even smaller. Black Americans only suffer 1.01 more police killings per 100,000 arrests than white Americans (13.9 versus 12.89).
Leave a Reply