By: Frank Salvato
One Baltimore protester exclaimed to FOX News’ Geraldo Rivera, “I want to tell White America to stop not giving a damn about Black people.” And there you have it in a nutshell, the underlying sentiment trying to be vocalized by a violent, frustrated Black urban demographic that has taken to the streets in cities areas across America. There is just one thing wrong with that narrative. It is based in obliviousness of a cultural reality that has been prevalent for the last two to three generations. And it is truly sad.
I grew up in the 1960s. I remember full well the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The 1960s and the 1970s were decades of true and real change; change that reshaped and redefined American culture in many ways, some for the better, some for the worse. Those years gave way to the Civil Rights movement and the understanding of a need for gender equality, to name but a few of the good things that came from that era. But it also gave way to a degradation of the importance of personal responsibility, civility and a need to be a productive and positive member of a community.
During those years, children were taught to be painstakingly aware of what today would be referred to as racial privilege. In our schools and in our homes, Americans of all racial backgrounds began to understand, fully, the brilliance of the words of Civil Rights movement leaders, especially Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We were brought up – taught in our schools and by our parents – that we were to form our judgments of other people not on the color of their skin but on the conduct of their character. It made sense. And for at least two to three generations now that is the way White American children have been raised, the first of those generations now in their mid- to late-50s.
But where in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a real issue with racial disparity and discrimination, today we face a moment in time when an entire faction of American society – urban “Black America” – either won’t acknowledge or is incapable of acknowledging the fact that racial disparity and discrimination – societally and systemically, as history accurately recalls – has ceased to exist in the form they have been led to believe.
That sounds like a denial that racism exists in today’s culture. It is not. Rather, it is an observation – based in reality – that systemic racism and discrimination against Black Americans does not exist today, not in the form in which they are led to believe. Are there racists among us? Yes. That intellectually stunted way of thinking, sadly, will always be with us. It is human nature, and humans – no matter how dedicated Progressives are to perfecting the human race (even going so far as to practice eugenics, which is intrinsically detrimental to Black Americans) – will never reach perfection. But that societal malady is not systemic. It is a malady that affects individuals, not the entirety of cultures. Three generations of White Americans have been taught and conditioned to see past race; to see past the color of a person’s skin. Three generations have learned and benefited from a simple idea, that people should form opinions of other people based on their character, the actions, their deeds and the way they interact with others, not their skin color. But, evidently, sadly, urban “Black America” doesn’t seem to get this fact.
“I want to tell White America to stop not giving a damn about Black people.”
I don’t doubt that the person who made that statement truly believes in what he says. In fact, I am certain that he does. I am certain that he believes that every single White American that he passes on the street sees a difference between them. But that is a perception issue based on assumption, not a racial issue. And therein lays the crux of the problem we are facing today in Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Ferguson and elsewhere. Entire urban Black American communities are judging the entirety of “White America” by the sins of eras past (even though over 600,000 men, mostly White, died in pursuit of eradicating slavery in the US Civil War) and by the intellectually stunted actions of individuals today. The sad irony in all of this is that Black America is judging White America by the color of their skin and not the content of its character. Black America – especially urban Black America – is being racist against White America. Where post-Civil Rights Movement White America has learned from the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it appears urban Black America has jettisoned his wisdom in preference to special interest racial privilege, at least in a macro sense.
“I want to tell White America to stop not giving a damn about Black people.”
Logic mandates that there is no possible way that one person can ever truly know what is in another person’s heart – regardless of their race – unless they engage them one-on-one. I would suggest that the man who made that comment has never taken the time to actually talk to the average “White American” about the issue; that he has never had an honest “conversation” about the issue outside of his own like-minded community. Instead, the person who made this statement has been conditioned by the opportunistic politicians and the permanently disgruntled to believe a false narrative, one that divides the nation along racial lines for the purposes of acquiring and maintaining power, and one that will be hard to remove from society unless we all – not just White Americans – start looking past skin color and more towards the character of all Americans, individually.
As for me, I will not be bullied back into the false narrative. I do not judge anyone on the color of their skin, nor do I know anyone, anywhere who does. It is an antiquated thought process that serves no good thing. Instead, I judge people on their actions, their deeds; the way they interact with others, whether they are kind and supportive or jaded, uncaring and indignant, whether they live by the rule of law, working to affect change through a peaceful process, or use violence to destroy, to bully, to intimidate and coerce…I judge them on their character.
Today, as I watch Baltimore burn, I can’t say much for the character of the urban Black American community. Their actions speak for themselves. They are, sadly, disappointingly, trapped in the death-cycle false narrative that institutional racism still exists in the United States…blind to the fact that they could, alternatively, truly be “free at last.”
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.
