But you appear to be letting the validity of the second statement (with which I somewhat agree) turn the whole issue into a black and white one (pun intended) in which you simply dismiss the reality of the racism.
Consider the statistics of young black men in jail. An awful lot of them are there because crimes and convictions tend to show up most among the poorest groups in crowded situations in society. I agree that there is no specific racism in that situation (other than that the racist actions of previous generations created the a fair amount of that poverty). However, when we consider that the huge numbers of people incarcerated over the last 20 years are in for drug related crimes (including possession as well as selling) and that we have the testimony of Federal law enforcement personnel that they devote most of their energies toward the inner city, a different picture emerges of why their numbers are as high as they are.
You have also focused nearly all your attention of the poorest groups of urban blacks, but racism has an effect on the middle class, as well.
Finally, you seem to rely pretty heavily on anecdotal personal experience. I too have seen poor performing workers attempt to play the race card. There is no question that that happens. However, I have also seen racism used to keep blacks out of certain housing or put a ceiling on their careers–the apartment I rented in a mixed neighborhood where I discovered everyone in my building was white and where the landlord asked me as I moved out if I knew any white people who were looking for housing, the multiple employers of a person I know in HR who have continually asked her to find ways to let them circumvent the equal opportunity rules that she was hired to enforce, the hiring of the least qualified black by managers who were under pressure to recruit outside the “white male” box so that they could point at the hired person as an example of why hiring blacks was a bad idea.
I am in favor of black leaders getting in the faces of students and telling them that the phrase “acting white” is about the stupidest phrase in their vocabulary. I am in favor of simply dismissing charges of racism when the employee is obviously incompetent or unmotivated. I am in favor of someone (preferably in the black community) telling Jackson and Sharpton to sit down and shut up when they loudly defend black kids who have been caught (on tape!) in criminal acts.
I am not in favor of using that sort of event as an excuse to simply say it’s all their fault; let them figure it out or to declare the battle for civil rights to be “won” when I have seen ample evidence that there is still active discrimination continuing in this country.
The black mayor of New Orleans was an idiot for not taking seriously the suggestions that he needed to evacuate his people and then whining on (inter)national TV that his people had been betrayed.
But it was the white police chief in the next city that physically prevented black people from leaving the city after it flooded, then ordered his troops to scatter the people and destroy their possessions.
We had seven days of loud proclamations that (black) people trapped at the Superdome were rioting and raping and murdering each other and only a couple of months-later footnotes that none of that actually happened.
Racism does continue to play a role in our society. We will never get everyone to love one another, but we can work a lot harder to remove barriers to advancement and to treat people more equally.
