January 07, 2014
Source: Shutterstock
If you look at what people do instead of what they say, you will note that the races do not want to associate and indeed don”t much like each other. In Washington, DC, where I lived for many years, the races coexisted in compulsory amity at work but then went to separate neighborhoods, bars, and restaurants. When blacks wearied of the (black, actually) violence of the city, they moved to Prince George’s County in Maryland, heavily black; whites went to Fairfax County, Virginia, almost all white. Black kids in white universities want black-only fraternities and living quarters. When whites threaten by gentrification to become a majority in black regions such as Washington itself, blacks hate it.
And now we have the Knockout Game of explicitly racial attacks by gangs of blacks, often leaving the victims crippled or dead. The media hide the occurrence of these assaults, the police (who know better) deny that they are racial, and the federal government deliberately does nothing. This is a dangerous game. It is interesting that a sober, conservative black intellectual such as Thomas Sowell sees a race war looming”his words, and worth reading. See also Walter Williams.
Maybe a little less togetherness would better preserve the peace. The Supreme Court once said irrationally that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Why? Men and women have separate public bathrooms. Is this unequal? We have sports teams separated by sex. Inherently unequal? Should we force sexual integration of sports? Jews and Catholics have schools intended to preserve their cultures, and it doesn’t seem to have brought the Republic down.
So then why do we keep trying to compel a togetherheid that no one seems to want? Why not let the races manage their own affairs as they see fit? For instance, we might organize the schools by culture instead of race. As a white man, I want my children to go to a culturally white school, meaning one that stresses real academics, requires good English and what I regard as civilized dress, and demands good comportment. No social promotion, affirmative action, or toleration of seriously bad behavior. Black students that chose to meet these standards would be welcome”but they would have to meet them.
This would result in something close to de facto segregation by race. So what? It would also end complaints by blacks of discrimination in grades, discipline, and so on, since they would be running their own schools, and whites would no longer complain of the dumbing down of courses and the inability to maintain their standards of language and behavior. If by law all schools received the same funding, none would be at a disadvantage.
It is worth a thought, methinks: comity at arm’s length. What we are doing isn”t working. Violence grows. Sooner or later there will be an explosion, and, perhaps, a conflict from which the country will never recover.
