Whuffo everything in Armerica is about blacks? Fred Reed explains

Walt had kind of forgotten about Fred on Everything, a blog of scurrilous commentary written by Fred Reed. Agent 17 poked me (by e-mail) to tell me to read Fred's rant on "Black Power". I'm glad to have done so, and recommend that you, dear reader, do likewise. [He means you should read Fred's blog. Ed.]

To compare Walt's views with Fred's is to compare mayonnaise with five-star chili. I have to think that Fred is somewhere beyond the reach of the PC police [Maybe in Mexico? Ed.], that he gets away saying flat out what Walt only dares to suggest. I'll quote just a bit of Fred's question about why, half a century after the passage of laws guaranteeing "civil rights" (for everyone except us straight white men), "black issues" continue to dominate American politics.

It is curious that blacks, the least educated thirteen percent of the population, the least productive, most criminal, and most dependent on governmental charity, should dominate national politics. Yet they do. Virtually everything revolves around what blacks want, demand, do, or can’t do. Their power seems without limit.

Indeed. If you want to get down to specifics, click here to read the entire post. Kudos to Fred for being brave enough to call a spade a spade.

Note from Ed.: The only thing missing from Fred's post is a good illustration. Thanks to Agent 6 for this one.

How black do you have to be to be "black enough"?

What you have to understand, to appreciate the irony of this story, is that Canada's equal rights laws -- included in its "Charter of Rights", a part of the constitution -- are so progressive and righteous as to make America's seem like Jim Crow laws by comparison. Never should anything done by anyone in the Great Not-so-white North be tainted by the merest suggestion of discrimination on the basis of colour. Hiring/firing decisions, for instance, mustn't betray a hint of tint!

Poetic justice, then, that a woman of colour [person of colour, surely! Ed.] took to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission a complaint that she had been wrongfully fired by her employer because of the colour of her skin. Her employer was the Black Educators Association. And the problem with Ms Brothers's colour was that she was not black enough!

No, gentle reader, Walt is not making this up. Unfortunately, the Canuck lamestream media seems unable to find even a tiny picture of Ms Brothers, so we can see what colour she might be. Apparently she's not white, else she wouldn't have been hired in the first place, so Walt assumes she's what was once called a "high yeller". [Are you referring to the pitch of her voice? Ed.]

In a decision released this morning, the Human Rights Commission found that Brothers was "undermined by association staff whose 'colourist thinking' and behaviour created a toxic work environment at the head office in Halifax and the Annapolis Valley regional office in Kentville, where Ms. Brothers was employed as a regional educator."

The woman named in the report for discriminating against Ms Brothers was Catherine Collier, who was vying with Ms Brothers for the same regional educator position, a job which Ms Brothers landed. The HR police chief [Human Rights Commission Chairman, surely! Ed.] said in his report, "It is clear to me that Ms Brothers was undermined in part because she was younger than, and not as black as, Ms Collier thought Ms. Brothers should be.... In Ms. Collier's eyes, Ms. Brothers was not really black enough."

The Association has been ordered to pay Brothers C$11,000 -- $10,000 in real money -- plus interest, for general damages and lost income. The Black Educators Association is, errr, taxpayer-funded, so the award, the lawyers' costs, the Commission's costs -- the whole ball of wax -- comes out of the pockets of the thrifty New Scotlanders.

But never mind. Tracy Williams, CEO of the Commission, assures taxpayers that "This decision addresses an important human rights issue. The commission needs to explore this sensitive subject to better understand its impact and identify ways we can be of assistance." If you pay taxes in Nova Scotia and you disagree, send a postcard saying "I'm a sucker and I'm tired of being licked!" to Human Rights Commission, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Footnote: It's worth reading the decision made by Donald Murray, Q.C., in its entirety, in order to appreciate the kind of thinking that has created the latest in a long line of sins against human rights. The new sin is called "colourism" (or "colorism" if you're in the USA). A bit of good news: apparently people of colour can be just as GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY or colourism as us whiteys.

Book review: "Some of My Best Friends Are Black"

Some of My Best Friends Are Black, by Tanner Colby (Viking, 2012) is a book I didn't expect to like. Just skimming a few pages at random to get a feel for it, I recognized the author's white, liberal, anti-Republican stance. (He calls Richard Nixon an asshole, which may be true but he should've said the same of Bill Clinton!)

Obviously, I thought, "The Strange Story of Integration in America" -- that's the book's subtitle -- is going to be a defence of the noble ideal, the downtrodden "African-Americans" and a condemnation of the "white racism" that caused integration to fail. Not so.

True enough, the bias is there, but Mr. Colby sees and writes truthfully about the problems and fallacies of the greatest experiment in social engineering in the history of America. He finds that, 50 years after Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, true integration has made few inroads into the lives of most Americans. Some of My Best Friends Are Black tells four stories to make this point.

Part 1 is "Letter from a Birmingham Suburb", which recounts the fight of wealthy, white-flight Vestavia Hills AL to keep its schools white. When federal courts ordered desegregation by busing, Vestavia's high school got some black kids from neighbouring Oxmoor, and some other black kids from the inner city. A handful of the better-off black kids were accepted by their white peers. The rest segregated themselves, for instance by establishing their own section of the school cafeteria. Meanwhile, the Birmingham schools became blacker and blacker, and today are effectively as "separate but equal" as they were before Brown v. Board of Education.

In "Planning for Permanence" (Part 2) we learn the geography and history of Kansas City MO, where Troost Avenue marks the "Berlin Wall" between the blighted black part of town, to the east, and the prosperous white areas to the west. The further west you go, the nicer KC becomes, until finally you get to the very posh "Country Club District" which spills over into Kansas. This, Mr. Colby tells us, was all planned and deliberate, achieved by a technique called "block-busting", which he describes in detail for any realtors who don't know how to do it.

One small area on the east side of Troost held out. It's called "49/63", after the intersection of two streets at its centre. There, a couple of Jesuit priests and some white folks who were not horrified by the prospect of white neighbours organized a citizens' group to help newcomers get decent financing, and keep up the neighbourhood (and property values). They tried to build a community, and were moderately successful, albeit without much participation from the black newcomers, for reasons which Mr. Colby doesn't quite get a handle on. Today, "49/63" is the only quasi-integrated neighbourhood east of Troost.

Possibly the weakest of the book's four parts is No. 3, "Why Do Black People Drink Hawaiian Punch?" It's about Madison Avenue and the world of advertising, which Mr. Colby writes about from personal experience as a creative in more than one New York agency. He analyzes the hard choice faced by blacks entering the industry -- whether to try to join the "old (white) boys network" which pervades general advertising even today, or try to make it on their own, using black media to sell black stuff to black folks.

Because of the colour-blindness of the Internet, Colby argues, black-only advertising is no longer viable. Does that mean black practitioners are now working in general advertising in large numbers? Errr, no. Despite a spike in black employment in the industry in the 1970s, top black creatives in New York today number in the single digits, just as it was in the early `60s.

Finally, Mr. Colby looks at the world of religion in "Canaan", Part 4. He tells the story of the twin Roman Catholic parishes -- Sacred Heart and Christ the King -- of Grand Coteau LA, deep in the heart of Acadiana -- southern Lousiana's Cajun Country. In theory a Roman Catholic parish should correspond to a defined geographic area, and each parish should have one (1) church. But in LA -- unlike any other place on earth -- it had become the norm to have overlapping white and black parishes.

In the 1960s the Church decided that it should try to make "real" the principle of the equality of the races, by integrating its white and black parishes. The author describes in detail the struggle of two bishops and 11 parish priests -- 13 if you count the ones that came back twice -- to unite "The Church of the Sacred Heart of Christ the King". The white parishioners were willing, although not very happy about it. The real opposition came from a black faction, who wanted to stay in their own building, worshipping in their own way with people they were comfortable with. Human nature!

After 40 years of struggle, the two churches finally coalesced as St. Charles Borromeo. In the rest of Louisiana, dual parishes -- black and white -- are still the norm. And across the entire country, separate (but equal?) churches are stronger than ever. As Dr. King said, "11 a.m. on Sunday is the most segregated hour in America." Here's a quote from Some of My Best Friends Are Black:

"As the black middle class spread out in search of suburbia, black churches followed the migration. Once established, they became centers of gravity, accelerating the move and concentrating it...
"It would seem that just about everyone has settled quite contentedly on opposite sides of the spiritual tracks. By the most widely cited statistic, 93 percent of all churches in America are racially homogeneous. And if you every stop to suggest that maybe those churches should do something about it, people just look at you like you're crazy."

I know we're running a bit long here but I can't resist adding one more snippet, buried in the middle of Part 3, which sums up the dilemma of integration very nicely. The emphasis is mine.

"Starting in the late 1960s, America hurled its public schools headlong into a hugely disruptive, shot-in-the-dark experiment. We spent billions of dollars, all of it just to corral the Children of White Flight and the Children of the Dream and put them under the same roof. Given that historic opportunity, we call came together and...we sat on opposite sides of the cafeteria. Then we went and hung out at different clubs and fraternities at opposite ends of college campuses, or at completely separate colleges altogether.

"Ever since Brown v. Board, there's been a steady chorus of academics and politicians pronouncing all the wonderful things that integration is supposed to do for America. Integrated schools will produce better educational outcomes. Diversity programs will give us integrated workplaces that offer competitive advantages in a multicultural world. Etc. It's all a lot of crap.

"Integration doesn't do anything. It's something that is done, by people, and only by mutual choice.... Among those who were give the opportunity to integrate, most of us chose not to."

Re Mandela -- Just fancy that!

Headline and subhead in the online edition of today's Notional Post:
What's next in racially charged South Africa?
Mandela’s vision of a ‘rainbow nation’ failed, almost inevitably, to meet the heady expectations propelling the country two decades ago

Headline on Walt's first post yesterday:
What happens, now that the black "redeemer" has died?


The accompanying text points out that today's South Africa is hardly the paradise on earth that Mandiba and those who used his name promised would follow the end of the "racist white apartheid regime". The truth is that South Africa is becoming more like its neighbours north of the Limpopo -- going back to bush, that is -- with every passing day. "Almost inevitably", as the Post would say.

Footnote from Ed.: Geoffrey York, the Glob and Mail's man in Africa, had a piece published just a couple of days ago -- terrible timing, that -- headed "Nearly 90, Mugabe still driving Zimbabwe's economy into the ground".

Unfortunately it was behind the G&M's "Unlimited" firewall so we weren't able to read it. But we take Mr. York's point to be that if Mugabe lives another five years -- as everyone fears -- he'll actually finish the job that Mandela only started.

What happens, now that the black "redeemer" has died?

Nelson Mandela died today, at the age of 95. RIP. Now that he's gone to his reward, you can expect an outpouring of breast beating and maudlin sentiment such as has not been seen since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Mandela would be a candidate for instant sainthood, if only he were Catholic. [In today's Church, do you really have to be Catholic? Ed.]

Mixed in with all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth will be a large dose of anti-colonial, anti-white rhetoric. Comparisons will be made with the plight of the Jews in the Egypt of the Pharaohs. The Afrikaners will be cast in the role of the evil oppressors, while Mandela is portrayed as the Holy Moses who led his people out of bondage and into... well... into what? Into the promised land of black empowerment, equal rights for all (even queers), and all the blessings a "rainbow nation" can bestow.

Conveniently overlooked will be the fact that, for the vast majority of its people, South Africa is no better -- and in some respects worse -- than it was in the days of apartheid. The education system is in freefall, corruption is rife, and violent crime threatens virtually everyone. In other words, South Africa has become like the rest of sub-Saharan Africa under black rule.

Walt hopes that in the last couple of years of his life, Mr. Mandela's faculties were so dimmed by illness and old age that he was unaware of what a shambles his people have made of his beloved country.

Here's a quote from an early work by V.S. Naipaul, an ethnic Indian native of Trinidad, with some experience of Africa and the failings of countries, including his own, in the post-colonial era. This is from "Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad", which appeared in a fine little collection entitled The Return of Eva Peron, with the Killings in Trinidad (André Deutsch, 1980).

Black Power -- away from its United States source -- is jargon...a sentimental hoax. In a place like Trinidad, racial redemption is as irrelevant for the Negro as for everybody else. It obscures the problems of a small independent country with a lopsided economy, the problems of a fully "consumer" society that is yet technologically untrained and without the intellectual means to comprehend the deficiency. ] [Emphasis mine. Walt]

It perpetuates the negative, colonial politics of protest. It is, in the end, a deep corruption: a wish to be granted a dispensation from the pains of development, an almost religious conviction that oppression can be turned into an asset, race into money.

While the dream of redemption lasts, Negroes will continue to exist only that someone might be their leader. Redemption requires a redeemer; and a redeemer, in these circumstances, cannot but end like the Emperor Jones: contemptuous of the people he leads, and no less a victim, seeking an illustory personal emancipation.

In Trinidad, as in every black West Indian island, the too easily awakened sense of oppression and the theory of the enemy point to the desert of Haiti.

Hmmm. Haiti. Yes. And Mr. Naipaul wrote that in the mid-70s [when you could still use the word "Negro". Ed.]. Look at Haiti today -- more of a "desert" than it was 40 years ago. Look too at Zimbabwe, whose "redeemer", Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, is only 90, but determined to hang onto power until the desertification of his country is complete. Mr. Mandela, at least, was spared that.