The Diversity

Ol' Remus

VERBATIM

A version of this article appeared in Woodpile Report 213 as Zero Tolerance. The year and a half since then has been a disaster. Ordinary urban life has gotten dangerous in a way it never was before. DNA-based thuggery against the vulnerable or the merely random is going parabolic. It's getting as serious as many doomer scenarios. We're on our way to being Beirut or Mogadishu. As it is, conventional norms of civility can no long be relied upon, the hair-trigger hostility walking among us can neither be predicted nor avoided. There isn't any right place to be or right time to be there.

Thoreau knew what he was talking about when he said people do what's respected rather than what's respectable. How it got like this and where it's going is a fit topic for those who honestly try to see things as they are. Yes, it's "understood" we're not supposed to talk about this among ourselves, yet it's "understood" what this otherwise inexplicable aggression is all about even so. The perpetrators certainly make no secret of it. Even the "nothing to see here, folks" mainstream media hint at it, and where they don't the reader's comments will make it clear, if roughly so. As always, Joe Everyman is way ahead of editorial policy.

Remus knows full well talk of black racism is considered racist in itself, usually said to be evidence of omitting a larger reality, or of a deficiency in understanding and compassion, perhaps even of knowingly servicing retrograde causes. He knows it's not cool, makes him no friends and probably gets him on lists compiled by those who believe conspicuous deviation from the approved narrative is something to be answered for. He also knows he can't let it pass.

We got to this point by making foolish assumptions. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s undid institutionalized discrimination, ensured voting rights and compelled desegregation, with the stated intent of establishing a color-blind society, a brotherhood of equals, a citizenry that could go forward together without the "artificial and demeaning divisions inherited from the past". A convulsive good faith effort by white American legislated away every conceivable advantage they might have over others and suppressed even the mildest dissent with draconian remedies. With full faith in the rightness of the cause, with the warm and cozy chatter of good citizenship and the new dawn of brotherhood, the nation awaited with pleasure the benefits our newly renovated society would bring to all. That was two generations ago.

It's clear now the stated goals of the civil rights cause were never really shared. A Blue Ocean Strategy immediately fell into place. Self-selected victims groups scrambled land-rush style to exploit the vulnerability so trustingly exposed. The vulnerability is of course "white guilt", our peculiar sense of justice that seeks to set things right not just in our own eyes but in the eyes of all. It's clear now how easily open-ended good will can be exploited, how every engagement with the allegedly wronged provided a fresh tipping point and new outrages, how eager we were to avoid confrontations—meaning we'd lost before they happened—and how simple it was to transform trivial incidents into an epic moral crisis .

Principle took a battering from which it still hasn't recovered. The duplicity was, and is, astounding. For instance, it was racist to say some programs benefited black America almost exclusively, yet also racist to propose trimming them because they benefited black America almost exclusively. Or as the cliche news headline puts it: "Poor, Minorities Hit Hardest". This tactic is meant to freeze us in place like a bug in amber, and it works.

Every good faith concession was taken as a weakness, which invited new demands. The lofty covenants of civil rights were reworked into ultimatums, backed with threats of unanswerable violence, taking us ever further from the putative goal of unity and equality. Those who would have benefited most not only failed to hold up their end, or even make the effort. Instead they embraced a militant race-based thuggery, grasping for unwarranted preference and unearned payoffs with no thought of how it diminished them personally and us as a nation, much less how it betrayed and embarrassed those of us who believed in the larger aspiration. For our part, principles turned out to be a mispriced commodity. We were astonished how cheaply they sold us out when the market became favorable.

White Guilt—tellingly, it has no counterpart—has proven so successful a tool it's been codified so even the downright saintly can't escape:

White privilege is a system of advantage to white people in housing, salaries, employment, positions of power and education stemming from a former era of legalized discrimination but whose current beneficiaries need not hold discriminatory beliefs themselves.

Ol' Remus can't see how equality is even possible with this as a starting point. The excesses seem without end. He, reluctantly but firmly, came to accept black America as it reveals itself to be, rather than as it declares itself to be. He hasn't accepted the opinions and demands of "civil rights" leaders as legitimate or compelling for a very long time. He now accepts racial hostility as racial hostility. Simply put, ol' Remus went back to conditional tolerance, the condition being good will. It's more than is granted him.

As it is we're becoming Zimbabwe in more ways than wealth destruction. Any white person who lives or works in a city knows to avoid the subway or regional rail other than during rush hour, and some routes even then. Whites typically avoid taking a city bus anywhere at any time, they've become a victims-in-a-can proposition. Whites, or blacks for that matter, can't patronize some fast food restaurants with a reasonable expectation of civility, or even safety, the otherwise excellent Popeye's for instance. And McDonald's is closing in fast.

Inattention has consequences. Unprovoked racial assaults have become a part of urban reality, like a force of nature. One can cross an event horizon unknowingly and be pulled into oblivion. Once again, as in the 1960s, the popular option is escape. Once again the urban working class and professionals, black and white, are self-evacuating the cities. Realtors know what these new customers really mean when they inquire of the neighborhood schools. And their customers know communities aren't gated to keep out rogue lemonade vendors. Whatever a person may prefer to believe of The Diversity there's no ambiguity about the facts. People in large numbers are having a moment of clarity every day. And they're talking.

As in all things, we can deal with things as we wish they were or as they really are. We know how we got here. If we're serious, we know how things really are. What matters now is where it's going. Remus is at a loss to see how this can turn out well. The cumulative damage is too deep, the reservoir of good will too depleted. The record of white America, and whites in general, says minorities are well advised to never let things reach this point. Patience and good will tend to expire simultaneously. At present the restraints are holding. The page of history always turns however, and while no man can know what's written there, black America has been unwise in the part they've chosen, or at the least, accepted .

As the saying goes, it's never different this time. There's no point in overthinking this. It's enough to understand prudence in all things is the way of survival. A good beginning is to stay away from crowds, as always.

Addendum - In the previous Woodpile Report, Remus recommended this article by Matt Bracken, When The Music Stops – How America's Cities May Explode In Violence, posted at Western Rifle Shooters Association. In it Mr. Bracken asks, "what if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT cards flashing nothing but ERROR? This sudden revelation will cause widespread anger, which will quickly lead to the flash-mob looting of local supermarkets and other businesses." He concludes, "It's not inconceivable that the United States could produce a dozen Sarajevos or Beiruts." The ongoing economical pratfall will materially affect The Diversity eventually. Mr. Bracken has written a dispassionate, credible, CIA Assessment-grade description of the maelstrom likely to follow.

Disclosure - Remus saw the segregated South first hand, participated in the civil rights movement when it was neither cool nor entirely safe, and lived in, not near, a Diverse NEC Big City for a time. Reproval of lesser provenance will be dismissed at the point of a ten foot pole.