Frankly my dear
With all the recent troubles we're again
being invited to an honest and open conversation about race, or said
differently, the browbeatings will be resumed. Try this for honest and
open: many of us, probably most of us, are tired of your whining, your
so-called grievances, your violence and crime, your insults and threats,
your witless blather and pornographic demeanor—all of it.
You're not quite 13% of the population yet
everything has to be about you, all day, every day. With you, facts
aren't facts, everything's a kozmik krisis, and abusive confrontations
are your go-to.
Here's the thing: some of us despise you,
although fewer than you believe, but most of us plain don't care about
you or your doings. There was a time when we did care, but you betrayed
our good will and played us for fools. We laugh about it now, but we
actually believed you wanted equal opportunity and mutual respect and to
live in harmony—all that stuff. Ain't it a hoot? Imagine our
embarrassment.
We talk among ourselves just like you do.
It's true, we have "frank and open discussions" when you're not around.
Why? Partly because it's exhausting to tippy-toe around you. Partly
because you think it's your celestial right to tell us what we can say.
And partly because you're alarmingly aggressive or painfully dim-witted
by turns. We never know which "you" will pop out of the box, or when.
But mainly because you've revealed yourself as grasping opportunists
without honor or principle. There's your deal-breaker. There's more.
During the recent riots you expected us to
believe heisting snack food then torching the place was "standing up for
justice". When we didn't buy it, you told us the looting and arson
wasn't done by the rioters after all, no, all the bad stuff was done by
rioters from out of town. Apparently you think it makes a difference to
us. And if we don't fall for that one, you tell us you're the real
victims, you're the ones "hit hardest" because the neighborhoods you
looted and burned are, um, looted and burned.
We've never stood in your way but we don't
really care if you have good neighborhoods or not. The evidence says you
don't care either, unless we build and maintain them for you, what your
enablers call "investments in urban communities". They don't mention
the return on our past "investments". Our former neighborhoods weren't
improved by your arrival. Your contempt for ordinary civility tells us
no level of "investment" would make a difference.
Listen up. It's simple. Just like our
neighborhoods are our responsibility, so are your neighborhoods your
responsibility, not ours. Your clownish leaders will tell you otherwise
but they've always been your responsibility and they always will be your
responsibility. Accept it or don't, you're the ones who live in them.
There's more.
Your air conditioned, smart phone equipped,
EBT-financed "poverty" doesn't wash to begin with, yet you'd have us
believe poverty causes crime. There's no payday for assault and rape and
random killing. Police say 20% of your criminal violence is related to
dope-dealing, okay, business disputes of a sort, but it says the rest of
it is largely pro bono. We also notice you have a working knowledge of
jury nullification and take pride in not "snitching", typical gang
behavior.
We say "what you think, you do. What you do,
you are." We know what you think—we hear it every waking minute. We know
what you do. How could we not know what you are? Just so it gets said,
crime causes poverty. It drives away productive people, their businesses
and the opportunities you said you wanted. More bad news: you're free
to accuse them of anything you wish but they're not coming back.
Schools haven't been educating our kids for a
long time. They're too busy conjuring up new ways to teach yours, in
fact, we're beginning to think yours are the only ones who matter.
There's always some new scheme claiming dazzling success which, in the
end, amounts to handing out the answers with the tests, or taking the
annoying hard stuff out of the coursework, or entering unearned grades
by hand.
Whatever they're doing they're doing it
wrong. Your kids are telling us, in every way they know how, they have
neither the interest nor the inclination for academics. Perhaps we
should listen. If what they want is "out" it's worth considering and
probably worth encouraging.
You tell us the schools have "failed to meet
their needs." And what are their needs, pray tell? Higher standards and
tougher tests? Stricter rules and a dress code? Or some alternate
universe where credit is earned for putting teachers in the ER, or for a
string of abortions before the tenth grade? If you'd tell us what their
needs are we'd at least know what needs we're failing to meet. Until
then we'll mark it down for what it is, another lame excuse. They're
supposed to be schools, not day care or orphanages or theme parks.
You pester us with the "civil rights
movement" of fifty years ago as though it happened last week, with
tedious 1960s footage and cloying voice-overs, in an endless loop, like
Groundhog Day, decade after decade. It's understandable, you haven't met
any real resistance since those days. Breaking news: none of it matters
any more, it all devolved into just another swindle, an extortion
racket, "pay up or we'll make a stink—and the bad optics are on you".
Schools now teach something called White
Privilege, which claims no overt act is necessary for us to be racist,
in fact, absence of such acts is said to be direct evidence. It's the
"original sin" concept in a different wrapper, meaning our putative
racism is bone deep and can't be discharged by good works. Even so, they
say we must atone in perpetuity for being white. They suggest we devote
our lives in selfless service to you. No. Sorry. Whatever white
privilege there may be, it isn't enough. In fact, being subjected to
White Privilege prattle is worth a couple of privileges.
Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college
grads—and 20% of all of you—are employed by government. The intent is to
create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial
positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries. In the lower
reaches it's the quota hires, typically unqualified. It's a great offer.
You pretend you're doing something useful and we pretend to believe
you.
The rest of your grads are largely diversity
directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious "studies" and improbable
"histories", and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise
unemployable. It's as good as it's ever going to get, except for those
on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e.,
earned respect. You'd be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as
it lasts.
So here's the deal. If you want to know what
we really think of you, the answer is we don't, unless you're making
yourself unavoidable or we're cleaning up your latest mess. We can
safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame
us for the consequences. And you'll demand we make good on them for
you.
We won't take a chance on your sincerity ever
again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us.
You're a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend
to our own lives and our own problems. It's as it should be. We
recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don't give a damn.
A few years ago I wrote a guest article entitled "Frankly my dear" for Francis Porretto's indispensable 
