Race Talk
Walter E. Williams
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
What to call black people has to be confusing to white people. Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names. Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black, and now African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most unintelligent. You say, "What do you mean, Williams?" Suppose I told you that I had a European-American friend or a South-America-American friend, or a North-America-American friend. You'd probably say, "Williams, that's stupid. Europe, South America and North America are continents consisting of many peoples." You might insist that I call my friend from Germany a German-American instead of European-American and my friend from Brazil a Brazilian-American rather than a South-America-American and my friend from Canada a Canadian-American instead of a North-American. So would not the same apply to people whose heritage lies on the African continent? For example, instead of claiming that President Barack Obama is the first African-American president, it should be that he's the first Kenyan-American president. In that sense, Obama is lucky. Unlike most American blacks, he knows his national heritage; the closest to a national heritage the rest of us can identify is some country along Africa's gold coast.
Another problem with the African-American label is not all people of African ancestry are dark. Whites are roughly 10 percent of Africa's population and include not only European settlers but Arabs and Berbers as well. So is an Afrikaner who becomes a U.S. citizen a part of United States' African-American population? Should census takers and affirmative action/diversity bean counters count Arabs, Berbers and Afrikaners who are U.S. citizens as African-Americans and should they be eligible for racial quotas in college admittance and employment?
Are black Americans a minority group? When one uses the term minority, there is an inference that somewhere out there is a majority but in the United States we are a nation of minorities. According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2000 census, where people self-identify, the ancestry of our largest ethnic groups are people of German ancestry (15.2 percent), followed by Irish (10.8 percent), African (8.8), and English (8.7) ancestry. Of the 92 ethnic groups listed, in the census, 75 of them are less than 1 percent of our population.
Race talk often portrays black Americans as downtrodden and deserving of white people's help and sympathy. That vision is an insult of major proportions. As a group, black Americans have made some of the greatest gains, over the highest hurdles, in the shortest span of time than any other racial group in mankind's history. This unprecedented progress can be seen through several measures. If one were to total black earnings, and consider black Americans a separate nation, he would find that in 2005 black Americans earned $644 billion, making them the world's 16th richest nation -- that is just behind Australia but ahead of Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland. Black Americans are, and have been, chief executives of some of the world's largest and richest cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, appointed Joint Chief of Staff in October 1989, who headed the world's mightiest military and later became U.S. Secretary of State, and was succeeded by Condoleezza Rice, another black American. Black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities and a few are among the richest. Most blacks are not poor but middle class.
On the eve of the Civil War, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have believed these gains possible in less than a mere century and a half, if ever. That progress speaks well not only of the sacrifices and intestinal fortitude of a people; it also speaks well of a nation in which these gains were possible. These gains would not have been possible anywhere else.
As the National Geographic Genome Project has so conclusively proven, we are all "African-Americans" ... the "racial" appelation is no more important than the "hair color" appelation.
We should all put "other" on our US Census questionnaire next year. I know I'm going to.
and gillis, I loved your comment about... "well, yes, if they were born in China, they would be Chinese" [paraphrased]... I rarely agree with you, but, that was to the heart of the matter.
Jim..
This message has been edited by Avalon99 on May 13, 2009 10:06 PM
i think most Americans are stupid about the subject of race
fear produces strange reactions to events.
if we really believed that we want equal treatment under the law (and in society)
there is no substitute for EQUAL
one is the same as another
skin color matters as much as shoe size or hair length
perceptions only change responses not genetic attributes
it is our culture that can (and must be) fixed
culture is what causes crime/poverty self destruction of individuals
that we can change (but only for the willing)....unless we all band together and shame/ostracize those individuals who display the negative traits in our society which we desire to be removed
that we can change (but only for the willing)....unless we all band together and shame/ostracize those individuals who display the negative traits in our society which we desire to be removed
So who gets to decide all this? A "majority"? Har! The other name for that is a *mob*! The First Amendment wasn't written to protect "Reader's Digest", it was written to protect "Hustler". The Second Amendment wasn't written to protect duck hunters, it was written to protect We The People from tyrannical governance. Try and keep all this in mind.
Dr. Williams missed the negative side...and only accentuated the positive...
the other side of the coin is that cultural problems that get attributed to race incorrectly can be addressed , but the racial component has to be overcome through education...
flaws in culture can be fixed
the biggest problems that many black americans have have nothing to do with race....
and can be fixed through their own policing of each other (as Bill Cosby recommends) (much to liberal outrage)
This message has been edited by gillis7 on May 14, 2009 12:36 PM
