If a black person had to choose
any country in the world in which he wanted to live, which country would he
choose? The answer is probably the United States. A case might be made for the
UK or another Western European country, but nowhere in the world are black
people freer, more successful and wealthier than the United States. One of the
reasons why we can so easily answer the question of where a black person would
choose to live is that black people do choose to live in the United States.
Huge numbers of black people from Africa and the Caribbean want to move to the
United States. This indeed is the case with all races.
If the United States had a
completely open-door immigration policy how many people from all around the
world would choose to live there? The numbers of people from all countries and
all races would be quite overwhelming. This is likewise the case with countries
like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and others. How many people on the
other hand who live in the United States want to become citizens of an African
or Middle Eastern country. How many Americans want to renounce their American
citizenship in order to become Chinese or Russian, Iranian or Indian? The
answer of course is almost zero.
Those black people who actually
do live in the United States have so to speak won the lottery. Out of all the
black people living in the world, they are living in a place where more black
people would wish to live if they had a chance. Not only this, those black
people who do live in the United States under no circumstance would give up
their United States citizenship in order to go elsewhere. How many of them
would decide to become citizens of Angola, or Mali? Almost none.
It is of course the case that the
vast majority of black people in the United States are there because something
terrible happened to their ancestors. Slave traders whether black or white
forcibly removed these ancestors from Africa. They sailed across the Atlantic
in terrible conditions and then were forced for generations to work without any
pay and without any freedom. Nevertheless, a black person living in the United
States can accurately reflect that the best thing that ever happened to him was
that his ancestor was abducted rather than missed. The descendants of Kunta
Kinte’s brother remained living in the Gambia and long for the chance to have
what the descendants of Kunta Kinte have.
The United States has come a long
way since 1860. It has come an even longer way since 1960, but it is as if none
of this progress ever happened. In no country in the world do black people have
the equality of opportunity that they have in the United States. Black
sportsmen, film stars and musicians are some of the richest people in the
world. There is not a single profession in the United States where black people
cannot reach the top. But America is more divided about race than it ever has
been before.
The places where you are most
likely to meet racial prejudice are those which are least multi-ethnic. Forms
of racism and racial slurs are a completely routine part of life in Russia,
China and Japan, simply because few Russians, Chinese and Japanese have ever
made friends with people from other ethnic backgrounds. Britain is much less
racist now than it was before Windrush. Once people from different ethnic
backgrounds work together, make friends and marry prejudice becomes
unsustainable.
Prejudice is a feature of
humanity. We are tribal. People with similar beliefs and languages formed
themselves into communities that eventually became countries. It is not
accidental that most of these countries historically were not multi-cultural.
The United States was one of the
first countries in the world to try the experiment of bringing together peoples
from all over the world. There are now Americans whose ancestors came from
every country on earth. Is there prejudice in American? Yes. Is there more
prejudice there than elsewhere. No. In fact the United States is one of the
only places in the world where people from everywhere for the most part can
live free, successful lives where they rarely meet prejudice. Compare and
contrast living anywhere else.
A black American may be able to
find a similar quality of life and opportunity if he moved to the United
Kingdom. He might find a similar lack of prejudice if he moved to Australia or
some parts of Europe. But where else could he go and be able to achieve what he
can achieve in the United States?
But it is as if none of this
matters. Having achieved so much America is more divided now than it ever was.
The least hint of perceived
racism has become the unforgivable sin. Anyone who expresses an opinion that
does not conform to the Left’s latest edict on race is likely to be condemned
by a mob on Twitter. This sort of condemnation frequently has real world
consequences. People have lost their jobs because of a slip of the tongue or a
mistake, or a dubious joke. In the land of the free it has become dangerous to
write seriously about race. In order to think through an issue, it is necessary
to think freely to write things that might be controversial. But controversy
about race has become dangerous. The
thought police is waiting for any slip. Did you say “colored people” rather
than “people of color” did you express the correct view about an aspect of
American history. The consequences of getting it wrong can be enormous and
life-changing.
If America were so full of
prejudice how is it that people from Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Indian
backgrounds have achieved such success. Did they or their ancestors not face
prejudice? Irish people were met with prejudice when they first arrived in the
United States, but this has not held them back in the long run. Prejudice is
due to our humanity.
The greatest temptation is to
blame someone else for whatever bad things happen. But this tendency is the
reason for failure.
If you tell a child that success
depends on his own effort, he will be much more likely to succeed. If you give
him an excuse for failure, he will be much more likely to fail. It is easier to
embrace the excuse for failure than to succeed.
This is the biggest problem
facing America. Some people succeed despite whatever prejudices they meet. Other
people use perceived racism as an excuse for failure. It’s not the racism that
causes them to fail. Other people met racism but succeed anyway. No, it’s
embracing the excuse for failure that causes it.
In this way the obsession with
race in the United States acts as vicious circle. Far from helping those who
are still on average less successful it reinforces this lack of success.
Despite numerous examples including the President of the United States far too
many people think that they cannot possibly succeed because of racial
prejudice.
But everyone faces obstacles to
success. Some people have disabilities, others are from poor backgrounds,
others go to bad schools or don’t know anyone who is successful. But nowhere in
the world can these obstacles be more easily overcome than in the United
States. At no time in history can they be more easily overcome either.
Black lives matter in the same
way that any other human beings lives matter. But rather than continually
blaming someone else for lack of success or for unjust deaths, look at what you
can do to improve the lives of yourself and other people living in America.
Blaming someone else whether it is other Americans, including the police,
shifts the responsibility away from yourself to the other person. It makes you
passive, a victim. Passive victims never succeed and never change anything.
If each black person thought
about what he could do to make it less likely that black people would be
murdered, there would be less murder. Police kill people because of crime and
the fear of crime. They have prejudice about black people in part because of
the behaviour of some black people. It’s not straightforwardly racism. After
all there is no Chinese lives matter campaign, because Chinese Americans are rarely
shot by the police. Why? This is in part owing to the behaviour of Chinese
Americans in general. Only when every American takes responsibility for how
they each live their lives will there be any chance of overcoming prejudice. If
there were fewer gun crimes in America there would be far few instances of the
police unjustly killing innocent people. But it’s not merely up to the police
to reduce crime, it’s up to all of us.
America was built by individuals
taking responsibility for their lives and not blaming the other guy when things
went wrong. But the Left requires a victim and it requires an oppressor. It is
for this reason that even as America becomes less racist and less sexist it is
still always white men who are to blame for everything. As long as this
continues then the races and the sexes will continue to battle and never find
peace.
Continued
Continued
