DOS

No not the old archaic Disc Operating System (DOS). This acronym stands for Descendants of Slaves (DOS). I believe that given the assault on Black recovery from over 3 centuries of legalized racial oppression, DOS should become the legal term used, going forward, for targeted recovery assistance. The current efforts by whites to resist efforts to combat the legacy of black oppression, through government policies, require a new legal strategy. That strategy centers on using the proper legal terminology to protect our ability to hold the government to its responsibilities.

Whites and conservatives have improvised since the passage of the Civil Rights act some 40 years ago. They realized that they could no longer use racial laws to keep blacks down; therefore they developed a new strategy to twart the governments responsibility to help blacks get up. What they have discovered, by intent or accident, is that the language and terminology used to deny whites the legal ability to oppress black can be turned against blacks to keep the government from its responsibility in helping blacks to recover.

I term this technique “Racial Jujitsu”. Jujitsu being a martial art form in which the goal is to use an adversary’s strength and leverage against it. Whites and conservatives have thus taken the language of the civil rights movement, in regards to laws against racial discrimination, and turned it against programs aimed at helping blacks recover from 3 centuries of legal racial oppression. The conservative and white call for a color-blind society, at this juncture, is not for altruistic reasons as it appears at face value. Rather, it's an attempt to block efforts by the government to rectify its past wrongs hence preserving white privilege.

The reason that whites can successfully challenge these programs legally is due to the fact that programs, like Affirmative Action, use race as one of the targeting criteria. Its then argued successfully by lawyers before the Supreme Court that these programs violate laws against racial discrimination by giving preference to blacks. This is due to the fact that race is the explicit intent of the language used in the policy. However, targeting people for Affirmative Action based upon being DOS removes race from the explicit legal criteria preventing the policy from violating laws against racial discrimination.

We all know, for all intents and purposes, that DOS criteria will coincidentally result in all black beneficiaries, but whose fault is that? The University of Michigan gives preference to students applying for admission from obscure counties in Michigan. All these students are white, more than likely, because blacks do not live in these obscure counties in any significant numbers. Yet, this is not considered a racial set aside, despite the beneficiaries being white, because race is not used in the criteria. So it cannot be argued that this is racial discrimination against blacks. By the same logic, set-asides for DOS, even though it maps to black people, like the obscure counties map to whites, cannot be argued successfully as discrimination against whites.

DOS is actually a more accurate and efficient term for what America is attempting to fix. As much as I love my African Born Brothers and Sisters who come to America, they should not be part of the target pool due to the fact that their forefathers and mothers did not endure the assault here in America. Under the current methodology, Africans, I believe, can take advantage of racial set aside programs. The program should specifically target for repair the descendants of slavery or DOS. The DOS population is also the sufferers of Jim Crow, so in encompasses both the oppression of slavery and the oppression of Jim Crow. Moreover, it helps to define our condition as the product of being DOS and not the product of shared experiences of minorities.

Of course the million-dollar question that people will ask is how does one prove that they are descendants of slaves. I think that it will be a challenging thing to prove for individuals, but I do believe that given the will and modern means and agencies that over 90% of the people who are actually descendents of slaves can prove it via Court data, census data, DNA evidence and the like. It could create a whole new field of opportunities in providing service to track roots to slavery. Such would also, I believe, reconnect black people to a history that young people have forgotten or dismissed. I may be projecting but I do believe that such knowledge could possible change the enmity we have toward each other.

I am not suggesting that we stop calling ourselves African Americans or blacks and define ourselves as descendants of slaves (DOS). Rather, I am suggesting that for legal purposes that we hold government and institutions liable for repair not using the language of race but rather the language of the condition that caused the problem, which was enslavement. The fact that this nation choose to only enslave blacks does not make the intent of the current parties racially motivated, but rather, the intent of the enslavement racially motivated. It can be argued that the intent is to rectify the descendants of the enslaved, which can be identified by documents and DNA, and not by race.

Double Standard or just Bad Credit?

Double Standard? If a person applies for a mortgage and has an extensive history of not paying their bills on time, or at all, is it a double standard to deny that person a mortgage when others with no such history can get the same loan? This happens all the time in the lending business where risk and worthiness is assessed by way of an entities history. It’s not called “Double Standard” in the free market, but rather “Bad Credit” and its understood as the consequence of historical behavior.

To put it bluntly, as a collective entity, white folks have bad credit when it comes to issues of race and black folks. There is no double standard manifesting as people claim where whites cannot say things that blacks can say, as in the Imus controversy. White folks are going to have to learn to deal with and be responsible for the ramifications of the choices they have made over the last 300 years. Yet, they refuse this accountablity.

Derogatory commentary coming from white folks does not get the benefit of the doubt, precisely due to their history. For centuries white scholars and citizens have been propagandizing the inferiority of black people. All anyone has to do is to study history to see a long degrading physical, psychological and economical attack upon black people rationalized by verbal or written suggestion from whites that we are sub human and inferior. Why on earth would white people now feel that they could utter such words with impunity?

It seems that white folks have filed chapter 13 and have not told black folks about it. They have written off all their misdeeds of the past and not only want shielding from their creditors, but good credit standing restored. However, in this whole scheme, they once again have ignored or circumvented the losses of black folks from their historical behavior. Now they expect black folks to just “write-off” those losses and pretend with them that the last 300 years never happened. Now they EXPECT, yes, expect that black people trust them and give them the same benefit of the doubt that we give ourselves. When we don’t, we, and not their history, are at fault.

For the white folks who may read this, understand this. Until you make sincere efforts to clean up your history and come to terms with those you have wronged, you will remain the bad guy to black folks who don’t know you. You will be collectively held accountable for the transgression against blacks, even if you are a good white person. This is why good white people need to take control of the collective image of white people and clean it up via reconciling past wrongs.

I constantly hear white people complaining about being labeled or seen as racist when they say that they are not. Well, that is simply the consequence of the history of America. The reason you will continue to be seen as racist is because you choose not to be responsible or accountable for white history, while being the primary beneficiaries of it. Whites will continue to be tainted by an ugly racist white history until white people take the responsibility to reconcile damages. That is when and how you will stop being collectively punished and distrusted. It’s not enough to stop the bad behavior that you started; you need to fix what you broke.

So in conclusion, until white folks take responsibility for white history and cleaning up the racial aftermath of their bad behavior, whites will continue to have bad credit in the eyes of blacks. Don’t call it a double standard because it is not. It’s the trust and respect that whites have earned via your history. You dug yourselves into this whole of distrust and now you will have to take responsibility to dig yourselves out of it. Don’t blame black folks because we don’t trust you or let you say things we say to each other, blame yourselves…. because you earned the lack of respect.

Guilt

Guilt is clinically described as an emotional state produced when one feels that he or she has not lived up to their ideal selves via feelings that they could have or should have done more. It is one of many natural human emotions, some of which, via the brain, trigger a chemical reaction of pleasure and some of which, like guilt, produce the reaction of pain. Obviously, as intelligent pleasure seeking creatures, our rationalizations seek to maximize pleasure and reduce the pain in our lives.

One of the most powerful quotes of human nature that I have ever read, the author of which escapes my memory, was this: In order for one to truly be happy, they must first divorce themselves from the needs and concerns of others. Wow! When I first read that it just blew me away because it just rang so true from my personal experience as a human. For those with compassion, it is really hard to enjoy life when there is so much suffering going on around you. Why me or why you? Why should we have so much while others have so little? Could you enjoy a full meal in front of starving children? One would hope not.

Call me crazy, but I do believe that most humans are naturally compassionate. I also believe that most humans are most profoundly pleasure seeking, which produces the corollary of pain aversion. Consequently, our desire and drive to attain the natural high of pleasure conflicts with our natural tendency to feel compassion due to the fact that compassion often causes guilt and pain and hence inhibits pleasure. However, our rational minds, which is beholden to our strongest emotions, presents a case to the self on behalf of pleasure which convinces the self not to feel guilt.

In light of these natural tendancies, how do humans generally divorce themselves from the needs and concern of others? One method is the out of sight out of mind method. People simply avoid witnessing people in need. Others who may witness will rationalize that people in need chose their own fate via the choices they make. Another rationalization is that to help those in need only enables the continuation of bad behavior. Yet another rationalization is that the condition of need is natural because of innate shortcomings and any help would amount to a permanent subsidy as the condition will never improve.

These rationalizations work to convince the selfish self to continue seeking pleasure at the expense of compassion, which therefore impedes assistance to others. Its like the cartoon depiction of the good Angel in one ear and the bad angel in the other, seeking to control behavior. The elites, whether they are the elites by virtue of class or by virtue of race, or by both, are the masters of these rationalizations that are made palatable by minor grains of truth. However, their rationalization is not designed to do what is best for the people in need and suffering, but rather, to eliminate the feeling of guilt in their own lives and to continue the pleasure of enjoying so much while others have so little.

In America, whites and the rich, who are disproportionately white, propagandize these rationalizations to the nation. Their intent is designed to eliminate guilt and to conserve the pleasures born from their status over non-whites and the poor. White people and rich people must rationalize that black people and poor people are in their relative state of deprivation because that is the life that they choose. To rationalize otherwise would threaten the feeling of pleasure that they receive from their absolute and relative stature. Whites and the elite also want to conserve the physchological pleasure of feeling the sense of being better, superior, than others in a fair competition of life. They want to feel as if they won by virtue of working harder and or working smarter and that the resultant is the natural order of survival of the fittest. Hence, there is no reason to feel guilt.

You see the natural sequence is that compassion in humans should be followed by assistance. The natural way to deal with guilt is to do all that you can do to help others. However, in order to add something to another person’s life one has to subtract something from their own life, whether it is the subtraction of time and or financial resources that normally go for personal pleasure. Hence, one cannot subtract from their lives and maintain their level of pleasure unless their level of pleasure in life is born from helping others and not materialism and stature. In America, the whole economic structure and system is dependent upon the promotion of the latter, so that is how most people define themselves and why they don't want to sacrafice that definition.

Most white people think the way they do about black problems because they too are human. They are trying to avoid the sense of guilt and moral responsibility and they use all the rationalizations listed above and more. Race is such a painful topic for whites because deep down inside they know that as humans they are not living up to their ideal selves, especially as so called Christians. You see, compassion and guilt are the emotions that helps us be our Brothers keeper. Hence, Blacks must be rationalized as at fault in order for whites to not have compasion or guilt and hence not the keeper of their brother. If blacks were in their position, we would rationalize the same thing because its human nature to seek to rationalize the continuation of pleasure and the aversion of pain.

Many whites rationalize that a valid guilt, in terms of race, is having some responsibility for slavery or Jim Crow. Since no contemporary white person has owned black slaves, they rationalize that they should not feel compassion or guilt in regards to the black condition of inequality. Moreover, they rationalize that despite centuries of white privilege, via the corollary of black oppression, that the relative deprivation of blacks is self inflicted and natural. Moreover, they have evolved to rationalize away feelings of guilt about their own racism by believing and suggesting that blacks are just as racist as whites. However, one would be hard pressed to find empirical evidence that our acts against them are equal in degree and kind to their acts against us. There is no offsetting behavior in blacks towards whites that neutralizes the impact of past and present white racism upon blacks. Yet, these cognitions help whites to avoid guilt and compassion all so that they can continue to enjoy the pleasure of relative and absolute stature and privilege over blacks.

The problem for black and poor people throughout America and the world is that people who have the most power to make a difference will continue to rationalize reasons to not make a difference. The elites will continue to divorce themselves from the needs and concerns of others so that they can not only maintain the pleasure of the egregiously skewed allocation of wealth nationally and globally, but also increase it. I really see little evidence of this changing now that capitalism has spread to nearly every part of the globe.

The impact of Urbanization pon Black America.

What has been the affect of urbanization upon African Americans? In 1920, the vast majority of blacks were Southern and rural. The great migration, which lasted from around 1920 to around 1970, brought millions of blacks to Northern industrial cities seeking a better life. By 1980 80% of black people were living in urban, as opposed to rural, environs. Today, although most blacks are still southern, over 90% of blacks live in urban environments, with the majority in higher density central urban environments.

A question was recently presented to me, via the mind of a black conservative, concerning the debunking of the notion that problems of today’s blacks are linked to the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. The proposition was this: If racism is the origin of many black problems today, then why are many black problems, like crime and out of wedlock births, worse today than in the early 1900’s when racism was much worse a problem? It’s actually a very logical question for if there is a correlation and causation between black problems and white racism, then black problems should rise and fall with the level of white racism in the general society, right? Not exactly.

The flaw of this analysis and proposition is that it assumes all other things remain the same, when they don’t and did not. The reason why some conditions worsened for blacks, while overt white racism declined, is due to the fact that others things changed. One of the things that changed is that the nation, and particularly black America, became much more urban than it had been. The behavior and culture of blacks radically changed once they started moving from a rural personal existence to an impersonal and dense urban existence in ghettos. Moreover, the society as a whole was becoming more individualistic as it was transforming into the “Me” generation where individual expression ruled over traditional expectations. What was the impetus for this change? The push factor was to escape Southern oppression and poverty born from racism. So our migration was a reaction to the action of white racism, i.e. racism is correlation and causation.

It’s like a person who says that he or she steals bread because he or she is hungry then a critic disputes that rationalization by noting the time when the person was much hungrier, yet, did not steal to the same degree. However, the critic never thinks to consider that the opportunity to steal may have varied between the time when the person was much hungrier compared with now. Had there been the same opportunity to steal bread, as now, when the person was much hungrier, the person likely would have stolen more bread. Thus, the degree of hunger, like the degree of racism, is not the only factor in determining the resultant behavior. Rather, it’s the “push” factor relative to opportunity to succumb or give into the temptations created from the “push” factor successfully. Hence, the environment that black folks lived in, in 1920, did not offer the opportunities to behave in a manner that manifest in contemporary urban black communities.

If you talk with any black person over the age of 50, they can give you a chronology of the change. They will tell you about the era when they used to leave their doors unlocked at night. They will tell you about the era when everyone spoke to one and other when they passed in public. They will tell you about the era were children addressed adults with “sir” and “ma’am”. They will tell you about the era when the neighbor looked out for and could and would discipline another’s child who had transgressed from the expectations of normative behavior as defined by the community and culture. These were all the traditions and culture formed from a rural southern existence and they eroded as blacks became more urban and less rural, more impersonal and less personal, as a consequence of becoming more Northern and more urban.

One also must keep in mind that years of racial oppression left a deep psychological scare upon black people. The rural black existence, unlike the urban black existence, did not offer the triggers or opportunities for deviant behavior for a psychologically scared people. As a general rule, when people live in a low density area where everyone knows everyone and the people have all lived in the area for many years, people don’t transgress from expectations very often. People who wanted to transgress from traditions usually move to the “city” for that, where it’s more impersonal and they feel they can become anonymous. Hence, the “city” has always been the destination and incubator of vices and blacks migration to the city, looking to escape the racism and poverty of rural southern existence, exposed them to opportunities from many vices.

In light of this, the reason why black conditions, in some respects, are worse today, than when racism was much worse, is due to the fact that the glue of rural existence and traditions are no longer keeping us sane. Let us also not forget that white racism has never vacated the premises either, although the loss of legal foundation has greatly curtailed the ability to egregiously oppress blacks with impunity. When blacks moved into their new urban environments, whites moved away to a suburban existence and their jobs followed them, making the core urban environment that much more an incubator of vices and bad behavior for a psychological scared people due to a lack of opportunity. The psychological scaring manifest frustration, anger and hopelessness that resulted in misplaced aggression and irresponsible behavior inflicted upon the people closest to them, which were other black people.

So as our national society and culture slowly decays in pursuit of materialism and individualism, all to support commercialism that feeds capitalism hyper greed, the traditionally vulnerable will be disproportionately impacted. Humans are not a naturally dense living people, as opportunity and urbanization forces it upon us. It’s an incubator for all type of socially deviant behavior, as well as, providing income opportunities needed in the modern day and age for survival. Black people are likely the most urbanized group in America and we also receive the less opportunity from urbanization of any group. Thus, whe don’t enjoy the positive income opportunities born from Urban (because most of it is now suburban) living, to the same degree as others, while being exposed to the vices of downside of urban living.

Of course, the same ole people will see this analysis as fitting the pattern of excuse making, when it is not. Every action produces a reaction and that phenomenon is intellectually known as “cause and effect”. Every intellectual pursuit of knowledge and discovery must deal with the phenomenon of cause and effect. It’s only when people want to emotionalize a debate that the phenomenon of cause and effect is relabeled the blame game and excuse making. Every time an attempt is made to intellectually explain the black condition, emotional terms are superimposed over logical terms to obfuscate with the hope of discrediting the findings or conclusion.

Numbers

1619 - 1865, 1865 – 1965, 1619 – 1965, 1619 – 2007 = 388 years. 1619 - 1865 = 246. 246/388 = 63%. 1619 – 1965 = 346. 346/388 = 89%.

What do those non arbitrary dates and numbers represent? 1619 is the birth of the black collective in this land later called America. It is the date that 20 indentured black servants were brought to America and who later became the first black slaves in America. 1865 represents the freeing of the slaves marked by the end of the civil war, which by the way was not fought to free the slaves, but to preserve the union. 1865 – 1965 was the unofficial era of American Apartheid, which came to a legal end with the Civil Rights Act of 1965, although it carried on criminally long after. 2007, of course, represents the present.

What the numbers means is this. The black collective, i.e. black people, has been in this land 388 years. We, the collective, have spent 246 of those 388 years in a state of bondage. That represents 63% of the time the collective has existed in these lands. The collective has spent an additional 100 years in a state of racial apartheid which denied blacks equal opportunity and access, as well as, inflicted racial violence in the form of lynching’s, rape, castration and assaults with impunity. This period of Apartheid represented 26% of our collective existence in this land. Combined, the period of bondage and apartheid equals to 346 of legalized black oppression out of a total of 388 years of existence in this land. That represents 89% of our collective existence in this land under a legalized form of oppression and 42, out of 388, in theoretical, if not practical, legal equality. That’s 11%.

In light of this, does it makes sense that the black collective today is more greatly influenced by the state of oppression than from the state of theoretical legal equality? How could humans spend 346 out of 388 years under oppression and their present condition not be heavily influenced by that oppression? One could make that argument if and when our collective existence in this land under legalized oppression drops below the 50 percentile, but to make that argument near the 90 percentile (90% of our existence in the state of oppression) is absurd. Therefore, economically, culturally and psychologically, the contemporary black collective is immensely influenced by the aftermath of oppression. Every action creates a reaction and 346 out of 388 years under the act of economical, cultural and psychological racial degradation is reverberating strong reactions upon the contemporary black condition, notwithstanding legal freedom. Moreover, the degradation and discrimination did not end with laws, but even if it did, the damage to black people will naturally last for decades to come.

Life is a continuum. Each generation does not start anew independent of the condition of the previous generation. Each subsequent generation inherits the condition passed onto it from the previous generation. Life is also a competition, like a rely race. Where one gets handed the baton of life is dependent upon the previous runner. If they are behind in the competition, when they pass off the baton to the next generation the next generation will start off behind as well. The only way to make up the difference is for a runner in a leg to be extraordinary and superior to the competition, lest he or she be equal and never make up the difference. The reason that the black collective is so far behind others today is that we inherited a disadvantaged start passed to us from our oppressed previous generations. Now that we have not made up the difference people who are blind to the past only see us as inferior runners in the race of life, which makes them, as the corollary, seem like superior runners. Hence, the expectation for a solution rest upon the premise that black’s are or can be superior to other groups of humans and can therefore make up the difference, as the failure to be actually superior will mean that we can never make up the difference as a collective.

This brings us to the point of management of expectations. Who is to say that black people have not performed in a manner typical for humans in regards to the odds against us? Who are we being compared to and coming up short in our recovery from 346 of 388 years of oppression? Who are the other groups who have had the same experience in degree and kind? Unless one thinks that blacks are inferior, how can anyone conclude that a group has had a parallel experience in degree and kind yet not manifest the condition that blacks are in? What would be different about our humanity that we cannot recover from oppression like others supposedly have? The proof of a similar oppression as blacks is a similar contemporary condition as blacks, relative to the beginning and legal end of the oppression.

Life is about choices

It is often said that life is about personal choices, in explaining why some lives turn out successful and others as failures. I am sure you have heard this many times. Essentially, what this analysis implies is that an entity chooses its fate by virtue of the choices that it makes. However, should not the analysis go much deeper than that given the fact that the choices people make are based upon the perceived feasibility and or knowledge of options? Is everyone working from the same equal set of probabilities?

It’s too simplistic to suggest that it all comes down to a matter of choices. Of course that is part of it, but it’s not the root of it. People are not juxtaposing between becoming a doctor, lawyer, Engineer, Physicist vs. becoming a drug dealer, gang banger, pimp, hustler or the like, then choosing to be a gang banger. Generally speaking, the choices people make are born from the options revealed to them by their environment. That which is observable therefore naturally shapes the options which in turn shape the choices. Therefore, living in a bad environment exposes one to a lot of bad options. Hence, should it be at all surprising that people who live in bad environments manifest a greater propensity to make bad choices?

It must also be noted that no human or creature is programmed to make a choice that is not a calculation to be in its best interest. Beings are programmed to survive by biologically seeking what pleasures them. It’s a simple pattern. Things that promote and cause pain are the things that threaten survival and things that promote pleasure are things that promote our survival and biological directives. For example, two of the greatest pleasures of living creatures are sex and eating and that is so because pleasure is the biological incentive so that life will make choices that promote its survival.

In light of that, people will always choose the option that promotes the greatest pleasure. People are not intentionally trying to ruin their lives, but rather, attempting to bring or increase pleasure in their lives. The problem for many people is that they live in an environment where the opportunities for pleasure are reduced by poverty, so people over indulge in natural forms of pleasure like sex and eating. Others may seek drugs. Yet others may become inspired to seek artificial or material pleasures, gained via money, by way of illegal activities based upon how they see others acquiring it. Money may not buy happiness, but is certainly can and does increase ones access to pleasure. These short term pleasures often increase long term pain.

Options are also regulated by optimism or confidence in ones future. When one lives in an environment with much poverty it does not inspire much confidence and optimism. It might inspire dreams, but those dreams do not come with an observable road map provided by the environs, unless its sports, entertainment or illegal activities. Thus, when one is not confident about their future, they feel less as if they are throwing something away as a consequence of their present choices. Hence, the calculation of pleasure is based upon what it will bring for the moment and not what it will cost in the future. There is no deferring of gratification if one is not confident that their future will be gratifying. Deferring gratification is an exercise for people who are confident about their future, not for people who don’t feel they have one.

The above having been noted, success and failure of a life is not a simple matter of choices. The idea that it all comes down to choices makes the playing field seem even and as if everyone is choosing from the same pool of options. Even though an option may exist as a possibility for all, it varies widely in probability for many. Just because something is possible does not therefore imply that it is probable. It’s possible that the majority of kids growing up in Detroit or the South Side of Chicago can be Surgeons and scientist; however, it’s highly improbable due to the environment not offering such as an observable option to emulate, as well as other environmental impediments. Hence, people are not making those choices. Of course, I am not saying that exceptions to the rule do not exist, because they always do for the extraordinary. However, no solution to a problem should assume or depend upon extraordinary behavior.

We are all humans. We are not that fundamentally different to account for all the socioeconomic difference that exist between us in regards to race and class. It does not all come down to personal responsibility and choices. It goes much deeper than that. It’s linked profoundly to history and an environment created from the actions and reactions that manifest in and over time and evolves a temporal state or condition called the present. We are all striving to survive and bring pleasure into our lives. None of us are trying to purposely ruin our lives. We are all trying to maximize our lives the best way that we know how based upon the information made to us by our environments. If people truly had to walk in other shoes, they would more than likely end up in the same situation because we are not that different as humans.

The fundamental corruption of analysis is born from the human desire to maintain a sense of ranking. Few people want to believe that their stature is not the product of being better than other, whether “better” translates to smarter, harder working, more responsible or the like. People want to essentially preserve their sense of superiority over others and they cannot do that while accepting the proposition that they had some advantage over many who have achieved less than them. People are essentially competitive and want to conserve their sense of an honest victory in a fair competition. Many of us want to believe that we are were we are because we made the intelligent choices and made the responsible choices while others with less made the dumb and irresponsible choices. Its not that simple and its not that true, notwithstanding grains of truth.

Imus no longer in the Morning.

Why are so many European Americans so upset with the firing of Don Imus? The answer is because this is and has always been a country and land designed to be of the European people, by the European people and for the European people. If you don't believe me, just check recorded history. In other words, America is still Amerikkka. In light of this manifest the expectation of European Americans is that everything should always go in the favor of and to the benefit of European Americans first and foremost. When it does not, they feel they are loosing out.

The Imus incident, like the OJ incident, inspires fear in European Americans. What is the fear? The fear is that this nation and land is straying from its manifest of being the land of the European peoples, by the European peoples and for the European peoples. Historically, right or wrong, things nearly always worked out the way European Americans wanted them to work out. Today, however, as highlighted by the OJ case and now Imus, high profile incidents are not always going to the favor of European American interest and wishes, regardless of right and wrong.

The problem is that the whole mindset of European Americans is distorted by the historical manifest of this nation. In short, European Americans, as a collective, are spoiled brats who are used to having everything their way. This is not to say that there have not been sub groups within the collective, like the Irish, where what was true for the collective was not that true for them. However, as a collective, European Americans have always been granted preference over African Americans and Native Americans, the two largest historically oppressed groups in this nation. Consequently, like a spoiled child, European Americans really do not have a clue of what fairness actually feels or looks like.

European Americans, the collective, if not a particular individual who is such, see the loss of European American privilege as unfairness. You see, one cannot go from unfairness to fairness without the previous beneficiaries of unfairness loosing something that they once had. Think of any spoiled child and their reaction to attempts to no longer spoil them. They will feel as if they are being punished and wronged because something they once enjoyed is being taken away. Unfairness to them thus becomes any act or attempt that seeks to diminish the advantages and privileges that they once enjoyed. Hence, there is no way for America to become a more fair society without a dismantling of European American Privilege, which will create anger.

What European Americans need to understand is that fairness implies an equality of unfairness. European Americans fight to preserve or limit the debilitating affects of racial unfairness to African Americans. We all know that anti-black discrimination still exists, despite laws. We all know that African Americans are still impacted by the effects of 300 years of past discrimination and racism. These realities weigh negatively upon African American forward progress, while European Americans are not weighed down with such. Yet, when society tries to redistribute unfairness via programs like Affirmative Actions, European Americans fight to keep the burden of unfairness disproportionately upon African Americans. Again, it’s the spoiled brat syndrome. The brat will continue to resist threats and change to their status quo unless it’s to given them more.

The biggest enemy of current European Americans is past European Americans. Think about it. It works like this. European Americans do things to maximize and increase their standard of living, often at the expense of non Europeans. Think of racial slavery in America as an example. Every action reverberates into a future reaction, however. Consequently, those future reactions are often passed on to the next generation of European Americans, as well as the benefit of the original action. Present day European Americans thus respond aversely to the negative reactions created from their forefathers actions. Hence, what irk European Americans today are reactions that manifested from European Americans actions in the past. In other words, if it was not for the actions of Europeans Americans in the past, the reaction that they dislike would never exist.

The civil rights era leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are all the product and reaction to European Americans who denied civil rights to African Americans for several hundred years. Hence, there would be no civil rights leaders angering millions of European Americans if millions of European Americans in the past had not decided to benefit from denying the civil rights of millions of African Americans. One has to be intelligent enough to know that every present action creates a future reaction. Hence, its not African American leaders that are really ticking off present European Americans, rather, they are ticked off at the liabilities passed on to them by past European Americans. This is rather hypocritical though, because European Americans have no problem enjoying the benefits past to them from the acts of past Europeans, just the liabilities. The benefits, though, were created from the liabilities, but European Americans wants to keep the assets passed to them, but just not the bill for the liabilities.

This whole Imus incident has become more about Jesse Jackson and Al Shapton than about Imus. European Americans are most angered not about what Imus said, but their perception that it props up the stature, exposure and credibility of people like Jackson and Sharpton. That’s what ticks them off. European American, as a collective, is less concerned with the impact of white racism upon non whites than they are with the impact of white racism upon the reputation of whites. European American seems to have decided that they will henceforth see and promote America as being free from the scourge of white racism. They seek to decouple continued black problems from past or present white racism. Consequently, in this fantasy view, Jackson and Sharpton are the bad guys for falsely promoting the idea that white racism still exist. Then Don Imus comes along and uses the phrase “Nappy headed hoes” and gives legitimacy to Sharpton and Jackson and the corollary of illegitimacy of the fantasy that white racism is dead. This is what really angers European American, the legitimizing of Sharpton and Jackson and the de-legitimizing of their illusion or should I say the exposing of their deception.

What I have learned is that European Americans are really hurt by the label of racist. Racism has become their scarlet letter and they are highly uncomfortable and defensive about the accusation. You will not even find traditional hate groups who have members who will self describe themselves as racist. That is because calling someone a racist, to them, is like calling them Evil, while they want to see themselves and America as righteous. European Americans do not want to appear morally inferior in regards to race. Thus, they live in denial and manifest cognitive dissonance in regards to race. They also try to make everyone else equally racist, if not more, so that in the juxtaposition they will not seem like the morally inferior group. Yet, one would be hard pressed to find evidence of black people every doing to white people what white people have done to black people in degree and kind. Yet, European Americans like to paint African Americans as equally racist, when in fact, we are just reacting to what they did to us.