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.