Copyright 2015 by John T. Reed
“Nigerians make up less than 1 percent of the black population in the United States, yet in 2013 nearly one-quarter of the black students at Harvard Business School were of Nigerian ancestry; over a fourth of Nigerian-Americans have a graduate or professional degree, as compared with only about 11 percent of whites.” New York Times 1/25/14
I previously read that America’s elite colleges fill their quotas for blacks with not American blacks for the most part, but with blacks from the Caribbean and Africa.
Here is a line from conservative-headlines.com:
In 1999, a study at the University of Pennsylvania found that over 25% of all black students in elite colleges are immigrants or children of immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean. The number may be even higher now. Much of the rest of the black students at elite colleges are Mulattoes.
Obama is a Mulatto. He was also raised entirely by whites.
Canadian blacks strike me as better behaved, dressed, and groomed and un-angry compared to American blacks. In 2013, I spent a couple of weeks traveling back and forth at the Canadian border in BC and AB. The contrast was stark. The Canadian blacks looked like black lawyers or investment bankers or TV news anchors here. Then you would go down to Belligham WA and the blacks would be in their hoodies glaring at the whites and blasting their music at illegally-loud decibel levels.
Historically, 150 years ago, the U.S. had slavery and Canada was the terminus of the Underground Railroad that escaped slaves took to get away from not only their slave masters but also the Fugitive Slave Act which said Southern slave owners could pursue and recapture their runaway slaves in all U.S. states. That history may have an influence, but I suspect I would not have made such observations about differences between American and Canadian blacks had I visited Canada before the mid sixties—so so much for ancient history. The history that matters is American blacks got infected with the “black power” movement in the mid sixties.
Here is a Wikipedia entry about one of the iconic events of that change:
The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute was an act of protest by the African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City. As they turned to face their flags and hear the American national anthem (The Star-Spangled Banner), they each raised a black-gloved fist and kept them raised until the anthem had finished.
The 5/6/15 Wall Street Journal has a column by William A. Galston contrasting the economic success of Pittsburgh with the economic disaster that is Baltimore. Galston’s columns in the Journal always surprise me. “What is this crap,” I think. “Is Galston some sort of token liberal so the Journal can claim to listen to the other side?”
But I really liked his column on 5/6/15. He basically said a number of Rust Belt American cities have self-destructed, giving the examples of Port Clinton, OH and Detroit, while another Rust Belt city that by all appearances was in the same boat, Pittsburgh, did not go that way. It will be hosting multiple national and international conferences soon. Those locations are generally chosen by the host country to show off the city in question. In contrast, a record 29conventions were scheduled for Baltimore in 2015. Three have recently canceled because of the violence, or more accurately out of fear that Baltimore’s new rioting-and-looting image would cause prospective attendees to stay home.
Galston credits Pittsburgh’s “coordinated effort by the city’s political, economic and nonprofit leaders to link education and innovation, nurture new business and turn Pittsburgh into one of America’s most livable cities.”
I’m not buying that. Baltimore had plenty of that and more. Rouse, Camden Yards, the new NFL stadium, the Ravens, John Hopkins, not to mention being near the great engine of all-season, American economic expansion: DC Democrats.
But there is another fact in the column, the one I think explains the difference between economic performance in Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Baltimore is 63% black and Pittsburgh is 26% black.
But it is not the skin color that is the problem. A better way to put it is that Baltimore has somewhere around 60% of its people being vehemently opposed to “acting white;” in Pittsburgh, only around 20% have that mind-set.
I’ll tell you what Pittsburgh probably has more of, and would like even more still: Nigerians. And, as my Archie Bunker maternal relatives would have said, the Nigerians are as black as a telephone. (For the young, before the 1970s anti-trust suit that broke up AT&T, all telephones were owned by AT&T and made of black Bakelite.)
Skin color is not holding Nigerians back. Or top athletes. Or Africans in general who come to America. Or many Caribbeans.
I remember an In living Color skit about Jamaicans who only had three jobs being disparaged by other Jamaicans who had five or six. Here is an article about Jamaicans succeeding far more in American than American blacks: http://www.topix.com/forum/afam/TM7OHV8H8T6STR8R5/p15.
It mentions another good point. Blacks aren’t the only Americans who can’t blend into the Caucasian crowd. Asians and Southwest Asians can also be spotted from 50 yards away. And like the Nigerians, they seem to do better than American whites who were born here.
Hell, the problem of American blacks is not failure to “act white.” It’s failure to act Asian or failure to act Nigerian or Jamaican. Even whites should be acting more like the Asians, Nigerians, and Jamaicans.
Maybe we need a KATUSA program for blacks. Early in the Korean War, the South Korean Army sucked. After some efforts to train them better, they were simply integrated into the U.S. Army—like one South Korean in every ten-man American squad. The program actually still exists. Did it work? The North Koreans were thrown back out of South Korea by UN forces.
We had ROK units in South Vietnam when I was there. They were famous for extreme discipline—which was very much quite absent early in the Korean War. There was a rule that all soldiers had to wear a helmet and a flak jacket when traveling in vehicles. Because it was hot, most Americans ignored the order. I never saw a ROK soldier not wearing his helmet or flak jacket in a vehicle.
We probably already have a “KATUSA” program for blacks already—blacks raised by whites. Like I said, Obama is one. There are probably a lot more. It would make an interesting study to compare how they have done with their black fellow Americans who were raised by blacks in black neighborhoods and educated in black public schools.
A number of prominent blacks were saved from the hood by going into the U.S. military. Antwoine Fisher is one. I heard him speak, talked to him afterward, and saw the movie about his life. The name of the movie is his name. Denzel Washington plays a Navy Psychiatrist who straightened him out. There are other prominent military vets who may or may not have been saved by the military: Harry Belafonte, Sunny Anderson (Food network star), Shaggy (Reggae artist), Congressman Charles Rangel, MC Hammer, Ice T, James Earl Jones (I just learned that he graduated from U.S. Army Ranger School. Yo, James, “Drive on!”), Mr. T (I wonder if he’s a relative of Ice T.)
A number of prominent blacks were Army brats or had a parent who was career U.S. military in another branch. Harris Faulkner of Fox News is one. Tiger Woods is another. Also WC (a hip-hop artist), Ronnie Lott, LeVar Burton, Herman Edwards, Robert Griffin III, Charlayn Hunter-Gault, Alan Keyes, Shaquile O’Neal, Lionel Richie, Rachel Smith (Miss Universe USA), Bill Cosby. Montel Williams is an Annapolis grad and a retired career Marine. David Robinson is also an Annapolis grad and a former NBA star.
It is not military training that is benefiting these people. Rather, it is growing up or coming of age in the very strong, disciplined, military culture—which is very much there after work hours because of living on post and a top-down, sycophant social order— which is about 99% the “acting white” denounced by so many of the misguided in the ’hood. The military brats often attend U.S> Army schools with all other children of military personnel—mostly white. If a black teenage son of a career Army NCO or officer acted like the teenagers in the streets of Baltimore, it would probably end his father’s career. Not an option.
Since the “black-power” movement took over the leadership in the black community, blacks as a group have descended into an economic and criminal hell. Here is a Wikipedia line about it:
“The movement was prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values.”
The phrase “black values” is the key. There are no “black values.” “Black values” are like Kwanza—a fake holiday whose reason for existence is simply that blacks felt bad about a lack of recognized holidays that were created by blacks. So-called “black values” are simply the list of time-tested values of all advanced western and Asian societies, only with the word “for” crossed out and replaced by the word “against.” 7-Up once called itself the “Uncola” in its advertising to try to differentiate itself from Coke and Pepsi and to appeal to those who want to be different for the sake of being different. “Black values” are nothing but the “un-white values.”
“Black values” also have some elements that are not the unwhite values. True, blacks were hated by the Klan and many other southern whites and by American Nazis. But that was wrong. Blacks initially in the civil rights era condemned the white hatred against them, but recognized that adopting an identical hatred in the other direction would cost them the moral high ground and distract them from the work of raising themselves up economically and in other areas of American endeavor like academic, charitable, political, and business leadership.
The “black power” leaders threw all that out. They demanded that all blacks join them in a rage against whites. Slavery was the main reason, plus post-slavery segregation laws. But no current whites are former slave owners and no current blacks are former slaves. And many current blacks, like Obama, are not even the descendants of former slaves, and a great many whites and other non-blacks came to America to live in the North during slavery or came here after slavery ended. They don’t even have “inherited culpability,” yet the rage blacks have talked themselves into makes no distinction between a white who was born in, say, Russia in 1978 and a white whose ancestors lived in South Carolina for centuries.
Blacks had plenty of values back in the post-World War II/pre-Civil Rights Act of 1964 era. Their values were the same as whites and other races: honesty, hard work, self-reliance, get a good education, try to look your best, use good English, stay out of trouble with the police, get married, take responsibility for your own actions and inactions, be a good husband and father, good will toward others, the Golden Rule, be a good neighbor, know and use good manners. And blacks were moving up the economic ladder rapidly. Back then, blacks had lower unemployment and out-of-wedlock birth rates than whites.
The outspoken black men of Sanford, FL; Ferguson MO; Staten Island; and Baltimore appear to have the following “values:”
• talk and dress like a convenience store robber
• commit drug and violent crimes to get street cred (I think Obama bragged about using cocaine in his autobiography to impress black voters on the South Side of Chicago where he ran for Congress.)
• disdain education
• owe no loyalty to anyone but your immediate family and gang, if you are a member
• make your living through crime, lawsuits, and government handouts
• impregnate multiple girls in their early teens; don’t marry the girls; pay no child support
• blame others, mainly whites, police, and government for all your failings and bad choices
• hate all non-blacks, police of all races, successful blacks who succeeded by “acting white”
• take whatever you can get away with
Not all inner-city blacks are like this. We used to play inner-city teams when I coached youth football. Those parents seemed to be good ones. But I saw few such people on TV in the coverage of Ferguson, Baltimore, etc. And the few I saw seemed terrified of saying anything that would be disliked by the dominant blacks—the ones who hold the values I just described.
This is a formula for the destruction of a group of people. Before 1964, when “black values” were the same as the values of whites and Asians, America’s blacks were emerging from their long nightmare of slavery and segregation. Then, because “black power” persuaded many, maybe most, blacks to embrace the above “values,” they have descended into a hellish combination of murder, incarceration, drugs, unemployment, violence, ignorance, unwed mothers, fatherless children, and hatred that their deceased 20th century ancestors would have been horrified by it.
“We were poor,” I suspect they would say, “but we experienced nothing like this.” I have not seen the stats, but I suspect the percentage of blacks who were murdered by whomever—blacks or whites—before 1950, was far less than the percentage who are murdered by fellow blacks today. And I know that the percentage of blacks incarcerated today far exceed the percentage that were incarcerated before “black power.” It is legitimate to ask, who was worse off: a slave before 1865 or a maximum security penitentiary prisoner today? Both get room, board, and medical care. The slaves got to be with their families—usually, and had more room to roam.
Blacks from the Caribbean and Africa have enjoyed much success and prosperity in America—ironically, because they have absolutely no use for “black values.” So have blacks raised by one or two white parents or by a career military parent. The failed blacks in America today don’t need to have a “conversation” with whites. They need to have a “conversation” with Africans and Caribbeans in America, and the quasi-black Katusa’s in America and do more listening than talking—for a change.
Two of my sons cringe when I say “blacks.” Something about it being out of date and not all black are throwing rocks at police. NO problem. Would someone please come up with a word that refers to the segment of the black community who incessantly rant about racism, blame all their failures on whites and government policy—the whole in-the-’hood, hoodie-wearing, single mother family, anti-“acting white,” apostrophe name, incarcerated or out on bail anti-social, unemployed human disasters as opposed to the blacks who act like normal people, e.g., Obama, Bryant Gumbel, Jason Riley, etc.
Here are some Facebook comments on this article and another similar one about Baltimore: http://www.johntreed.com/problem-is-not-black-skin-it-is-suicidal-American-black-culture.html
Ray Pascali I suspect that many of the police officers who do not take your advice and leave will "play the game" by doing the bare minimum while not putting themselves in jeopardy. Bottom line is the public loses but that's the price they pay for continuing to live in this environment.
Phillip McGregor Excellent articles. Last night I dined with a retired police detective and he said these body cameras will be the end of effective policing. He expanded by saying what you just stated in your article about anti-white values in the hood and that he had to talk to them on their level and that is impossible on camera. He gave an example of ordering me to move my car. He said, "Sir, could you please move your car over there?" would be sufficient for normal citizens but in the hood if he said that the typical urban black would slouch, grab his crotch and say F you. He said to get him to move his car he would have to say, "Get this piece of shit car off my MF'ing street before I stomp your ass!" This is not even rude to their minds and they respect him, so they move the car. Of course with a body camera if that recording made the news it would be cue the rabble rousers.
Phillip McGregor On the subject of the service academies, a friend's kid is in the Merchant Marine Academy. Once trained they can be officers on merchant ships making six figures or any number of other civilian jobs in the industry for just six years. Unique to the other academies, graduates can also elect to become a commissioned officer in any branch of the military. It seems to be a very good deal.
John T. Reed Today’s Thomas Sowell column says similar things to my article above about black skin not being the color. The article title in the San Ramon Valley Times is “Race, politics and lies—we blindly follow the script.” Googling that may enable you to read it. But headlines and titles on columns tend to vary from paper to paper around the country. You may be able to find it by Googling Thomas Sowell’s latest column.
I think my mom’s mind-set sort of eliminated “no excuse, sir” and an unnecessary interim step. She simply had three boys and a husband to feed and had no time to discuss it in terms like no excuse. Excuses require a socialist mind-set. My mom came of age during the Depression. The only solution then was to get a job and work. Today, you can be a Democrat-base grifter living off lawsuits, government checks, welfare fraud, black-market shadow economy work, and crime. None of those were options for my mom. At West Point, “No excuse” was the answer to the question, “Why did you fail to…?” In our house, no one was around to ask that question and my mom had no time to answer it.
It’s a bit like what I say about public school teachers and coaches. The teachers may come up with some dopey notion and teach it to the kids—messing them up for 30 years. Coaches are no less likely to come up with some dopey notion, but they sure as hell are less likely to not wise up fast because they have a game or two each week during the season and getting beat causes a needed reevaluation.
I think if anyone offered my mom some excuse back then—like having a drunk husband or having to support three sons and a husband on a secretary’s salary or some such, she would have dismissed it with, “I can’t pay the bills with excuses.” For pre-1960s Americans, that was an automatic mind-set, like tough love as a way to raise kids.
The mind-set now is from each according to his ability (progressive income tax); to each according to his collection of excuses (government safety net). This is causing expanding disaster in the black community and spreading to other identity groups.·
Stephen Tobey One correction in the second article, the sketch about the family with multiple jobs was on In Living Color, not SNL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-QdhtmvowMIn Living Color Hey Monyoutube.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-QdhtmvowM
John T. Reed Re McGregor: I was not aware of how cops had to talk to the homeboys, but it makes sense. We have a similar thing in football coaching where a total transcript would make the coaches sound too harsh. What is missing is the 300 times we previously used less harsh language with the player in question and it did not penetrate.
Re the US Merchant Marine Academy, yes it is a good deal, apparently for the same reason we almost have no U.S.-flagged merchant marine. Maritime unions drove America out of the merchant marine business with overly high wage demands combined with federal laws supporting those demands. Cruise ships have to stop in foreign ports to avoid coming under crushing U.S. laws. I’m not sure, but I think you can’t take a cruise from say CA to HI without stopping in Ensenada, Mexico or some such.
Lots of blacks do quite well in America. But I think the inner-city “plantations” on which Sharpton, Jackson, and black elected officials are determined to keep blacks are so isolated from proper values and role models that they are utterly clueless about how they might escape or even why they should escape.
In the movie Gifted Hands about Ben Carson childhood and life, his mom is a cleaning lady for a doctor. He has a huge library in his house and the mom is impressed by his success and demeanor. She asks if he read all those books, “Most of them,” he said. (I actually think they were law books for the camera—collections of books with identical bound covers.) So the mom, who was illiterate, forced her sons to read books constantly. Close enough. Ben became a top neurosurgeon and is now running for president.
My mom was a high school grad with secretarial and retail sales clerk skills, the first high school grad in her family. She knew no one who went to college. But during WW II, she got a job at the New York Shipbuilding Corp. in Camden, NJ. There she worked with naval architects and engineers. They apparently impressed the hell out of her. My whole life growing up she kept telling me I was going to college. We rarely passed over a bridge without her telling me that engineers knew how to design the bridge so it was safe. So I went to West Point, an almost engineering school where I learned, among other things, how to design bridges.
I read about a study where social workers were embedded with two categories of families: single moms in the hood and normal affluent suburban families. They observed how the kids were raised not just in classrooms but in the home after school and on weekends. The difference was stark.
The poor moms had no clue about how to succeed in life and were like leaves blowing in the wind. The suburban parents were constantly teaching the kids about getting a good education, being polite, deferring gratification like practicing music or sports. The parents set the example and the kids had a zillion good role models in their lives. The parents and other grown-ups in the lives of the kids knew the ropes about how to succeed.
One contrast was going to the doctor. The poor mom just took the kid and sat there mute like a POW speaking only to answer the questions of the doctors or nurses. The suburban parents would tell their child before going to the doctor how to talk to the doctor and to ask questions about anything they wanted to know about the illness or injury.
My oldest son want to an Ivy league College as a football player. The younger two graduated from UC Santa Barbara and Arizona.
My parents knew about “college” but they did not distinguish much. My mom and dad thought West Point was hot stuff, but they had no concept of the Ivy League. My mom put a West Point decal on her car when I was there, but when I asked if she wanted a Harvard Business School decal, she said no.
She came to both graduations, but was sort of baffled by the Harvard graduation. She seemed to sense both were great institutions but was unable to articulate feelings about the sea of well-scrubbed, well-spoken, super-confident, well-dressed, preppy, almost glowing mass of Harvard grads and families in Harvard Yard. (All of the grads of Harvard go to the same ceremony—undergrad, Law School, Business School, JFK School, etc., then they go to a second ceremony with only their school to get their diplomas. She sensed that she most definitely was not in Collingswood, NJ anymore in Harvard Yard, but I don’t think she could put her finger on what she was seeing all around her. The West Point graduation, in contrast, just seemed like the Collingswood one only with just the smart, clean-cut kids present.
By the time my sons were born, I knew the Ivy League and how useful it was and roughly how to help my son get in there. My parents had no clue about either why or how to go there. The black single moms in the hood are about a million miles behind my high school grad, Depression-era mom who knew no college grads until the shipbuilding experience.
As another WSJ column recently said, the only way to get them out of there is to get them out of there before much of their childhood has passed. The inner-city bad neighborhoods are in a death spiral amply demonstrated by Camden, NJ, my birthplace and where my mom came of age, Detroit, and a whole lot more. They welcome Baltimore to their ranks.
Taxpayers outside of Baltimore should stop “helping” Baltimore. It is not working and they sure as hell are not deserving. When the rock throwers and their apologist elected officials are willing to admit they are the problem, we’ll consider helping. Don’t hold your breath.
I saw David Clarke, the Milwaukee sheriff testifying in Congress. He said similar to what I’m saying above only he had a name for the blacks who behave this way—underclass urban or some such.
John T. Reed