Ouch My Head Hurts!

It Martin Luther King Day! (Or it was when I wrote this.)

And since my last couple of swipes were at the right (Hey! The party in power always makes the best target.) let’s redirect my venomous out pouring of bile to the left.

In the fifties and sixties the appalling and viscous treatment of the minority population in this country was finally address. Many people bravely lost their lives to ensure that justice and liberty was applied equally to all.

So what the hell went wrong! As it currently stands blacks in this country are about as integrated into mainstream society as oil gets integrated into water. In the history of this country we have successfully repressed and then integrated many populations into mainstream America. Many of the populations were illiterate uneducated non-English speaking immigrants. German, Ukrainian, Dutch, English, Chinese, Korean, and Hispanic all have made the leap or are actively trying. But the Blacks seem to have hit a wall of their own making. It is ironic that the very population that started the civil rights movement seems to have lost their way. An oriental that becomes a success is held up as a role model. A black person who becomes a success is regard by his own people as a sellout.

The attitude of the major different population currently integrating is startling. An oriental wants to achieve the American dream so bad they will do anything, including endure some of the most appalling hardships. True they can be some of the most viscous, immoral and cutthroat individuals I have every met, but at least they are trying. Then there are the Hispanic populations. Regardless of their legal status and language skills nobody can say they are not hard workers.

But the blacks just seem to be lost in their own little world. And the blame for this sits firmly at the foot of the affirmative action program. What started out, as an attempt to jump-start the integration program has become an abomination. Instead of assisting the black population into mainstream America it has become a drug they cannot do without. It has taken the spirit of the civil rights movement and corrupted it into something truly evil.

Yes I know that discrimination still exists. I have witnessed it myself. Yes I know something had to be done to address the institutional inequality of the early 20th century. I am even willing to concede that at the time affirmative action was introduced it was a necessary thing.

But it has turned very ugly in the 50 odd years of its existence. And the people it was designed to help have swung 180 degrees. What had started out, as an attempt to achieve equality has become a system of inequality. It is ironic that roles of the black man and white man have switched from what they were in the fifties. Today if you are black you don’t have to show up for work on time, you can cop an attitude that would get a white person fired and if you do show up for work you don’t have to do anything productive. If anyone points out your inadequate performance they are label a racist and reported to the Equal Opportunity Police. If you are black you can sue your employer for the slightest preserved slight, ruin his business and get a large monetary reward. In today’s work place black people actually have more rights than whites. I have personally witnessed this behavior on numerous occasions. In fact I have only meet one black person who has not “played the race card”. The absurdity of the situation makes me wonder if I am on some bad acid trip.

The most heart wrenching part about this scenario is that I use to be a liberal. I was raised on a steady diet of liberal sit-coms and police dramas in a rural town that didn’t even have a single black man. I never even met a Black, Hispanic or Oriental, till I was in my 20’s. I just assumed that the TV portrayal of all the races living in harmony as one big happy family was correct. That the entire planet was populated by intelligent, articulate, reasonable people, who just happen to have different color skin. Then I got a job in the South, and was subsequently transferred into the Deep South. What a shock! All of a sudden blacks and redneck that totally embraced all their negative stereotypes were everywhere. It was also very obvious that to point out this deviation from “television reality” meant that the redneck would beat the crap out of you and the black man would get you fired as a racist.

To this day the true nature of the world makes the little gear in my head grind like fingernails down a blackboard.