Straight Talk on Race Relations | Center for Equal Opportunity

Here’s an excerpt from a recent column I wrote (you can read the whole thing here) and that I thought you might enjoy:

Race relations in the United States are good, have never been better, and in all likelihood their future is even brighter. And the key for continued progress is not complicated: don’t discriminate, and don’t screw up.

Martin Luther King, Jr., dreamed of the day that his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The first part of that statement gets the most attention these days, but the last part is important, too: isn’t it stating an expectation, a hope even, that we will have standards and that we will judge people by them?

As W.E.B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folk: “Draw lines of crime, of incompetency, of vice, as tightly and uncompromisingly as you will, for these things must be proscribed.” Again: color line, definitely not — but character standards, definitely.

Or, to look at it another way, for black advancement there is a legal side (the color of your skin should not be an impediment), but also a cultural side (the content of your character mustn’t be an impediment either).

It is ironic — tragic, really — that just as opportunities began dramatically to open up for African Americans in the 1960s, the ability and willingness of too many African Americans to take advantage of those opportunities began to decline, and in particular with the implosion of the black family.

… [And not] to sound too Andy Rooney-ish, but why is it that so many young African Americans adopt hoodlum-style dress, demeanor, and music, and then complain that people “profile” them as possible hoodlums? Many go to a lot of trouble to pin a very specific label on themselves, and then are surprised and indignant — and demand our sympathy — when people read it.

This is not the first time this has happened, of course. Teenage boys have always wanted to look tough and menacing, and teenage girls have always wanted to look, um, available. But they want the labels read only by their own cohort, and not by their elders. Sorry, kids, but it doesn’t work that way. Never has, and never will, and it’s not “blaming the victim” to point out that fact.

Consider: in the late 1960s, adolescents would grow their hair long to show their rejection of authority and the war and all that, and then complain when the less enlightened looked askance at them. A popular song back then implored: “We shouldn’t care about the length of his hair.”

Well, why not? If his hair length is intended to be a political statement, then why shouldn’t those who disagree with that statement like him less and those who agree with it like him more?… [So really] I’m not singling out young African American males here. …

Bottom line: we shouldn’t use a “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement as a way to avoid the demands of good character; we shouldn’t use affirmative action, either, because it flies in the face of the dream that people ought not be judged by the color of their skin, that race not be used as a proxy for who we are and what background, experience, or perspective — and especially for what character — we have.

And when it comes to character, we need to be more judgmental, we need to witness more, we need not just to walk the walk but also to talk the talk. We do all that when it comes to condemning discrimination. But it’s also true for criticizing bad character — and, I would add, praising good character.

* * *

What I wrote above is actually not far out of line with some recent remarks made by President Obama — and, predictably, the Left is not happy with those remarks.

The Washington Post noted recently that, though President Obama’s commencement address at Morehouse College received a “rousing response” from the audience, some of his supporters are less than pleased. Amazingly, they argue that the President has devoted too much time to discussions of black accountability and responsibility. They also suggest that Jesse Jackson has more credibility than the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan on appropriate messages for the black community, that the president is posturing for white folks when he delivers his message, and that he needs to spend more time challenging “the system” and taking responsibility for black people and less time urging them to take responsibility for themselves.

Needless to say, I think that President Obama’s message – and particularly his discussion of fatherlessness – is justwhatthe doctor ordered. And the criticism that his message is all right but needs to be delivered less frequently brings to mind this story: The search committee for a church was looking for a new minister to replace the retiring one. It visited another church where a young pastor gave such a moving sermon on the wages of sin that he was hired on the spot. The next Sunday, at his new church, the pastor gave exactly the same sermon. The committee was somewhat taken aback, but decided that, well, it was a new church and a different congregation, after all, so no harm in him giving the sermon to this audience. But then, the next Sunday, he gave the same sermon again. So, at this point, the committee met with the pastor and suggested that he talk about something else. And he replied, “But they’re still sinning.”

* * *

The Center for Equal Opportunity is anxiously awaiting Supreme Court decisions in two of the cases that we participated in this year, one challenging racial preferences in university admissions and the other challenging the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (I spoke on both cases last week before the Pittsburgh lawyers chapter of the Federalist Society, by the way).

Here and here is why we think that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is bad policy, outdated, unconstitutional, and ought to be struck down by the Supreme Court. What’s especially ironic is that the principal use to which Section 5 is put today is forcing jurisdictions to create and maintain racially segregated and gerrymandered voting districts – which is completely at odds with the original ideals of the Civil Rights Movement. There are other federal laws available to protect the rights of voters, and they don’t raise the problems that Section 5 does.

And here’s recent data from the Pew Research Center, bolstering our claim that the discrimination problems that originally justified the extraordinary measures of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act just don’t exist anymore.

For example: ”In its Nov. 8-12 poll in 2012, just 4% of whites answered yes to the question: ‘Did you have any problems or difficulties voting this year, or not.’ Only 2% of African-Americans responded affirmatively.”

And: ”Further, the findings of Pew’s Elections Performance Index show that while problems in American voting — such as waiting times at polling places, or rejected voter registrations – are widespread, they are not particular to poorer states or Southern states. This lends further credence to the absence of a race gap in the incidence of voting problems.”

Also discussed is recent Census data on elections (see also this earlier post): ”The Census survey found on average slightly higher reports of voting among African-American voters than among whites in former Confederate states, 67% to 62%. Notably, in Mississippi and North Carolina, more blacks reported voting than whites by 10 and 15 percentage points, respectively. The racial gap in voting was more modest in non-Confederate states (67% among blacks versus 65% among whites).”

Related posts: