{"id":8390,"date":"2015-05-06T06:33:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T13:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=8390"},"modified":"2015-05-05T11:05:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T18:05:54","slug":"baltimore-and-the-betrayal-of-black-dignity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/baltimore-and-the-betrayal-of-black-dignity\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore and the Betrayal of Black Dignity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The real losers in the Freddie Gray riots.<\/em><\/h3>\n

by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

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Image #: 36434158 Baltimore firefighters battle a three-alarm fire at Gay and Chester Streets on Monday, April 27, 2015, in Baltimore. It was unclear whether it was related to ongoing riots. (Jerry Jackson\/Baltimore Sun\/TNS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

[1]<\/sup>Baltimore is the latest American city to become a stage for the farce that is our national racial discourse. The swift, politicized indictment of 6 police officers for the death of Freddie Gray\u2013\u2013which brought down, for now, the curtain on this performance by abandoning all the canons of procedural justice\u2013\u2013 is a fitting end to this sorry spectacle.<\/p>\n

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The winners of this shameful display are obvious, as they always are after these riots. Local thieves, gangsters,\u00a0and thugs; bourgeois white \u201canarchists\u201d out on a lark; junior-high posers indulging adult-sanctioned destruction;\u00a0well-heeled black politicians fanning the flames and leveraging the violence for career advancement; race-baiting vultures like Al Sharpton, and the sensationalist national media\u00a0all benefitted. Most important, the false narrative of a national conspiracy of racist cops itching to murder innocent black men was yet again perpetuated by race hustlers and their progressive enablers.<\/p>\n

The losers are the local black businessmen, the law-abiding black residents, the blacks trapped in ghetto hellholes, and the principle of social order\u00a0as the necessary foundation for individual autonomy and advancement. Worst of all, black Americans have been betrayed by yet another spectacle that reinforces every racist stereotype blacks fought against during the decades of Jim Crow.<\/p>\n

Legal segregation was based on the same rationale as slavery\u2013\u2013the false assumption\u00a0that all blacks were by nature incapable of achieving the level of civilization necessary for political freedom and personal autonomy. They\u00a0were unsuited for freedom and autonomy because they lacked enough rational capacity to exercise impulse control and avoid the destructive behaviors that characterize barbarism, particularly sex and violence. As Aristotle, an important ancient source for this idea, put it, \u201cHe who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature.\u201d Thus \u201cit is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black Americans battling racism understood that their oppression was founded on the white assertion of\u00a0their inability on their own to exercise virtue, especially self-control. Thus in their daily lives they strived mightily to explode these stereotypes by their own behavior. Education, deportment, proper speech, churchgoing, dignified public behavior were all daily challenges to the racist assumption that blacks\u00a0could not be civilized because they lacked by nature civilizing virtues. In doing so blacks\u00a0were not \u201cacting white,\u201d for many whites behaved in disorderly ways that bespoke a lack of virtue. Hence the Progressive eugenics movement in the early 20th<\/sup> century, speaking the language of Darwin rather than virtue, targeted poor whites and immigrant peasants as well as blacks. No, black people were acting civilized<\/i>, and they refused to cede to whites the notion that civilization was color specific\u00a0and exclusive.<\/p>\n

Segregationists understood what blacks were doing, which is why they targeted black dignity, and attacked blacks who acted \u201cuppity\u201d\u2013\u2013which included not just defiance, but speaking English properly, using a sophisticated vocabulary, displaying knowledge, and generally comporting themselves in a civilized\u00a0and virtuous fashion, all of which made blacks dignified. If segregationists did not challenge that dignity, then the foundational idea of their racism\u00a0was bankrupt. Blacks could be civilized, more so than many whites, and thus they deserved the political freedom and personal autonomy that defined American civilization.<\/p>\n

That was an intolerable contradiction\u00a0for racists, one battled not just with violence,\u00a0but with daily ridicule and contempt. In contrast, black excesses of sex and violence,\u00a0or vulgar and clownish public behavior, may have annoyed segregationists, but it\u00a0did not challenge the justifying ideas of racism. Rather,\u00a0such behavior was comforting, for it confirmed the notion that blacks acted that way because they lacked by nature the capacity of rational self-control. Long before the Civil Right movement, millions of American blacks had to fight\u00a0every day\u00a0for their dignity, and to assert their equal capacity to be civilized by behaving in ways that often called down\u00a0on them contempt and humiliation.<\/p>\n

But just at the moment the 1965 Civil Rights Act codified in law that idea for which blacks had struggled, for millions of blacks cultural developments began to undermine that achievement. Abetted by a decline in religious faith, the notion of virtue and self-control, reinforced by shame, guilt,\u00a0and religious sanctions, began to retreat before the therapeutic hedonism epitomized in the chant, \u201cIf it feels good, do it.\u201d As a result,\u00a0impulse control, the most important virtue necessary for poor and historically disadvantaged people to improve their lot,\u00a0was discarded, replaced by an idealized hedonism that glorified behaviors like sexual promiscuity and drug use guaranteed to hold back those trying to advance.<\/p>\n

Second, the idea of Western civilization\u00a0as a set of universal ideals and rights that transcend the accidents of race and ethnicity was attacked by identity politics. Now the particularities of race, ethnicity, and various spurious \u201ccultures\u201d were promoted by \u201cmulticulturalism.\u201d An authentic identity could come only from the values, habits, and mores unique to one culture and incompatible with others. Hence the saying, \u201cIt\u2019s a black thing, you wouldn\u2019t understand.\u201d No matter the differences of privilege, education, region, or wealth, melanin and hair texture melded all blacks into one identity, just as the one-drop rule did to blacks under Jim Crow.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Western civilization now was uniquely oppressive, marred by slavery, imperialism, colonialism, capitalist exploitation, and endemic racism. As such, assimilation to Western civilization became a betrayal of racial identity, and learning its language, history, and foundational ideals yet another act of cultural oppression. Once W.E.B. Du Bois spoke of reading Shakespeare and Aristotle as \u201ccrossing the color line.\u201d Now it\u2019s \u201cHey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go,\u201d as the privileged students at Harvard and Berkeley chanted. Those who attacked America whether through ideas or violence were romanticized\u00a0as \u201crevolutionaries\u201d fighting for racial \u201cliberation,\u201d as well-heeled racial commentators<\/a>[2]<\/sup>\u00a0have done after the Baltimore and Ferguson riots. Or consider the new social media fad in which middle-class black kids stomp on American flags, in imitation of New Black Party college student Eric Sheppard, the self-proclaimed \u201cterrorist toward white people\u201d currently being sought by the authorities.<\/p>\n

Finally, this new black identity assumed that being a victim was the core of blackness. No matter how rich or educated, every black American is still a victim who deserves some sort of redress, whether racial preferences and government jobs, or some form of redistributed federal tax money. Hence in the aftermath of riots like those in Baltimore we hear calls for \u201cmassive investments in urban communities,\u201d as Obama puts it, despite the fact that Baltimore has been run by blacks for decades, and has enjoyed billions of dollars of federal aid. But even more dangerous, to predicate identity on victimhood and demands for reparations is to put inferiority at the heart of black identity, for it inculcates dependency, destroys autonomy, and frees people from personal responsibility and accountability. For as the African proverb has it, \u201cThe hand that gives is always above the hand that receives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The footage from the recent protests and riots all reflect this betrayal of respectable black Americans. Of course, there were peaceful demonstrations led by respectable community leaders, but they were obscured by the rioters and the race-baiters who peddled the old melodrama of evil white racists and helpless black people who lack the character to fight against joblessness, drugs, promiscuity, vulgarity, crime, and the slaughter of their black \u201cbrothers.\u201d What we saw were images that would have warmed the heart of an old-school racist, and confirmed his belief that black people are barbarians, incapable of virtue and hence of civilization. That white leftists\u00a0and privileged black opportunists enable and justify this narrative is a betrayal of black dignity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

URL to article: http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/2015\/bruce-thornton\/baltimore-and-the-betrayal-of-black-dignity\/<\/strong><\/p>\n

URLs in this post:<\/p>\n

[1] Image: http:\/\/www.frontpagemag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/baltimore-riots-878×494.jpg<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

[2] commentators: http:\/\/insider.foxnews.com\/2015\/05\/01\/oreilly-every-excuse-book-being-used-justify-baltimore-riots<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2015 FrontPage Magazine. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The real losers in the Freddie Gray riots. by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine [1]Baltimore is the latest American city to become a stage for the farce that is our national racial discourse. The swift, politicized indictment of 6 police officers for the death of Freddie Gray\u2013\u2013which brought down, for now, the curtain on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[842,22,92,330,120,145,86,383],"tags":[1001,1000,676],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2bk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8540,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/progressive-elites-ignore-human-nature-at-everyone-elses-expense\/","url_meta":{"origin":8390,"position":0},"title":"Progressive Elites Ignore Human Nature at Everyone Else\u2019s Expense","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Human nature is unchanging, predictable \u2014 and can be dangerous if ignored. 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Facebook and Google may have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science"","block_context":{"text":"Science","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/science\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":936,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/koran-burning-and-destructive-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":8390,"position":4},"title":"Koran Burning and Destructive Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The riots and violence in Afghanistan over some accidentally burned Korans are following a script that by now is all too drearily familiar. As we have seen over the years with the riots over the Mohammed cartoons, Pope Benedict\u2019s comments about violence in Islam,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3362,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/running-scared-of-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":8390,"position":5},"title":"Running Scared of Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society One of Broadway\u2019s big hits this season is the musical\u00a0The Book of Mormon, a creation of the scatological geniuses behind the cartoon\u00a0South Park. 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