Back To Blood

Way back before writing was common, there was a young black politician coming along who was ticketed for big things. The FDR-New Deal coalition was in tatters and the Reagan Revolution was in full swing. Catholics, the so-called Reagan Democrats, were walking away from the Liberal Democrats. Southern whites were heading for the exits. In both cases the underlying issue was race. The Civil Rights Movement turned into looting and retribution, busting up the old coalition that had made the Democrats the majority part for 50 years.

In the midst of what looked like a collapse of the American Left, the search was on for “new” Democrats. The Democratic Leadership Council was founded in ’85 with the goal of reforming the party and unloading the old commies and radicals that scared the hell out of decent people. The search was also on for new black leaders. Lunatics like Jesse Jackson were embarrassing and reminded whites of what went wrong with the Civil Rights Movement. That’s how Kurt Schmoke got his start in politics.

Instead of being a man of the streets, Schmoke was a man from the Ivy League. On paper he looked like the ideal black guy. He was smart, well spoken and civilized. He avoided all the bomb throwing that other black politicians could never seem to resist. Schmoke was a black politician who could go toe-to-toe with the white guys in the board room and the classroom. He was guided into elected office by the Maryland Democratic machine and eventually became mayor of Baltimore.

I recall being at a reception of some sort where Schmoke was ushered around by some big shot Democrats. The buzz about the guy was thick. He was going to be the first black governor and maybe the first black president. Instead he was mayor and never went any further in politics. He entered office as a technocrat who would make the city work. His first was uneventful, but it was clear he was not up to the task of fixing the city. By his second term it was typical black city politics. The pols were looting the treasury and the city services were declining. The people were also fleeing in droves.

The interesting thing about Schmoke, and the only reason I bothered to keep up with his career, is he could never resist the pull of black racial solidarity. By his final term in office, he was dressed like an African potentate. He was sporting a kufi and dashiki. At one point he was flying the ANC flag at City Hall. Gone was all the talk of sitting with the white man as an equal. It was all black power and separatism. He even hired the Nation of Islam for security.

As Obama came along I was reminded of old Kurt Schmoke. The pitch was a bit different as the Cult was ascendent, rather than in decline. Back in the 80’s they were hoping to stave off collapse. In the 2000’s they were talking about realignment and making the Right a fringe operation. Instead of being a clean articulate black guy who would not scare the whites, Obama was a clean articulate black guy who would scare the whites. That’s largely been true, but Obama seems to be following the same path as Schmoke at the end of his time. Today Obama held a hate whitey festival at the White House. He invited all of the usual toothaches from the racial grievance industry.

The decent thing to do now is to let the whole Ferguson matter fade into the past. Race relations is about keeping the peace. That’s it. There will never be a colorblind society. If Obama cared a whit about improving race relations he’d be out front in closing the book on the whole thing. Instead he seems hell bent on causing blacks to riot nationwide. Like old Kurt Schmoke decades ago, he is embracing his Afro side with a vengeance and will spend the remainder of his term inflicting exactly that, vengeance.

This reminds me of something else from the old days. Obama’s sponsors, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, were attracted to radical politics because they thought it upset the squares. In their Weather Underground days, they set out to do exactly that. The point of their terrorism was no point at all. They just liked mayhem. That’s what Obama’s Hate Whitey Day looks like. It’s just a way to cause trouble for no good reason. Bourgeois radicalism is just an extended tantrum against the peace and prosperity of the adults.

One final thought. I’m struck by the reaction of whites to all of this. When it comes to race, it has been a long time since whites have spoke forthrightly about the subject in public. On-line and on television I’m seeing some tough words about black crime, black racism and the general dysfunction of black America. That used to be the sort of thing that got you banished to Steve Sailer’s basement. In private, I’m hearing white people speak in ways that would have made Archie Bunker blush.  If blacks had the capacity to self-police, they would be wise to muffle their bomb-throwers now and let all this settle down.

9 thoughts on “Back To Blood

  1. Pingback: Black versus White at The Z Blog

  2. (Blushing deeply) Yes, yes, I meant to say ALLEN West, and was just hoping nobody would notice my blunder. In my defence, I’ll say that my husband and I have been watching the Rifftrax version of the 1949 Batman serial every evening this week, and I guess the power of suggestion was just too much to fight off.

  3. Well, Dr. Mabuse, while your mention of Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are quite correct, I have to disagree about Adam West. I don’t see him as a great African-American conservative talent because —

    a) They don’t come much whiter than Adam West.
    b) His mayoral tenure of Quahog, RI is mixed at the very best.
    c) His early record in early days of crimefighting left something to be desired, as every single masked criminal that he managed to foil would just show up again five episodes later.

    So I have my doubts. 🙂

    In all seriousness, though, it is worth noting that, while I genuinely wish the GOP was better at appealing to minorities, witness that, within the party, it is well and truly color-blind. If you are a person of color who shares our conservative values on family, faith, governance, and economics, we absolutely do not care what color you are, except that we might be that much more pleased as punch to have you. As opposed to the Democrats, where whatever color, faith, or sexual sub-group you are in is first and foremost, all else to follow from that. I would hope we could figure out how to capitalize on that truth at some point.

  4. I was one of those naive northern suburbanites. I grew up in a county that had more chiropractors than blacks (back then). Ocean County, N.J. White flight community. Back in the 70s, almost everyone else came from somewhere else. Some were racist. I wasn’t. In fact, I’m still not racist. I don’t think black people have any less intrinsic value than any other race, and are just as precious if not more precious in the eyes of God. However, what I thought were social dysfunction issues in the black community turned out to have a deeper cause … and I stopped talking about race.

    What changed my mind about race was this: I was put in charge of hiring for my department. We used to give the Wonderlich test. No matter what the education and experience, the highest any black person scored in the four years I was on the hiring team was a score that was equivalent to 101 IQ. It was a small sample, a dozen maybe, but I was blown away at the difference. These were four-year grads with experience at good organizations.

    I had previously taught at an all-black high school — I thought the problem was socio-economic, why HSers were writing at a second or third grade level in high school.

    We got a problem. Blacks just don’t have much native intelligence and there may further be genetic behavioral issues as well.

    I figured this out about 15 years ago. I was out of ideas at that point. My philosophy had been if we can maintain economic and social freedom in the U.S., in one more generation from now, around 2050, society will be so integrated no one will really think much about race.

    But if money and freedom and anti-racist attitudes won’t help, then we got a problem and I’m out of ideas except perhaps Christian ones about loving neighbor as oneself.

  5. “In private, I’m hearing white people speak in ways that would have made Archie Bunker blush.”-Z

    The tide has been coming in on that one for a while. Always out of earshot of “others,” Whites are returning to a voice from the past. An echo of a truth once well-learned and established.

    The reintroduction of nigger, coon, fill in your favorite, in White polite society, including the ladies, is a cathartic acknowledgement of unity. A binding force, once practiced and understood, to protect the tribe.

    It is, in my humble view, an expression of the basic natural instinct of self-defense. And, may I add, not a moment too soon.

  6. Southerners who move to New England immediately notice the lack of black people. They soon learn that native whites know nothing about black people. That’s part of why whites in the north are so gung ho for racial justice. They imagine blacks are just like them, but with black skin and better at basketball.

    A great example of this was a few years ago when the New England Patriots played in New Orleans over Thanksgiving weekend. Loads of New Englanders decided to head down for some partying in the Big Easy. They did not know that it was the weekend of the Soul Bowl. This is the annual game between Grambling and Southern, two black colleges. The result is the Big Easy is crawling with blacks from all over the south.

    The pasty-faced Patriots fans suddenly found themselves eyeball deep in black culture. That weekend there were half a dozen shootings in the French Quarter, right in the tourist areas. Thousands of extras from hip-hop videos were milling around the city. It was hilarious watching the white people suddenly facing a reality they never knew existed.

  7. Growing up, as a teenager I lived in a wealthy suburb near an urban area in the 1990s. Hip-hop dominated pop culture – it was the cool thing in the white suburbs among it’s sheltered denizens.

    At the time, Section 8 housing policies were happening, and a number of urban blacks were transplanted into the posh suburb. They were immediately popular, as they were so ‘authentic’ and had street cred. etc.

    Over the years though, they burned their bridges through blatant robberies and drug deals. Even among the suburban whites who were into that sort of thing themselves they had made enemies.

    I went off to college and when I came back, I was surprised to see a big shift in the attitude of the community (among the young people of course), that was at first welcoming to urban blacks, but was now very anti-urban black. They were hated period. This didn’t seem to extend to normal middle class blacks, but a line was clearly drawn.

  8. But the Republicans are still chasing the will-‘o-‘the-wisp of a black candidate who will beat the Democrats at their own game. They insist he’s out there somewhere, and always proffer the same 3 names in proof: Thomas Sowell, Adam West, Clarence Thomas. And… that’s it. There’s no great reservoir of black conservatives just waiting to be tapped; there’s a tiny, unrepresentative fringe of rare, intelligent men who’d be hooted down as “un-black” the first time they tried to run for national office. And it’s true: they ARE un-black. They don’t represent the black community. Whenever that community is give a choice, it goes for the cheating, lazy shyster. That’s what they want, and it’s what they insist upon having.

    It’s so obvious, that I would never trust a black politician, no matter how good he looks on paper. They ALL are vulnerable to the tribal pull. Mark Steyn once wrote about Muslims that, without exception, you can be having a nice, sensible conversation with them, and then they’ll go and say something completely insane. It always happens. So it is with blacks. You may think this is someone who thinks as you do, but without fail, at some point they will crumple to conform to the black “community”.

  9. The last universally recognized black figure to believe in a colorblind society was, as far as I know, Frederick Douglass.

Comments are closed.