A National Dialog on Race

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Angry denunciations from the left discourage white conservatives from voicing opinions about race. For some reason, liberals don’t welcome opinions on racial matters from conservative African-Americans, either.

Perhaps if conservatives were simply to concede ignorance about racial issues, the left’s social and cultural illuminati would educate us by answering some questions:

How, exactly, are the economic and moral problems devastating many black communities today the result of America’s 150-year old sin of slavery?
Does encouraging a mindset which views themselves as victims of slavery, blames others for their circumstances and makes others responsible for their deliverance empower or strengthen African-Americans?

Is self-determination a factor in black communities? Or are blacks really waiting for government to organize and manage their lives?

Do all African-Americans live in distressed, disadvantaged communities? If not, despite facing the same "structural racism," how did some manage to avoid or escape them?

Did free blacks own or trade slaves during America’s colonial and early national history? If so, do their descendants bear any responsibility for the plights of modern African-American communities? Why or why not?
If the unemployment rate for people of color is more than double that for white Americans, will general amnesty for illegal immigrants improve job prospects for young, unskilled black citizens? How?

If amnesty won’t help African-Americans, why do the president and all forty-three black Democrats presently serving in Congress support amnesty? Do they fully appreciate their own voters’ predicaments – or are they just more closely-attuned to their party’s desire to enroll more Hispanic voters?
Having controlled the African-American vote for generations, what problems have Democrats solved in black communities?

Do cities have any people of color in charge — mayors, magistrates, city councilmen, chiefs of police, school boards? If so, how have their policies improved the lots of their constituencies?

Aren’t the realities of a black president, a black attorney general and a Congressional Black Caucus evidence of black self-determination and opportunity?

In fact, with all that black power and influence, why is there large-scale devastation in urban minority communities?

What does the government have against marriage?

Why do the federal government’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other means-tested programs pay out more to unmarried parents? Shouldn’t tax and welfare policies encourage marriage and sound family structures?

If, since President Lyndon Johnson’s 1960s Great Society, Washington has spent about $22 trillion on 80 programs to raise Americans from the bottom of society, why do Detroit, Newark, Camden, and significant parts of Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, among other cities, still experience chronic poverty?

By ladling out assistance, has government effectively enabled society to quarantine the poor rather than improve their lives and integrate them into our communities? Is multi-generational poverty a predictable outcome of poverty programs?

Should Americans settle for this status quo or must we rethink our approach to combatting poverty?

Do you agree with Troy David, an African-American inmate at a Pennsylvania correctional institution, who wrote: "Too many African-Americans have become complacent and comfortable with mediocrity: welfare, low-wage jobs and imprisonment. Such complacency serves only to aggrandize the risk our children are already plagued with."? Why or why not?

Do those who insist that voter ID would suppress the minority vote really believe that millions of African-Americans are uniquely incompetent? How many things in civic life are simpler than obtaining the ID which is needed for almost any other meaningful activity?

Are the people who call for a national "dialogue" on race really more interested in delivering lectures on and, intrinsically or politically, profiting from racial divisions?

"The history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggles." — Karl Marx. Does the left perpetuate the myth of pervasive racism in America to sustain this essential liberal political paradigm?
Or is political correctness merely a device the left uses to avoid facing disagreeable and embarrassing truths about the unintended consequences of its social policies?

Will stifling honest, frank, unimpassioned discussion of racial matters — including of the motivating incentives to avoid work, education and marriage — improve race relations or lower black poverty?

Do you agree or disagree with Thomas Sowell who wrote: "When you want to help people, you tell the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell people what they want to hear."?

We’re listening…

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