This series is about speaking the hard truths, the "unsayable" things that remain a part of reality whether you say them or not. That makes everyone uncomfortable including me, but sometimes in life you have to put up with being uncomfortable for something more important. When you're recovering from major surgery, you experience quite a bit of discomfort, even pain, but if the surgery is necessary, then you have to endure the price. When you go to the dentist to get a filing, you go through discomfort, but it saves the tooth you need, and keeps you from worse pain later when the tooth completely rots. That's life, that's the reality we all have to come face to face with at certain times. So if this article makes you uncomfortable at some point, all I ask is that you stop and ask yourself two questions before flinching away: 1. Is that uncomfortable thing true; and 2. Since it is true, is it something that needs to be said, despite the discomfort; for the greater good?
We have been trying to solve the "race problem" in America for many decades now. We've gone to some pretty unhealthy and self-destructive extreames to do it. Yet we are further away than ever from putting it behind us, and frankly most people are getting sick of it.
There are plenty of race hustlers who would actually be disappointed if they ever got their wish. They've made their whole career, not to mention their identity out of faux outrage, contrived injustices and hardships, and demanding the ludicrous precisely because it is ludicrous, and therefore unattainable. If they ever got what they claim they want, they'd have to find a whole new career, a whole new grievance list, and a whole new con.
There are many masochists out there too, those who enjoy the sense of virtue attained from flogging themselves for things they had nothing to do with, like some midevil monk in his cell seeking absolution through remorse, demonstrated by self-harm. But these "martyrs" don't really want absolution, the flogging is the reward. "Humbly" proclaiming their shame for "their" sins is how they feel good about themselves. Most people don't even accept responsibility for their own wrong-doing, but they are so virtuous that they not only admit their sins, but even take on sins that aren’t theirs, like some perverted distortion of a messiah. Kneeling in the streets to wash the feet of random BLM rioters and dragging their children onto their knees beside them, to litterally pray for forgiveness, which they can never obtain, is a way to signal to the world that, although their "guilt" can never be washed away, they at least are virtuous enough to acknowledge that.
But make no mistake, these race hustlers and their devoted acolytes are in the minority. And most people, of all races, are sick of the same old show, that's been playing longer than any Broadway song and dance.
Priority #1 of the con-artists, or "activists", as they like to call themselves, is "reparations", which will never happen. It's time to stop even talking about it. Why should this 1 specific crime of American slavery, be singled out for financial compensation, out of the long list of atrocities humanity has committed? The holocaust is far more recent. It's victims lost everything too, from their heirlooms, homes, buisnesses, generational wealth, and their families themselves. They've never been compensated for it. In fact far more "activists" continue to call for the genocide of Jews, even non-Israeli Jews, barring them from classrooms, than the number of those calling for a return to slavery or openly threatening African Americans on the streets.
California proposed giving $20 million to every descendant of a slave in this country, under the notoriously disastrous leadership of Gavin Newsom, despite California never having been a slave state. But there are white people there, and I guess that's close enough.
The arguement is that if slaves had been paid wages, they could have passed on wealth to their descendants, leaving them in a better spot today. But those of us who descend from immigrants, who had to take similar menial jobs, don't have $20 million dollars in our bank accounts, so that's some bizzar math going on. Wages were spent on living expenses, medical emergencies, and all of life's unexpected problems over the past 160 years, not set aside for future generations. Even assuming that every slave managed to save their wages for their descendants, or every one of them was a genius at investing if.... there was this little event called the Great Depression in 1929....when everyone who had money lost it. Why wouldn't the great-grandchildren of slaves who were living then, have lost everything right alongside everyone else?
Even setting aside the whole generational wealth myth, how would reparations work? I assume it would be more precise than: your melanin content is similar to people who were slaves, and you kind of look like the same race that owned slaves, so pay up. How would you determine who actually descended from slaves, and who descended from slave owners? After all, most people in the south DIDN'T own slaves, they couldn't afford them. Some, like mine, lived in the South but objected, and dangerously sided with the North. And alot of people descend from Irish and Italian immigrants who werent even here during slavery, like the other 1/2 of my ancestory. Do they pay up too?
Most black people in America today are of mixed race, so do we calculate the amount of white blood in them and deduct what they owe for that white ancestor from the wages owed to their black ancestor? What about Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, do they pay? If they don't, on the grounds that they weren't involved, then surely white people whose ancestors weren't involved get the same exemption. And if black Americans can ignore their white ancestor's guilt, and identify only with the black ones, why can't a white person identify only with their non-slave-owning ancestors too?
What if your ancestor actually fought for the union to free the slaves, at great personal loss, are you exempt then? What if he died fighting to free strangers, meaning his family would have lost their bread-winner and suffered poverty, denying them the opportunity to build "generational wealth", does restoring their lost prosperity come out of the reparations, from the slaves who benefited from this sacrifice, the same way Americans theoretically benefitted from slavery?
What if a person is decended from black slave owners? Does he pay reparations, or recieve them? What if he descends from a tribe in Africa that was one of those who kidnapped their neighbors and enslaved them in the first place? After all, these African slavers sold their own slaves to the Europeans creating the slave trade. Doesn't that put them on the owing end instead of the recieving one? What about if you decend from the African pirates who stole 1 million Europeans into slavery, do we call it a wash? Do you intend to seek reparations from Turkey for the 18 million slaves the Ottoman Empire took from Africa at the exact same time as 11 million taken by the trans-atlantic slave trade?
And, again I ask, why does this tragedy, and it was horrific, from a long list of similar and even worse atrocities, deserve a check by way of compensation? Slavery was practiced by every race, including Africans, Native Americans, South Americans, and Asians since the beginning of time. Why do only American slaves count? And why is slavery worse than human sacrifice, or genocides, or invasions and wars, or all the other horrors humans have inflicted on eachother? If you sincerely see slavery as the worst of all these evils, why do we never see any of the women on The View campaign half so hard to free today's slaves throughout the world, as they do for their checks?
There are more slaves today, in places like Yemen for example, than their were at the height of the trans-atlantic slave trade. And more people enslaved by human trafficking than all the years of the trans-atlantic slave trade added together. If the atrocity that is slavery truly weighs on them as an open wound that never heals, then why not help those living under it today, and end slavery throughout the world, for the living, before you get around to worrying about compensations for the dead?
Hey, this series is called "speaking the hard truths", that was your unofficial trigger warning. I didn't make the facts, I'm just pointing them out. They are the reasons that reparations will never actually happen. Everyone truly needs to stop even debating it, and relegate it to a childish argument that no serious person even pays any attention to anymore.
But some forms of reparations have already been instituted. Affirmative action gave minorities certain advantages to compensate for the disadvantages of the past, so that they could catch up to where they would have been without slavery. After decades of this bias in their favor, affirmative action was struck down when Asian students sued for being penalized by over 100 points on ther SAT scores, to keep them from claiming too many Ivy League seats from the black students who had significantly lower scores. Let's be clear, some black students scored high and got in without any help from affirmative action, and I admire them. But those who got the spot that was earned by another student, who had done better than them, didn't earn their place, and that must be embarrassing to them.
Now we live under an even more Archaic form of discrimination: DEI. It seeks to not only ensure equal opportunity, which is good, but equal outcomes, which is communism.
Here's why it's evil, aside from the evidence of the millions of people who died under communism. If Ben Shapiro, a Jewish commentator, wanted to play in the NBA at his height of 5'10", equal opportunity says he can absolutely try out, and if he's exceptional enough to compensate for the disadvantages of his height, he makes the team. But reality, being the harsh arbitor that it is, we will not be seeing Shapiro quit his job to wear a Lakers Jersey, though it WOULD be a fun follow-up to the short-lived rapstar career of Dr Dreidel.
Equality of outcome means that he should be on the team regardless of his inability to compete at the same level as the other players. I guess you could spot him a bunch of points at the beginning, like you would when playing a child, but that seems mildly insulting. Or since height probably effects more than just your ability to dunk, like reaching things on the top shelf or even the way you're perceived by the opposite sex, it's really the height that must be equalized. There's no way to add inches to Ben, sooooo..... Do you want to give LeBron James the bad news that for the sake of social justice we're going to have to take a few inches off, or should I?
Ok, so no one is going to cripple the NBA in the name of fairness... yet. But it's a legitamate example of the principle being debated, and we are crippling other much more important fields. Do you want the scientist researching cures for cancer ro be the best scientist regardless of their color, the one most likely to succeed at finding a cure, or someone who has the right level of melanin in his skin? What if your child was diagnosed with leukemia today? How about now?
This type of collective sacrifice is already being made. A major airline went public with it's intention to do whatever is necessary to end up with 1/2 their pilots being female or minorities in the near future. Now to be clear, women and minorities weren't barred or discriminated against before. If they logged the necessary hours, passed the requirements, and were qualified to be pilots, they became pilots, just like the white males. Equal opportunity. So what are they changing here? The bar. If not enough women and minorities are passing the bar set to be competent pilots, and you have certain goals to achieve as far as how many you want to employ, then there's only one option: lower the bar for them.
I don't know about you but, I'm not prepared to die in a firey crash just so that the numbers on somebody's ledger show an equality of outcome. I want to live more than I want the world to be "fair". So I won't be flying that airline in future, unless they intend to give a special pin or something to the pilots who can actually fly the plane, who were hired by passing the sane standards; so I can tell them apart from the pity hires and know who's safe to fly with vs when I'm taking my life into my own hands just by stepping foot on the plane.
This is going on in the medical field too. Princeton's Surgical program proudly posted about prioritizing "equity" - or equality of outcome, in the selection of students for their program. They even go so far as to refuse to teach "white medicine" - or medical techniques and advancements that were created by white men or teams of doctors that weren't diverse. So I guess Princeton surgeons are all Witch Doctors now? Because that rules out most of western medicine.
As someone with life threatening health problems, who has had 25 surgeries, and had things go wrong even with competent doctors, I personally want a doctor with skill, not one passed along just to make the numbers look good. And that isn't because I'm white. This isn't a racial issue.
If you are a black parent whose child has sickle cell disease, do you want their doctor to be the best, or the DEI charity case? What about the researcher coming up with new treatments? Forget new treatments; if there's an old treatment that could save your child's life, do you want a doctor who was taught about it, or the one who refuses to learn it because a "privileged white male" came up with it? I saw my brother laid out in a coffin when I was 9. I watched my mother close the lid and put him in the ground, and make herself walk away. I promise you "social justice" will be a cold comfort to you on that day.
How much more malpractice are we willing to have inflicted on us and our loved ones, how many plane crashes? Because the victims will not all be white. Black people go to doctors too. They fly on planes like everyone else, even Airforce One if I recall. This hurts everyone. It can be argued that it hurts minorities most of all.
Before DEI, if you got a black female doctor, you assumed she was just as qualified as any other doctor, maybe more so, to have made it there. Now, you'll have to assume she didn't earn it, that she got to where she did, by having the bar lowered for her to manipulate equal outcomes. That will be the default assumption even if she was one of those who would have passed with the bar set where it should be; because there'll be no way to tell the difference. If you think the world is racist now, see how racist it seems when everyone, black and white, refuses to accept anything but a white male doctor, because he's the only one they can be sure had a high bar set. How elitist and condescending is it anyway, to assume that the only way minorities and women can succeed is if you rig the rules for them, because they aren't capable of succeeding on their own merit?!
DEI can't make an idiot into an Einstein, or raise the loser up to the winner, that isn't possible. The only 2 options for equality of outcome are to lie to the loser, and have everyone agree to pretend that he's exactly the same as the winner, at least until inevitably, the innocent child shatters the illusion by saying, "Daddy, the king is naked!"; or to hold the geniuses, winners and exeptional talents down, to the level of the lowest mediocrity, so that everyone is equal - everyone loses. That's the only equality of outcome available; everyone loses. You can't raise the lowest talent up, so all you can do is keep the most exceptional winner down.
This is the "better" world white liberal activists, and black race hustlers, with their heads in the clouds, are determined to create. And if we don't stand up and say "No", it is all of us who will pay the price; from the white buissnessman flying to a conference, to the black single mother with her child at a free clinic in the inner-city, to the successful brown person who worked insanely hard to climb up the ladder and still can't succeed in their field because people don't trust that he is qualified, thanks to DEI.
In the 90s, 70% (give or take 2 points) of both black and white people said race relations were good. Now only 30% of both groups think that. These programs, and an unbalanced focus on, not just injustice but on "micro-aggressions", not just on discrimination but on "unconscious bias", not just bigoted prejudice but on the boogie man of "systemic racism", are measurably making things worse. There's an easy answer to that: stop.
I'm not, in any way, advocating that we gloss over the past. Slavery should be taught in all it's ugliness. Jim crow and Civil Rights should be taught without any whitewashing - as we also celebrate the fact that America is a country that looks in the mirror, and fixes things when we aren't living up to our own standards that "All Men are Created Equal" - that's what makes us different from the rest of the world; our desire and proven ability to change and be better. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves. That was both horrible and hypocritacal. He also gave the world The Declaration of Independence which is genuis and revolutionary, the becon of light that made so many people literally cross the world to get here, and why they still do. Both are true, and both should be taught. It's actually not as complicated as they try to make it. And nobody's statue should be pulled down for not being perfect, by anyone who isn't also perfect (and not just by today's standards but by the unknown standards of those in the year 2272.)
Every university, government program, etc with a DEI department, or who teaches their ideas and devisive prejudices, needs to be de-funded by the government, and all donations from alumni need to be withheld. That is the way to a better world, a world where everyone is given the opportunity to clear the high bar, and the best of the best do....not the world where we never get nuclear power when no one recruits Oppenheimer because he isn't a minority woman. (Although as a Jew he actually was a minority, but DEI has made it clear - they don't count.)
DEI in universities is the biggest problem, because they are ruining the next generation's souls and capabilities. Setting aside her blatant antisemitism, Claudine Gay was removed from her position as President of Harvard for plagiarism, though sadly, she remains a professor there. She was grossly under quualified to begin with, her expertise being not in a rigorous STEM disapline, but in the theoretical social justice arena. She had published fewer papers than most students, and even those were plagiarized, down to even her thank you acknowledgments!
In the academic world, plagiarism is as bad as it gets. If you cheat, if you copy, if you steal someone else's work, you are a fraud, and there is nothing worse among intellectuals. Yet they all defended Claueine Gay, along with the entire media who condemned her firing as somehow due to her race and gender, instead of her total lack of merit.
Whether they will admit it or not, had she been a white man she would never have gotten the job in the first place, and not a single one of them would have defended her when she was fired. These things are actually harmful, with real-world consequences to science, medicine, culture, world policies, and having a conscience that actually points north. The fact that the media can no longer report the truth, only their politics, is the reason they are dying. And if universities no longer serve the purpose of educating, than they deserve to be allowed to die too.
Public schools are creating even bigger problems. Aside from teaching very destructive political views, many are banning math as racist. Instead of helping struggling minority students learn math, so they can succeed, they have decided that if the outcome isn't equal, the entire subject must be racist. Programs have been instituted in some northern and new-england states to teach math in a way that "doesn't focus on getting the right answer" but instead focuses on "the journey" and using the "right" logic. You want to know how you can tell if you've used the right logic in math? When you arrive at the right answer!
Does it matter? Well, yes, it does. When you don't help those who are struggling to succeed, but just stop teaching everybody, no one is competent. It may be equal then, but it's also suicidal. When you teach "indigenous math", which is to say, smoke signals, instead of.....math, how will you ever have advancements in anything ever again? "Indegenous engeneering" was beautifully displayed by the Congo when their new bridge collapsed.... at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
It turns out that not all systems are equal, despite claims to the contrary. Europe was more than 500 years in advance of other indigenous cultures - because their systems were more advanced. Those systems were superior by the measurement of their outcomes, and those systems gave us every modern advancement we enjoy today, from western medicine to flight, nuclear power to computers, democracy to electricity. Returning to stone-aged thinking and superstitions isn't a "virtue", it's a crime against humanity. And it's disrespectful to the sacrifices of those who came before us.
I will provide one final example. We recently experienced a solar eclipse. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a former member of the House Science Commitee, as well as a former member of the Space and Aeronautics Committee, apparently doesn't even know the difference between the moon and the sun....that's not an exaggeration....despite graduating from Yale and running the country as a sitting member of the United States Congress. The students she tried to "educate" about the eclipse (which she claimed in a tweet that, "Today I created the opportunity to see a unique science and solar experience for the students at Booker T Washington High School" arranging the eclipse for them, which is impressively god-like of her, so that underprivileged students could finally have the same privilege as other students to witness the "irreplaceable moment"... which as far as I know only requires you to have the "privilege" of being able to LOOK UP), but even elementary-school students would know more about the science of an eclipse than she does....or at least elementary school students of my generation did. Sadly I can't vouch for today's quality of education. She concluded, "The hallmark of this excitement is anchored in opportunity".... which I defy anyone to find any rational meaning in those words. But judge her speech to the students for yourself...
CONGRESSWOMAN LEE
"And sometimes you've heard the word "full moon", and sometimes you need to take the opportunity to come out and see, a full moon is that complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases"...
Ok, where do I start? The phases of the moon have nothing to do with gasses, they have to do with a regular cycle of shadows, that cover a growing, then decreasing portion of the moon, causing it to wax and wane...none of which has anything to do with a full moon - when there is no shadow and you can see the whole thing. The moon itself is made up of rock, not gases.... maybe she means the sun....which is a very different thing. Look, no hands, no Ivy League degree, just basic reading comprehension.
She goes on "And that's why the question is, why, or how could we as humans live on the moon? Are the gases such that we could do that?"
Is it time for me to stop banging my head? Oh, Okay. No since the moon isn't made up of gases, that is actually not one of the many questions surrounding the possibility of living on the moon. And if she means the sun....as she later claimed while criticizing her critics as "foolish thinkers lust for stupidity"....?.... that still doesn't work, as no one has ever talked about trying to live on the sun! Even the most uneducated, backwoods, unibomber-type, already understands that would be impossible, for sooooo many reasons: heat radiation, no solid surface....
"The sun is a mighty powerful heat."
Yes, thank you I would never have known that. Profound.
"It is almost impossible to go near the Sun."
No, it IS impossible to go near the sun! I'm assuming you're a climate activist, I would expect you to know that. Sun....bad.
"The moon is more manageable."
Right… because they arent even remotely the same thing. The moon isn't a dimmer sun. It reflects the light of the sun but gives off no heat, because it isn't the same thing! The moon isn't a star, the sun is. The moon isn't the "night sun" as compared to the "day sun".
"And you will see, umm, in a moment, well, not in a moment, in a couple of years, that NASA is going back to the moon."
Not if they're all DEI hires like you they're not. If an 11 year old believed these things about the universe, you should be concerned. To say that a 74-year-old Congresswoman, who sat on the Space and Aeronautics Committee, believing THIS, is unexceptable, is beyond an understatement. She lived through the moon landing people!! How is it even possible that in an era, where getting to the moon was all people talked about, that she never even encountered someone who knew.....anything? Much less sat on the House Science committee without even basic science, ever coming up? And SHE posted the video of this speech. Meaning no one on her entire team saw anything wrong with it! I'm sorry, but that is actually frightening. It ranks up there with Biden posting pics of our special forces, and giving away their identities. Or Whoopi Goldberg saying that "the Holocaust wasn't racist". Katherine Johnson would be so proud.
KATHERINE JOHNSON AND THE OTHER WOMEN WHO INSPIRED THE FILM. “HIDDEN FIGURES”
"What you will see today, will be the closest distance that the moon has ever been in the last 20 years, which means, that is why, they will shut the light down,"
"They" will shut "the light" down??? Does she think the moon is non-bianary? Who is "they"? And do you actually think "they" have a gigantic light switch for the SUN like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with the little Martian? And if so, why does the moon being close to earth motivate "them" to "turn the sun off"? This is child abuse!
"Cause they will be close to the earth. Which is (an) amazing experience, and what we are supposed to experience, and I'm hoping we can, complete darkness."
The moon being close to the earth isn't what creates an eclipse. The moon passing between the earth and the sun, thus blocking the sun from view does. The closer the moon is to the earth the more of the sun is blocked out, but that is a total side-note, not the source of the eclipse, which causes "them" to shut the light down".
"The one impact I want you to have, (I assume she means "take away") is how you are controlled by something outside your human experience."
Are eclipses racist now too? Ive heard the weather is, and pollution is, and covid is, so why not? The eclipse is an interesting phenomenon, but it didn't "control" anyone. Life went on.
"That the solar system is bigger than us."
Yes and the sun is a mighty powerful heat, I got it.
"Though there are solar systems, ummm, and there are systems, that are smaller than the earth.”
Help!! No there really aren't! There are no solar systems with a sun; a star, in the middle, planets orbiting around it, and moons orbiting around them, all of which, together, is smaller than the one small planet called Earth. We seriously need to get a restraining order that prohibits her from speaking to children ever again. They'd litterally get more accurate information from Sesame Street.
"Still we're in a solar system."
Is she a fortune cookie? Stringing together a bunch of words that are supposed to sound profound but....don't?
"And we depend on the earth, the moon, and the sun."
I remind you this Yale graduate, is speaking to high school students, not kindergartens. "That is our existence, that is what creates the, our, our, our desire for creativity, our music, ummm our weather, our rain, our snow, our cold, our heat, that solar system, working."
The sun, moon, and solar system create our weather? That's created by the evapoation cycle of the oceans, and the seasons are created by the tilt of the earth. And the sun and moon sure don't create our music... or humanity's creativity.
"We have yet to know whether we can live on the moon. I don't know about you, I want to be first in line, to know how to live, and be able to survive on the moon. That's another planet that you're going to see shortly."
My head hurts. No the moon isn't a planet. But I fully support the idea of you living there.
"And Dr Simmons, I didn't go too far away from the scientific explanation, is that correct? Hopefully? Alright so I was near it."
NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT. You would have been closer had you talked about the "man in the moon", and it being made of cheese. They didn't cut to the authority on astronomical science; Dr Simmons, because presumidly they had shot themselves by this point. Thankfully we were spared that sight, having already suffered enough.
So....who still wants an "equitable" world, where we all must be held down to that “science”? Who still wants a DEI brain surgeon to treat your cancer? Personally, I don't even want a DEI hire making my filet-o-fish!
How about we teach real subjects like math, and those who are exceptional excel, including women and minorities, and we don't patronize the rest by pretending they're exceptional if they aren't. Nor do we hold back the exceptional, to the detriment of us all, in the name of fairness.
A Yale graduate use to be more than this. And if they ever can be again, DEI must Die, for all our sakes. The high honors and important positions need to return to the standard of: survival of the most gifted. 'Nough said.