The word racism is like a charm these days—casting a spell upon its target, snatching our ability to reason well. From all the fuss over it, when accusations reoccur, you’d think some noticeable change would emerge.
The talk around racism in America is vexatious to the soul. It stirs up resentment, anger, envy, impatience, & un-forgiveness. Any ability to empathize or suspend bias is truncated. We lose all ability to think critically so as to discern a real offense from an exaggerated or false one and, consequently, how to execute an appropriate vs. inappropriate consequence. This proves true whether the racist is a white person, a black person, or other. Before, the detractors come out, I concur that there is, indeed, a place for outrage. Racism should outrage us and we should take swift and definite actions to execute justice. Although for some today, I wonder if we are slaves to the idea of racism and America’s past shame.
The first teachable moment for all of us, relative to the wounds racism has created in America, is the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.
Teachable Moment #1 John 8:1-11 “…He who is without sin; cast the first stone…”
One of the many elephants in the room around the discussions on race in America, is in our outrage over sins committed against us and against our ancestors, we prove certified hypocrites.
Before we aim, we would do well to consider the fact that we are all walking contradictions. That is where we excel in one area morally, we fail miserably in another. We are often what/who we criticize. Where we point one finger at our 
neighbor, who offended us, we have two pointing back at us because somewhere, we are the offender. A wise man once said BOTH the one who offends and the one easily offended is guilty of pride. How appropriate is this wisdom to buffer our righteous indignation to ensure we don’t offend or conveniently not notice that we often can be the very thing we despise & criticize.
Pride is used synonymously with dignity and self-respect. So when I say pride, I mean the ugly, unhealthy, self-serving kind. It begets the kind of prejudice that produces discrimination, slavery, and murder—as we’ve seen occur in history from white supremacist and dare I say from little black supremacists in American ghettos arbitrarily deciding to gun down their peers.
That acknowledged, what I experience with my fellow black Americans, is just as outrageous and sinful. That is, I see claims of racism deliberately exaggerated and likely even made up because we feel entitled to anger and un-forgiveness over what we’ve decided to is insufficient restitution for sins committed against our ancestors. Consequently, we are way too easily offended relative to race.
Teachable Moment #2: Gen X’ers & Millennials, let’s stop participating in these 1960 responses to racism:
Am I the only one who thinks the current discourse around race, post Dr. King, is dated? Like antique and might I add lazy. That is intellectually lazy. We are not thinking originally; it sounds like we are just parroting. God forbid we think through a racial accusation or real crisis with calm and patience—with urrent innovations at our disposal.
Could we please STOP living vicariously through our ancestors & parents struggle? Can we stop time traveling and taking on personas and attitudes that don’t fit the progress we clearly have made? We are several generations removed from the civil rights struggle. Not to mention, how hard we work to avoid small inconveniences—much less real struggle. Many of us are allergic to hard work and getting up before noon. Some of us barely honor the parents we see every day.
So I wonder are we being authentic when we act like we’re so outraged by racism something many of has not experienced in a sustained way—if we have at all? Can we really relate to “the struggle?” Or are we parroting? When was the last time we postponed updating our Instagram and wept or prayed about racism in America like our ancestors did? For, the elephant in the room here is a great many of us are actually living what Dr. King dreamed.
For example, I have not experienced overt racial prejudice. It’s been that aloof from me and I’m thankful. Note, I said experienced; I didn’t say it didn’t occur. It could have been right under my chinny-chin-chin. The point is it didn’t harm me. Understand the reality that this is an imperfect wicked world and God protects. Like you protect your children from all kinds of dangers they had NO CLUE they were in.
So what am I saying? I’m saying instead of outrage, why not innovate and shine and put racism under our feet—since we have so much at our disposal? Fueled by our ancestor’s middle passage blood pumping in our veins and their very fit survival skill, why not innovate and shine to the point any racism left (overt, covert, real, perceived) will have to either have several seats or bow down in respect? How about let’s make them deliriously proud?
Teachable Moment #3 White Privilege: My elite intelligentsia friends (black, white & other) throw this word around a lot. White Privilege, in my observation, is a nice way for educated black people to justify remaining really upset with white people about racism without looking ugly & intolerant. It’s a way for educated white people to prove how enlightened and sympathetic they are to blacks (or other minorities).
It also seems to be one of the leading answers for everything that ever goes wrong in the black community. And, since no one is getting lynched, hosed, or murdered for being black much anymore, we need something to apply to these new “soft” hard-to-prove racism issues like profiling, voter id, etc.
So “white privilege” seems a handy label to justify our accusation and anger. Drilled down, white privilege is a lofty but resentment laced concept likely created and codified by some well-meaning, white “social-scientist” suffering from white guilt at Berkeley, somewhere.
Well-meaning I’m sure, he/she maybe intended to simply describe and build a bridge to heal racism’s wounds and diffuse black hostility. Whatever the case, the concept has trickled down and around into every college on the planet—with many-a-Gen X’er/Millennial disciple who pity we fools who pay it no mind.
For the record, white privilege is a restatement of the obvious. It’s not news that recovering racist white people and whites who have no racist bone in their bodies might unconsciously behave in an exclusive way as a consequence of how they were raised or conditioned–consequently, negatively affecting some minority people.
Selfish human nature dictates that any privilege being associated with a powerful majority and that majority ruling (fair or unfair) is never a problem as long as we are in that majority. In other words, would we be having this reoccurring conversation and outrage around race if God chose to make blacks the majority and whites the minority?
No, cause we’d likely have white Martin Kings, Al Sharptons, and Jessie Jacksons. So, this concept is not helpful to healing race relations in America. It just produces vanity around intellect—which is annoying. And with that understanding, I direct us to Jesus Christ and back to Lessons 1 & 2 here.
Teachable Moment #4 Loyalty to Democrat Party:
Let us stop letting the Democrat party take our political capital for granted. Although what I suggested in my last posted commentary was a stretch and bordered on the conspiratorial (in the tradition of sound minds like Malcolm X), I consented to publish it for a few reasons. One leading was to insert a different opinion and address a few obvious elephants in the room around the case. Elephants media didn’t seem interested in investigating.
I wanted to ask some questions that would hopefully ALERT minority voters to revisit political history and what their parents, elementary, high school and colleges have taught them about black political history. I wanted to ALERT us that we may want to seriously reconsider our loyalty to the Democrat Party.
NOT so we immediately vote or become Republicans, but so we can realize we are wasting our political capital and to encourage us to start seriously considering other ideas–even if they come from stinking, rotten, filthy rich, selfish, boot strap pulling, heartless, racist, black people hating, white conservative republicans. #exaggerationintended
Because I’ve now been on both sides of the political spectrum and spend a lot of time watching CSPAN, I felt credible enough to pose these hard questions. I wrote the commentary to ask, WHAT IF we’re being played–like Malcolm X suggested in the 1960s? What did he see and discern then that compelled him to speak out so brashly?
Could it be the same dog different day, now? Are the Democrats, we’ve given our loyalty to for decades, really motivated by the altruism they claim or feign or by a greater agenda to exploit/manipulate us to maintain political power? Could it be, like Sterling, that a great many Democrats were either exploiting our sensitivities, all while despising us–appearing and sounding sympathetic to our cause? All while donating to said causes?
And for the record, the point of my making the comparison between Sterling and LBJ and other former Democrat presidents is it has long been my suspicion (and some others) that minority loyalty to the Democrat party, (with little to no due diligence) has been much a product of political socio-pyschological manipulation of the emotions around issues sensitive to minorities–particularly blacks. And the Sterling similarity was in the motis operandi of one “appearing” friendly while in not really being friendly. This was a relevant comparison because the narrative among most blacks is Democrats represent their interest better. And, what I’m suggesting is liberals have so mind manipulated us (via media & entertainment) that we don’t even know our own issues, anymore. The issues we think are ours have actually been defined for us and FED to us. In other words, I suggest that we are thinking about racism exactly what liberal progressive Democrats want us to think about it–which is what they are think about it—and communicate to us through their operatives in news media and entertainment.
[Oh! And for those familiar, I'm well aware of the narratives about the Southern Strategy; I'm researching these facts to thoroughly address this in future commentaries—stay tuned.]
A good day for me would be readers responding to my commentaries with a raised eye brow–scratching their chin going, ”ummmmm,” then typing keywords into Google to verifying the plausibility in what I suggest. That would be my reward as a writer. As all I aim to do is move us to think more critically. I’m a black conservative. I’m not ashamed of that—and if readers are truly tolerant and astute—instead of hold me in contempt and try to discredit or silence me, they’d ask me WHY.
For I trust those who are interested in truth vs. what they or their group prefer to be true will appreciate my stirring this pot. For, there was a time when minorities were political change agents vs. puppets.
Finally, my call to action. I ask readers to:
Conduct a self-inventory to examine our hearts with God and repent wherever we find hypocrisy or an unforgiving spirit toward white people.
Move toward them in friendship without suspicion.
In the meantime, listen to this moving spoken work piece set to music by an underground hip hop artist named Propaganda.
He does a masterful job describing the legitimate anger we black people presently feel about unacknowledged racism by white people, especially in various positions of influence & power, today. He drills down into the micro and directs his frustration toward white people in the Church. Listen very carefully to how he diffuses his own anger and reconciles the sinful atrocities of slavery committed by revered Christian slave owners. He ends his righteous indignation by looking in the mirror. The final action item & lesson of the day for us all.
With Love,
–Latisha