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A Nation of Cowards
by Walter E. Williams
Fewbruary 25, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States is "a nation
of cowards" when it comes to race relations. In one sense, he is
absolutely right. Many whites, from university administrators
and professors, schoolteachers to employers and public officials
accept behavior from black people that they wouldn't begin to
accept from whites. For example, some of the nation's most elite
universities, such as Vanderbilt, Stanford University and the
University of California, have yielded to black student demands
for separate graduation ceremonies and separate "celebratory
events." Universities such as Stanford, Cornell, MIT, and Cal
Berkeley have, or have had, segregated dorms. If white students
demanded whites-only graduation ceremonies or whites-only dorms,
administrators would have labeled their demands as intolerable
racism. When black students demand the same thing, these
administrators cowardly capitulate. Calling these university
administrators cowards is the most flattering characterization
of their behavior. They might actually be stupid enough to
believe nonsense taught by their some of sociology and
psychology professors that blacks can't be racists because they
don't have power.
What about Holder's statement that America is "voluntarily
segregated"? I say, so what. According to the census, in 2007,
4.6 percent of married blacks were married to a white; less than
1 percent of married whites were married to a black. While
blacks are 13 percent of the population, they are 80 percent of
professional basketball players and 65 percent of professional
football players. Mere casual observance of audiences at ice
hockey games or opera performances would reveal gross voluntary
segregation. What would Holder propose the U.S. Justice
Department do about these and other instances of voluntary
segregation?
Attorney General Holder's flawed thinking is widespread whereby
people think that an activity that is not racially integrated is
therefore segregated. Blacks are about 60 percent of the
Washington, D.C. population. At the Reagan National Airport,
which serves D.C., nowhere near 60 percent of the airport's
water fountain users are black; I'd guess blacks are never more
than 5 percent of users. The population statistics of states
such as South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that
not even 1 percent of their populations are black. Does that
mean Reagan National Airport water fountains and South Dakota,
Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont are racially segregated? If
Holder does anything about "voluntary segregation" at the state
level I hope it's not court-ordered busing; I'm not wild about
their winters. Just because some activity is not racially
integrated does not mean that it is racially segregated.
The bottom line is that the civil rights struggle is over and it
is won. At one time black Americans didn't share the
constitutional guarantees shared by whites; today we do. That
does not mean that there are not major problems that confront a
large segment of the black community, but they are not civil
rights problems nor can they be solved through a "conversation
on race." Black illegitimacy stands at 70 percent; nearly 50
percent of black students drop out of high school; and only 30
percent of black youngsters reside in two-parent families. In
2005, while 13 percent of the population, blacks committed over
52 percent of the nation's homicides and were 46 percent of the
homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims
had a black person as their murderer. Such pathology, I think
much of it precipitated by family breakdown, is entirely new
among blacks. In 1940, black illegitimacy was 19 percent; in
1950, only 18 percent of black households were female-headed
compared with today's 70 percent. Both during slavery and as
late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man
present was rare among blacks.
If black people continue to accept the corrupt blame game agenda
of liberal whites, black politicians and assorted hustlers, as
opposed to accepting personal responsibility, the future for
many black Americans will remain bleak.
Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George
Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of
Economics and is the author of
More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well.
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