Let's begin with two basic premises. (1) There are injustices to our African American citizens still prevalent in some places. And they should be eliminated. (2) A huge majority of the American people, of both races, who now give their moral support to opposing police brutality, are good people, with idealistic motives. And their excellent intentions must be realized.
But let's put both of these observations in proper perspective. And in doing so, let's bring some hard truths and plain common sense to bear on a very tricky subject. For it is stupid to sink a great ship because it has a few dirty splotches. And unless there is a better more rapid understanding of what is really taking place, far left activists are going to sink our whole ship of state under the excuse that they are trying to wash away the dirt.
1. The Exaggerated Problem
African Americans in the United States are so much better off than people of African descent anywhere else in the world. But the whole truth goes much further.
A. The average African American has a tremendously higher standard of living than people of African descent anywhere else; and far higher, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth's population of all races combined. African Americans own more automobiles than all sub-Saharan Africans combined.
B. The average African American not only has a far higher standard of literacy, but better education opportunities, than people of African descent anywhere else.
C. The average African American has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases.
D. So what is all of the complaining about? Basically, the answer is very simple. It is through the opportunities originally provided by the economic enterprise of White Americans, through emulation by African Americans of his white neighbor's ways, and through gradual adoption and absorption of the various spiritual, material, and political elements of American culture, that African Americans have been able in a brief 150 years to raise himself to this level so far above the vast body of mankind. With the inevitable result, under the circumstances, that he has not yet achieved a par with the very leadership he was emulating; and that there still remain differences, as a general rule, in the economic, literate, and social levels of the two races. And the agitators behind these protests demand that a complete and absolute disregard of those differences.
