Listen to this interview between Rush Limbaugh and The Breakfast Club (DJ Envy, Angela Yee, and Charlamagne ‘tha’ God). It was uploaded to youtube on June 1 2020, shortly after the George Floyd death.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y1vGD7bNEg[/youtube]
What impresses me about it is that you have two parties, both on the extreme ends of the left/right spectrum, able to hold down a civilized and rational conversation without it breaking down into hostility and accusations of racism or white supremacy or whatever (though it came close a few times). It gave me hope that the left and the right, if they’re both willing, can sit down and have a rational conversation about their differences, a conversation that makes it easier for one side to understand the other side’s point of view, and possibly come to agreements on certain topics.
One of the main gist I got out of this interview was that the black community, or BLM members at least, feel that the American system does not work for them, that when it promises opportunity and a chance for a good life for anyone, blacks (and other races I guess) are the exception. So they feel they have to overthrow the system entirely and build a new one–presumably not a replica of the American system as they say it just doesn’t work for blacks.
I just don’t see how this makes sense. How can the color of your skin make you so different, that a particular design for a social/legal/political system just doesn’t work for you? How is it that in a free market, a white man can setup a business but a black man, solely on account of the color of his skin, cannot? How is it that a white man can be accepted into a prestigious university but a black man, solely on account of the color of his skin, cannot?
Now, I understand that the first response I’m going to get from this is: racism!!! A black man will find it orders of magnitude harder to get into a university because he will be judged, partially if not totally, on the color of his skin. They won’t even look at his academic records, his achievements, his aptitudes–as soon as they find out he’s black, they’ll deem him unqualified.
Well, as much as I doubt this for the vast majority of people (I honestly believe real racism is marginally slim among the population), if its happening is as widespread as most woke and BLM people say, I’d still argue that this isn’t an artifact of the American system. I’d chock it up to culture and values, which is usually regional and not everywhere there are white people. The American system is built to allow a whole gamut of cultural trends and values–they come and go throughout America’s history, and a whole diversity of them coexist across your nation–the American System isn’t itself just a cultural trend or set of values. It is a legal structure and a set of political procedures for how business is done at the federal and state levels. It does not see race or sex or sexual orientation–this was ensured by the 13th, 14th, 15th amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (plus the 19th amendment if you’re considering sex)–so long as you are a human being over the age of 18 (or 21 in some states I guess), you are legally owed treatment by the system equal to any other human being over the age of 18 (or 21). What more can the system do? What other laws are needed? I mean, I’m sure BLM and woke people will have a whole list of laws that they’d love to implement, but none that keep the system working in the way most Americans want (i.e. maximizing freedom for all–indiscriminately–as much as reasonably possible).
If there’s any reason the American system doesn’t work for black people, it isn’t because of how the system is designed, it’s simply because they’re in a shitty situation and some cops (apparently) are racist (I do believe this is a real problem though I have no idea how widespread it is). It’s true that the system doesn’t have a quick and easy remedy for getting black people out of poverty, crime cycles, low levels of education, or being victims of police brutality (not that this represent all black people, but it’s the ones in this situation who are the squeaky wheels), but what system ever did? Any other system the world over and throughout history would most likely make their situation worse (or if they’re lucky enough to come out on top with a wholly different system–communism maybe?–it would just be some other group who end up in that kind of sticky situation–and most likely their newly acquired status of luxury and privilege would be short lived… just until the politicians and strong men in power begin their universal suppression of everybody).
This, I say again, is a problem, not with the American System, but with culture, values, and attitudes (most likely regional), which should be changeable with the right messages and information coming from the media. Or… by publicizing interviews like that of Rush and The Breakfast Club. I think if more conservatives and woky leftists were willing to sit down with each other and explain, in rational, reasonable, civilized, peaceful terms what their experiences are, what the world is like from their point of view, and if the other side would agree to acknowledge their experience (which is not the same as acknowledging the truth of their experiences, but an appreciation of them nonetheless), I think we could make miles of headway in this aggression between whites and blacks.
One thing I would like to say on the topic of the American System (not) working for the black community–and this is the crux of this post–is that I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that the American System just doesn’t work for those who have different amounts of pigment in their skin than whites. Rather, I’d say the American System just wasn’t design to handle setting slaves free. The founding fathers never wanted slavery from the beginning but had to compromise with the slave states in order to have a large enough union to fight off the British and establish themselves as a new nation. In fact, they could have fought along side with the slave states under the agreement that they would form separate nations once the British were defeated, but they didn’t do that. Why? Because the founding fathers really wanted to abolish slavery all together. Their plan was to incorporate the slave states into the union with the hope that the principles upon which the union stood would slowly chip away at slavery and eventually see it’s eradication through. They didn’t anticipate how much the slave states depended on slavery to maintain their economy (or at least, nurture the perception that it did). So it took almost a hundred years and a civil war to abolish slavery. But even then, the black community had no reassurance that they would be treated as equals and their race would be respected. The abolition of slavery did not get rid of racism, and the black community had to wait another 100 years before discrimination itself, at least in the job market, was outlawed. The American System, in other words, had no plan for how to handle this. It definitely wasn’t designed to deal with situations like this. History tells a story more like a bunch of baffoons trying to come up with patchwork solutions to these problems that work for the day, but not much foresight being invested in how to resolve these problems in the long run.
To put this another way, the history of white Americans and black Americans has always taken disparate routes. They have never been quite aligned in terms of the cultures and values they live under. Black people have their own music, their own art, even (to an extent) their own language. Everyone speaks English of course, but black people have slang and dialects different from whites, some of which most white people don’t even understand. Words can even mean different things to black people vs. white people. The N word, for example, compels me (a white dude) to not dare utter it–I have to literally call it the N word–because for a white boy, the N word is an offense–but to a black boy, spoken to another black boy, it means something like “fellow black person” or even “buddy”–a term of endearment. Totally different cultures evolving and reflecting off each other side by side. And the reason is that they didn’t start from the same place–at all–whites started out in the Americas as freemen–blacks started as slaves, kidnapped from their homes in Africa.
This is what the American System was not design for–despite it was right there in the beginning–it was not design to deal with two vastly different cultures, with vastly different experiences, living under the same roof–and then suddenly one culture being freed to join, even being welcomed by some, into the other culture. It doesn’t quite work that way. Especially without the Civil Rights act being there to protect the former group from the abuses–which will still come–of the latter. It’s not nearly as simple as that. (I’m reminded of an analogy told to me by someone–imagine a household in which on member is severely abusing another–and then one day declaring that he’s going to stop the abuse and expecting to be great friends from here on in–that’s not gonna be possible without working through a looot of animosity and resentment.) It’s not a matter of the American System not working for black people, it’s a matter of their trajectory through history along side white people. If we (or they) could only manage to control their trajectory enough to steer it in a direction that aligns them more with whites (or maybe visa-versa, depending on where that goes), then the prospect of black people working with the system such that it actually improves their lives would not seem like such a desperate pipe dream.
But I fully agree with Rush Limbaugh when he said, when questioned about whether the American System works for blacks or not, “It can.” I repeat that it just doesn’t make sense to me that the American System, as I understand it, would fail to work for someone just because of the color of their skin. Because of racism, sure. Because of poverty, sure. Because of police brutality, sure. But I’ve never considered these aspects of “the system”. These are cultural trends. Cultural trends, values, and attitudes, which can be changed by those, in large enough numbers, who are devoted to bringing the oppressed and victimized into a state where they can make the system work for them. I would love to convince woke people and the BLM movement that the system can still work for them–we just need discussions like that between The Breakfast Club and Limbaugh, discussions which are heated and emotions flare, but discussions serious enough to maintain civility and reason, enough to make little bits of progress each time. I think if that were to happen–on enough of a widespread level–then we white people could work with black people to make the system work for both of us–maybe with a few modification, or maybe not–but enough to get black people to a state where the experience of working with the system is no different for them than it is for white people. I think this requires white people following in the foot steps of Limbaugh–reaching out to the black community to have discussions, seeing if we can work out something that helps the black community work themselves out of their predicament such that they can start getting the system to work for them.
So that’s what we need–more honest and hands-on discussions between whites and blacks–no holding back for PC purposes, no slight of hand attacks because it works to silence your opponent–just brutal, but civilized, honesty, and a commitment to reason and resolution of differences–then, I think, we can make slow, and sometimes painful (let’s not sugar coat it), progress towards getting along and fulfilling the American promise. I think blacks and whites are at a point in history where this can happen. As much as the world is filled with racism and division between political factions, I believe that we’re at a point where if we’re going to resolve our differences at all, it’s going to have to be through discussion. We’ve done everything we can to change the law, the remaining work required to be done being that of discussion between grown men and women. If the problem is really one of regional cultures and sub-cultures, then rational and civilized discussion is all we have. For this, we need more courage and respect, the kind Limbaugh and The Breakfast Club displayed in the interview–courage to have the discussions, respect enough to avoid deterioration into blatant aggression, accusations, and aspersions–and the more we bring these virtues into discussions with blacks and whites, or between any number of races, the more I think we can make progress towards a truly unracist world.