Expert: LM - 8/15/2003

Question
Do you feel the Black Race will ever receive justice in the United States of America? and Do you feel there is a need for leadership in the African American Community in the same country...If so...What qualities do you feel he/she must pocess to do an above average job?
Thank you...I found your site...quite by accident...

Answer
This is a very complicated question.

At best, I can only answer it in pieces. One book that I would recommend reading is: "A Conflict of Visions" by Thomas Sowell.

When you talk about "justice," you must be very careful what you mean.  It is really too much to ask that every group be equal. If you look anywhere else in the world, you can find that people are not equal, no matter where you go.  That could be the Chinese people in Malaysia compared to the native Malaysians. Or the Indians in Britain (who actually have slightly higher incomes than the average white British).

In the case of blacks in America, I find that a lot of the disparities exist because they just happen to have worked out that way.

One example is geographic distribution.  About 50% of blacks live in the South (as in below the Mason-Dixon line). Just that is enough to lower the average income of the "average" black person.

Another is average age.  The average black person is a bit younger than the average white. Another hidden variable that will lower the average income just a bit.

Some things are a little harder to observe. So, for example, at my night job at a gas station (which I use to supplement my income as a graduate student), I see that a lot of the customers that come in and pay with food stamps are black. Not all, but most.  If you'll read your history books, you'll know that the era of big government came about around the time of the New Deal (Roosevelt) and the Social Security era. And with that comes a class of dependents/ people who have a sense of entitlement to government benefits.  So when big government programs came to exist, there were disproportionately more black people to become a class of dependents.  When I talk to the white customers in this low class area in which I work or the black customers, they pretty much have the same lines of reasoning and are just as oblivious to the world around them. But the question is: "If it *just* so happens that there were more black people in a position to become infected with the mentality of government dependency when government programs became 'en vogue,' is that unjust or did some large number of black people just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

There are other examples.  If you walk around this college campus (where I'm pursuing a MS degree), you'll find NOT ONE black person in the Engineering department. You'll probably find NOT ONE black person as a Pre-Pharmacy (starting salary= $100,000/year, easily).  You'll find NOT ONE black person in Mathematics. But you'll find plenty of us in throaway majors, such as Management Information Systems (it seems like every black person on this campus is majoring in that).  And that's worse than it seems, becasue the bottom has been falling out of the computer programming for years (not to be confused with Management Information Systems, which is a watered down version of such a degree program) and watered down degrees like MIS will feel the pinch harder than other degree courses first. So, when you see that there is a difference in the average black college degree holder's income vs. the average non-black degree holder, it's not really a question of justice. You could go back and predict the average income based on the number of degrees produced in each field.

The black leadership disgusts me. And I've written about this at great length in one of my other postings. See if you can find them (I'm not in the mood to write out the examples all over again). In them, I see a class of people that generate morass because it keeps them employed. Do you see any collective leadership for Chinese people? Or Jews? Better yet, do you see either of those groups so obsessively interpreting EVERY problem in the black community as something to be solved by political means? One of the first steps to stopping the "problems" in black America will be to get black leaders out of them.  (Read Timmerman's "Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson" to get an idea about that charlatan).

In closing: I'll say that I'm very American. I've lived in other countries (notably France), and they do NOT tolerate black people there. If they don't want to hire black people in some place, there are no laws against it. And much of the same story when I lived in Japan and Taiwan as well. (I remember one advertisement for a "Caucasian ESL teacher.") If you've done any reading, you should know about the case of the blacks in Brazil. It's too obvious for me to even elaborate any further. Here, at least there are laws to protect us.  

This may not have answered all of your questions, but I've given you two books that will give you much better, fuller answers than what I'm willing to put into one email. And one suggestion to read about blacks in Brazil.

I hope this helps.

Lemas