A
recent Rasmussen poll found that more
Americans by a wide margin think blacks are more racist than whites. This also
included a significant percent of blacks who according to Rasmussen said that they consider more blacks racist than whites or
Hispanics. The poll was sloughed off, mocked, and skewered by some.
But
many can and should quibble with the methodology. It was done through a
telephone survey and the sample was 1000 respondents. But the question is how
did pollsters define and determine what is "racist?" Still, its conclusion may have some validity.
For three decades, the steady drumbeat
has been that the avalanche of civil rights and voting rights laws, state and
local bars against discrimination, and affirmative action programs has
permanently crumbled the nation's historic racial barriers. The parade of top
black appointed and elected officials, including one president, the legions of
black mega millionaire CEOs, athletes, entertainers, and the household names of
blacks from Oprah to Bob Johnson is repeatedly waved as convincing proof of
that.
The ferocious assault by high profile black
conservatives, with a certain Supreme Court justice, leading the way, have sold
millions of Americans that everything from historic voting rights protections
to affirmative action are relics of a long by-gone racist past and should be summarily dumped in the historic
dust bin. They haven't stopped at that. They've even sold a wide body of the
public that to continue to fight for these supposedly unnecessary relics is
just a self-serving, greedy grab by the much rivaled "civil rights
establishment" to protect its racial turf, and feather its own nest. Those hurt
most by this are blacks who they supposedly mire in a semi-permanent state of dependency
and entitlement trap.
It matters little that
every objective study and survey for the past two decades has consistently
shown the gaping racial disparities in health care, education spending, the
criminal justice system, employment, the wealth gap, and poverty between blacks
and whites has either stagnated or widened. Or that blacks are still largely
the invisible men and women in executive management spots at the Fortune 500
corporations. It matters even less that the textbook definition of racism
explicitly means not just an individual's
thinking or expressing racially skewed bias and animus toward another
group, but having the actual power to exert control and dominance through the
mechanisms of law, public policy, and economic dominance over that group. This
is the defining point between an individual's personal prejudices, and there
are few individuals who don't harbor some personal prejudice toward another
group, and having the actual power to exercise that prejudice against another
group that is deliberately missed or distorted in the futile exercise of trying
to say who is a racist and what makes them a racist.
The entrenched notion,
however, is that if you're black, poor, uneducated, or locked in a prison cell,
don't blame social, political or economic iniquities, in short don't scream
race, blame yourself. This does two things it provides social and psychic
comfort to those individuals who think that they're bigotry free, and can
finger point blacks as eternal racial crybabies who love to scream racism at
every slight or failure. They also pound civil rights leaders for eternally
playing the race card on every supposedly imagined or trumped up racial
malfeasance.
But the far more
insidious thing then accusing blacks of being America's top bigots is that it
makes it much easier to ignore or outright assail laws, statutes, policies and
initiatives that were hard fought over to put on the books to protect rights
and eliminate discrimination. This ploy was on full display in the Supreme
Court debate over the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act that for decades
mandated Justice Department approval to prevent registrars in targeted Southern
and Southwestern states from using every tact to damp down black and Hispanic
votes. It was on display and in the ancient court and public debate over
affirmative action which has long been encased in public thinking, as "reverse
discrimination." The real victims of this supposed discrimination are not blacks,
Hispanics or women, but white males. This was amply borne out in a Rasmussen poll in May that found only 25
percent of Americans favored affirmative action as part of college admission
policies.
The Supreme Court
almost certainly will hear yet another affirmative action related case at a
future date. And there is talk among some Democrats that Congress should pass
some measures to restore the protections that the Court gutted in its decision
on the Voting Rights Act. Unfortunately, these polls give those who oppose any
more rights initiatives be it court, congressional or from the private sector
further ammunition to argue that America has reached a racial nirvana and nothing more need be done to protect or
further safeguard racial gains. And the only ones screaming for that to happen
are blacks. But then again that's only to be expected since so many blacks are
"racist" anyway.
Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new ebook is America on Trial: The Slaying of Trayvon
Martin ( Amazon ). He is an
associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al
Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly
Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the
Pacifica Network.
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Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson