The race issue has long outlived its usefulness in righting a wrong. Now it has beocme a political ploy, an excuse to empower and fund those who have made a career of keeping “racism” alive, and a means to expand a dependent underclass of voters.
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The race issue has the exact opposite of the putative intention of lifting minorities. When a people continues to have it hammered into them that they are subjugated and victimized, they come to believe that they are inferior and have no control over their destiny (which is the worst thing that can be done to the human mind). Providing people with a continuing flow of money, advantages, and resources they do not earn makes them dependent, weak, and dissatisfied, not strong, resourceful, resilient, creative, accomplished, and wise from a life that is forged in the fire of hard knocks, difficulty, and struggle.
 
We hear the word equality used in the same breath as racism. But this is the socialist’s ploy. To make everyone equal in their life’s outcome requires that individual accomplishment be pushed aside. In its place there would be a perverted social and economic order based upon affirmative action and redistribution of income.
 
We should be equal, yes, but in only one thing: equal rights to freedom. Freedom means the ability to explore and pursue one’s talents and enjoy the rewards without the unnecessary intrusion of government. The obverse of this is that freedom also means one can fail and suffer.
 
Equality means two people are the same in all respects, sort of in a mathematical sense. But since no two people are the same, no two people will have the same result from their go at life and thus cannot be equal in their relative stations. They can, however, be equally free. This simple truth is ignored in the racism debate.
 
The only thing about racism that can be solved is freedom, not results. Everyone should have the right to open a business, but everyone should not be guaranteed success. Everyone should be able to try out for a football team, but not everyone should be guaranteed to make the cut. So, quotas for each race in each sport, in each business, and in each school make no logical sense. People should be what they have earned. The only responsibility of society is to make sure the path is open to all to earn their way.
 
Now, as a result of the breast beating socialism that has slithered its way into our politic and social consciousness, there is a new slavery. The working class has become tax slaves supporting those on the public dole, who, like royalty, have come to think they are entitled simply because they were born and are breathing.
 
Let’s also face a reality nobody likes to talk about. Consider the obvious answers to these questions: Do some blacks not prefer the company of whites? Do some whites not prefer to be with Asians? Would some Hispanic business people rather hire Hispanics than Russians? The answer is yes in each case, and some governmental policy is not going to change these comforts, likes, or dislikes. There is an innate biological and psychological desire of creatures to associate with those most like them. The pursuit of some utopian immaculate social order wherein no creature will show any preference for any other creature might be possible somewhere in the universe, but not on planet Earth.
 
But all is not lost. The American business community thrives in spite of racial preferences. There are all-Chinese, all-Vietnamese, all-Spanish, all-Greek, all-Jewish, all-Italian, all-male, all-white, all-gay, all-black, all-young, all-old, and all-female businesses. This practice not only does not impede success, it can help create it. It is de facto discrimination, but it does not really encroach on freedom. It’s just an expression of the reality of inequality and preferences that exist between all people and all creatures.
 
When someone hires another, picks a mate or friend, votes for a candidate, moves into a neighborhood, or chooses an organization to join, the spectrum of variables are assessed with prejudice. This cannot be stopped, not does it need to be for there to be justice and for people to have freedom.
 
By attempting to force racial melding, we deny the reality that birds of a feather flock together. That is not an anomaly; it is virtually a scientific law. Even within a given race, people will preferentially gather in their families and make preferences accordingly. It’s just the way things are.
 
Notice that since the civil rights era, with full freedom guaranteed, non-caucasion races have initiated their own segregation. (White’s only identity has become “I defer to other races.”) There are Hispanic, black, and Chinese clubs and causes. There is Black Pride Day, the United Negro College Fund, Black History month, black-only colleges, Martin Luther King Day, the NAACP, Black Panthers, BET, and so on. There are even reversions to native cultures, and school curricula supporting such. The largest voting blocks for candidates come from voters of their own race. Ironically, the most enthusiastic are those who clamor for “racial equality.” Some 95% of blacks voted for Barack Obama, and will continue to do so regardless of his performance.
 
The prison system clearly demonstrates that preferences simply cannot be eliminated. Here there is absolute control over inmates, much like some politicians would like to impose on the populace. Prisoners, as a rule, couldn’t give a hoot about political correctness. What do they do? They segregate by race. There is so much violence and turmoil if the races are forced to commingle that some prisons now mandate racial colonies within the prison in order to keep peace.
 
The tendency toward preferences and segregation does not mean different races cannot come together in peace and harmony; it just means that in the main they prefer their own kind. That does not need to matter.
 
What about the argument that some races have at one time been abused by another race as a justification for special treatment centuries later? The problem is that all people can claim historical subjugation. Japanese and German U.S. citizens can point to World War II imprisonment in America; the Chinese can bemoan railroad labor oppression; Native Americans can complain about loss of land, genocide, and forced internment on reservations; African Americans can point to slavery; immigrants can recall an existence that included child labor and wages less than would permit survival. Anyone can dig into their history and find abuse of their ancestors. Does that give anyone the right to special treatment by the descendents of the subjugators? If I am Jewish and my neighbor is German, should he now be mowing my lawn for free?
 
About the only way a raceless and homogenous society could ever actually be achieved would be for intermarriage to be mandated. With enough time everyone would become ‘gray’ skinned, ‘gray’ gutted, and ‘gray’ brained. But even ‘grayness’ will not erase differences. In any given group, some will succeed more than others. Do we dare not succeed for fear of being ‘succeedist?’ Moreover, since virtually every person on Earth is as unique as their fingerprint, and therefore their own separate ‘race,’ we are all guilty of prejudice because each of us prefers ourselves to anyone else
 
To make society perfectly equal, all traits for which people are discriminated against must be leveled, not just race. We would need laws that eliminate preferences about weight, sex, comeliness, coordination, language, regularity of the teeth, intellect, height, neighborhood, occupation, amount of make-up, shape of the nose, color of the eyes, hairdos, dress, religion, ability to carry a tune, sense of humor, personality, shape of the feet, size of breasts or biceps, and running speed. Why does skin color get to enjoy such preeminent ‘ism’ status in public debate and policy when there is discrimination everywhere for just about everything?
 
Affirmative action would have to be applied to NBA basketball. The vast majority of first stringers on all NBA teams are African American. There is not a whisper of protest. Why isn’t there a government program that forces all NBA teams to put a proportionate number of Caucasians and short people on the first string, reflecting actual population percentages? In this case there would be about nine Caucasians and short people for every tall African American.
 
If we’re going to be fair in the affirmative action sense, English-speaking restaurants must hire Spanish-speaking waitresses, homely people must be able to win beauty pageants, a proportion of NFL linebackers would be required to be 90-year-old women, those with lowest IQ’s should be proportionately distributed in highest corporate positions, and quadriplegics should be on our Olympic 100 meter dash team (and rig it so they win a certain percentage of time in order to be “fair”); we must give mechanic jobs to some who test low in mechanical aptitude, make sure some who cannot carry a tune cut albums the rest of us are forced to buy, let those who have no technical or mathematical skills have an equal say in the space shuttle control room, and give the blind equal opportunity as air traffic controllers.
 
If skin color is the only real difference between humans, why not? Obviously trying to be politically correct and denying the obvious leads to absurdity. But where does one draw the line once the Pandora’s box of declaring everyone equal is opened? Facing reality, not bending to absurdity, is what advances the human condition.
 
The point is that although there are intractable differences between people, sexes, ages, and races, abolishing any hope of “equality,” that should have nothing to do with freedom. And, by and large, it no longer does. Although America lost its naiveté in the 1960’s as it went through an age of enlightenment with regard to racism, Vietnam, women’s rights, and environmentalism, what is done is done and should be put to rest. But social movements, like a train, are slow to get started, but once they pick up steam they continue way beyond their useful destination.
 
By making equality the same thing as freedom, society assures itself that a sense of injustice will never go away no matter what is ever done. Moreover, civilizations can only stand when they give preeminence to accomplishment and character, not causes that breed sloth, dependence, and authoritarian control. (For a more complete discussion of this topic see Living Life As If Thinking Matters.)