Last night I read a piece about comments made by the comedian Chris Rock regarding the ongoing protests related to the Mike Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. I can add another person to the list whose movies and comedy shows I will no longer be watching.
Mr. Rock believes that there has been no progress for blacks in this country. Apparently, Mr. Rock believes there can be no progress for blacks until whites take ownership of slavery. That is, whites should be contrite for slavery whether they were slaveowners (no longer possible, he admits, for a person to have been a slaveowner) or one's daddy was a slaveowner (again, impossible, the point is taken).
Essentially, Mr. Rock believes that white people need to take responsibility for slavery, understand how blacks haven't made progress -- despite evidence to the contrary -- and those actions will pave the way for true equality. In short, self-flagellation, public acts of contrition and an abandonment of all that we have to the black monolith is all that will satisfy Mr. Rock.
Others far smarter than I have already punctured holes in Mr. Rock's theory. I don't need to review the myriad shortcomings with his argument, an agenda so porous that not even the Obama administration would deign to try it on the American public. But I have some personal perspectives that I'll address to this race-baiter:
My forebears came to this country after Reconstruction. We had no hand in slavery. In fact, it is very likely that my family has slaves of its own in the past, given the often forgotten and largely ignored enslavement of the Irish by the Brits. My family has no business taking ownership of a wrong for which it has no responsibility. To claim that I or my family shares any responsibility for slavery committed by other whites suggests that Mr. Rock should share responsibility for all the gang bangers, rapists and murderers of African-American descent to whom he bears no relation. It's an invidious and illogical argument to make. But for blacks trying to cast the net of white guilt wide, sophistry is the perfect weapon.
What's more, as I've already detailed in this blog, my maternal grandfather did discriminate...against Poles and Germans and Italians and Russians, because of the way they treated him and his forebears who came to this country with weird accents and the Catholic faith. Instead, my grandfather hired blacks and Asians and Jews, because they, like the Irish, bore the similar effects of discrimination. I remain ambivalent about what my grandfather did -- sad that he discriminated but proud that he helped lift up peoples who were equally outliers -- but by no means will I ever take on responsibility for actions that I know for a fact -- historically and empirically -- we could have not have committed. Nor would any sane person suggest that Mr. Rock take on the responsibility for bad actions that other blacks committed. It's an unsound and therefore illogical argument.
What happened in Ferguson, Missouri, was unfortunate, but I do believe the grand jury got that one right. What happened in New York city was both unfortunate and wrong. I don't see how any logical person with more than a grade school education can think otherwise. I believe justice was attained in Ferguson but not in New York City. Remedies remain, including suit against the New York cop for violating Eric Garner's civil rights. Hopefully, there will be a review that leads to some sort of justice in that case.
As the black cop said on a radio show: Revenge is not the same as justice. Likewise, casting aspersions on other people won't change what's happened. But by trying to blame people for things to which they have no connection is ludicrous. It's high time blacks got a grip on this and stopped trying to blame whitey for everything that goes wrong. Sometimes, it's got nothing to do with race. I firmly believe that the outcome in the New York city grand jury is more a function of protecting the police than trying to get a white guy off for killing a black guy. Whatever it was, it's wrong and there should be some attempt to right this wrong.
But blaming whitey for everything is wrong.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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