Cringe at truth

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Cringe at truth				March 26, 2008

“God damn America,” imprecated the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in one of his more impassioned sermons and thus set the stage for one of the most intense discussions of the race issue since the 1960s.

In a speech dealing with his association with Rev. Wright, Sen. Barack Obama denounced some of the more inflammatory remarks of his preacher, but refused to toss him under the bus altogether. And probably with good reason.

The problem we face today in any discussion of race is primarily one of semantics and Procrustean linguistic logic. We are confronted not only by the necessity to choose our words with discretion, but also rightfully to refrain from drawing facile conclusions from perfectly innocuous premises.

In a recent study of our engorged prison population, it was found that one in every 20 young black men was behind bars. From that fact-based premise, may we conclude that young blacks are more prone to commit crimes than whites? Perhaps so, but not without weaving into our not-so-exquisite tapestry the stained thread of racism.

Similarly strained conclusions relative to the intellectual capacity of blacks have been derived from the fact that they fare less well on standardized tests than whites or Asians. Poor test scores and high dropout rates have led some to the semantically unacceptable conclusion that blacks are intellectually inferior to other groups.

Yet there are those who have overleapt the linguistic hurdles and gained unsavory adherence as a result.

In a recent talk at William & Mary, Jared Taylor, the editor of a white supremacist publication called “American Renaissance,” ran full-throttle into the racism-charged wall when he declared that blacks are indeed more prone to criminal activity than whites. Furthermore, said Taylor, forced integration has floundered pathetically and is simply not working. Whites have little interest in sending their children to schools with blacks, since human beings are “tribal” and are much more at home with their own kind.

Jared, who is a graduate of Yale with a degree in philosophy, also maintains that the 9/11 attacks were as a result of our support for Israel. He was invited to speak at the college by the staff of a right-wing student newspaper called The Remnant, which has opposed recent initiatives by then- president Gene Nichol to increase diversity on campus.

The difficulty we face in dealing with people such as Taylor and others who draw simplistic conclusions about criminal behavior, intelligence quotients or our obvious tilt toward Israel over the Palestinians is that there is a kernel of truth in their premises.

The level of black crime is indeed unacceptably high, and there is a tendency for blacks to perform at a lower level on standardized tests. Integration has failed in many areas, as whites have fled cities for a more gentrified, and white, suburbia. As for tribalism, despite increased diversity on college campuses, race-specific black and Asian student organizations flourish, while white student groups formed on purely racial grounds are rare or nonexistent.

As Obama noted in his speech, blacks still speak derisively of whites, and whites still almost automatically fear blacks.

Should we really be so shocked, therefore, when someone like the Rev. Wright calls on God to damn, not bless, America? Should we retreat in amazement when he introduces his own race card and dredges up that unfortunate little scandal called slavery or recalls the hubristically intolerable image this country has of itself as the military watchdog of the world? Is there no semblance of truth in his remarks?

Of course there is. But we automatically cringe at the audacity of his language. We intellectually recoil from neither his premises nor his conclusions, but rather from the semantic framework in which he introduces them.

The great difference between Jared Taylor and Rev. Wright is that Taylor abhors whatever genetic happenstance led to a race of people whose color is different from his own. Wright, on the other hand, having lived with and historically witnessed that abhorrence, is not about to take it lightly. Nor can he accept the fact that his God would bless the inhumanity and disgrace with which such hatred in any nation is associated.

Where does this leave us, then, in our attempt to deal with racism on a linguistically acceptable level?

To begin with, we must accept the situational truths with which we are confronted. We can no longer hide behind the niceties of socialized semantics and thus delude ourselves into thinking that the race problem in this country has politely diminished to the point of absolute comity. It hasn’t. As Obama well pointed out, it is still festering to the point of dread disease.

Whites and blacks must rid themselves of linguistic formulas and conclusions based on stereotypical inaccuracies and engage in the exculpatory language of reality, accommodation and understanding. Procrustean logic is simply no longer acceptable.