Joe Dees writes
> [Mike Lorrey wrote]
>> These sentiments about affirmative action and reparations arise in the
>> liberal white person from the same opinions (no matter how guiltily
>> felt) about the inferiority of black people that results from
>> stereotypes and ignorance, feelings that blacks are somehow less capable
>> of achievement as individuals than whites. Just as the KKK racist
>> discriminates by hate and exclusion, the liberal racist discriminates by
>> guilt and coddling, and both do it on a basis of skin color rather than
>> the character of the individual.
>
> Condescension is a more insidious, virulent and ultimately destructive form of
> racism than outright hostility. They both hurt, but only the first 'stabs the
> other in the back' by weakening the discriminated-against person's self-esteem
> by association with one who seems to deign to coddle the unworthy other only
> out of pity. To hate and oppose up front is to establish the other as an
> enemy, and thus, implicitly, as a worthy adversary, one worthy of spending
> one's time and effort laboring against, and one whose abilities require same,
> that is, one to be reckoned with, and by this means the hater confers, perhaps
> quite unwillingly, but confers, nevertheless, a correlative oppositional
> equality upon the other in a roundabout way.
Yes. Exactly. In fact, if black people have not "assimilated" economically
as much as other groups, it is entirely possible that part of the cause is
the economic condescension in affirmative action, which can operate just as
you say. Welfare policies that were, or are, targeted at inner-city black
people can have the same devastating psychological impacts that you describe.
On a related note, I also think that few attempts should be essayed
to "rehabilitate" harden criminals for these same reasons. It's a
little arrogant of the prison officials and psychiatrists to assume
that they are so much more intelligent and so much superior to the
inmate that they can alter him in a prescribed way. It's a little
like O'Brien's alleged mastery of psychology that allowed him, in
Orwell's "1984", to completely brainwash those whose beliefs and
behavior were "incorrect". The same goes for the "re-education
camps" in Communist nations, of course.
Lee
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