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Racism Towards a Red Light

The smallest minority on earth is the individual.
–Ayn Rand

In my last contribution to the decline of Western literature [It’s Not Personal – Police and You] I mentioned that it was the first is a series of articles addressing the national controversy surrounding peace officers and their interaction with the public. My plan in part II was to dissect the Michael Brown case, but, as many have heard me say before: a plan is just a list of things that doesn’t happen. With recent events and the mood of the protests we’ve seen nation-wide, I’ve decided to take a run at the subject of race. Yes, I understand that I’ll probably have as much luck with it as properly answering the question, “Do these pants make my butt look big?” However, it needs to be addressed so I’ll risk the heat.

Race, to quote the late George Carlin, is an accident of birth. Pride in one’s race is a false premise. It insinuates that the racial pedigree of a human being is a choice, or relevant to their abilities, intelligence, or rights. Nothing could be further from the truth. Would you take pride in your predisposition towards sickle cell anemia, alcoholism, or need for sun block? How about being proud of the date you were born, or the color of your eyes? These are all things that you have zero control over and are not in any way feats of personal accomplishment. Race is just random chance, like your parents, family, and shoe size. I’m not saying one shouldn’t be grateful – it’s fine to be happy you weren’t born in Somalia or without your toes. It’s not beyond any of us to be glad we’re not living the life of someone who is worse off, but there’s a big difference between being grateful you were born in modern Japan rather than 1400, and saying “I’m glad I’m Japanese because that means I’m better than everyone else on the planet – let’s invade China!”

Wrapping yourself in some race flag is a fantastic way to avoid reaching your full potential. Not only does it limit you mentally, it ends up preventing you from forming proper relationships with other people – People who might offer insight, help, friendship, love, partnerships, and all other manner of life enriching behaviors. It perpetuates the problem, and is actually self-destructive. That’s why so many of us feel our stomachs turn when we hear people like David Duke, Louis Farrakhan, or any other race supremacist, speak. We know they’re not only wrong, but pernicious – and if we’re honest about such people we need only ask one question: If they’re the best their race has to offer, what more information do we need to conclude their premise is flawed?

Today, racism in America usually amounts to people of white ancestry being accused of such by people of black ancestry. It happens with all races, but America has a long and sordid history of belligerent and crushing racism towards black people – That’s a fact. I was born in 1968, right at the tail end of some seriously turbulent racial times. There are plenty of people still alive who experienced the ugly of it all first hand. And for that matter, there are people alive that still experience it regularly. However, to suggest that racism in 2015 America is in any manner comparative to 1860 America is like comparing transportation in 2015 to that of 1860 – you might as well be speaking about our relationship to alien life on another planet. Most of us simply have no point of reference. Yes, I’ve read about people who traversed the continent in buck-board wagons, but it’s not a practical experience most of us have had. Nor is slavery, scalping, crucifixion, plague, mongrel hordes, Viking conquest, having to churn our own butter, or “whites only” bathrooms.

In practical terms regarding forward movement of law and personal rights, America is actually about 95-98% of the way there – but, in human terms, not so much. The events of the last 6-months have set the clock back 40 years. The level of stupidity that has come to light is depressing.

I could go on for pages pontificating about it, but it will make as much difference to present day America as if I never bothered. Those who need to re-assess their views on race are most likely not reading this. And judging from some of the outrageous statements I’ve recently heard protesters make, I doubt many of them could read and absorb it, either.

So, that raises the question: why bother?

Well, I’m not going to. Instead I offer is this:

There are only a few simple truths in life; at the top of the list is that none of us can change history. The past is the past and what’s done is done. Another is that each of us only has a limited amount of years, days, hours, and minutes on this planet. None of us get to know that number, and none of us get out alive. Time is short. We all have to choose what we will invest effort in.

Personally, I’m not willing to take the blame for the behavior of people who lived before me. I won’t apologize and I won’t be writing checks. It’s my time, so I’m going to live my life. It will be in an honorable manner based in a fair exchange of goods and services, and I’ll be holding as best I can to the principles of non-aggression. I will make my relationship choices based on the merits of each individual I encounter, and not on their racial make-up.

If you want to do business, be friends, exchange ideas, or share a laugh, I’m open. If you want to accuse me of some absurd harm to you due to my skin color, feel free to go pound sand. I’m not your problem, regardless of what Cornel West and Minister Quanell X says, or whatever level of guilt the latest Quentin Tarantino production attempts to suggest. On the other hand, there’s a great way to make me your problem and that’s to attempt violence towards myself or anyone I hold dear. That I will not abide.

It’s a pretty fair deal. And I think the world would be a better place if more people offered the same. So, I’m suggesting this to the suggestible reader: in all of your interactions with others, embrace the concept of the individual. It’s the true foundation of liberty.

…But, far be it from me to tell anyone how to live.

Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer! We must not let that happen here.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

8 Responses to Racism Towards a Red Light

  1. Jim February 18, 2015 at 2:39 pm #

    What a great essay. Sharpe must be a follower of Sowell and Williams, two incredibly intelligent and well written thinkers.

    • Frank Sharpe February 25, 2015 at 8:56 pm #

      I can’t say I’ve never read an article by either man, but it’s been years.

      Thanks for the kind comparison, though!

  2. Roger V. Tranfaglia February 19, 2015 at 12:49 am #

    Great read, great truth…
    If I may add…….Its not the gun, its the person holding the gun.

  3. kbrown229 February 19, 2015 at 10:20 am #

    “So, I’m suggesting this to the suggestible reader: in all of your interactions with others, embrace the concept of the individual”

    We live in an individualistic culture, it’s time to start thinking that way….all around.

  4. Tactical Butler February 21, 2015 at 8:22 pm #

    Given that emigration is a difficult and expensive proposition, and attaining citizenship in a nation foreign to one’s birth is even more difficult than that, one could state that patriotism is just as foolhardy as the racial pride you’re trying to denigrate above.

    Sure, some people manage to leave behind the cultural and genetic assets and handicaps of their birth, but for the other 99.9% of us, we’re stuck with our race and we’re stuck with our country. I’m still proud to be a patriot in these United States of America.

    There’s nothing wrong with feeling pride that my race knows how to pull our pants up and stay out of prison, or that we don’t go around raping and killing and blowing ourselves up at the aloha snack bar.

    I give every individual the benefit of the doubt, but that doesn’t require me to stop noticing obvious patterns about the world around me.

    • Frank Sharpe February 21, 2015 at 8:54 pm #

      I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone miss the point at such an enormous level.

    • TopGunJ March 7, 2015 at 1:57 am #

      I feel a slight divergence coming on but I have to at least pick one point to start. You stated that “feeling pride that my race knows how to pull our pants up…” You picked one stereotypical artifact harvested from the “urban” teenagers and twenty-somethings started 20 years ago and contrasted that against his entire race. (Sigh). Indirectly, you indicted an entire ethnic group. I guess it was an effort to highlight a clothing trend as being a pejorative “handle” , a representative trait of the “lesser” race. That is a catty attitude to me. “You’re not civil as we are because you wear your pants like this…” Sorry, your race is not different from other races. Whites murdered millions of indigenous people around the planet to get their land. How about Germans in WW1 & 2, Mussolini, American mobsters, etc… Oh that is too long ago? How about 3000+ killed but the IRA? How about the 100,000 europeans dead from the 1992-95 RACE WAR in Bosnia. Rape was a part of the ethnic cleansing my friend. The torture and rape of little girls in front of their family done by christian, white men. My friend was a Bosnian Serb so I know what I am talking about. So maybe that was still too long ago? Ok 4300+ dead in the Ukraine so far in 2014-. Granted, the white, southern Americans have become MORE civilized since lynching 4,000 black women, men and children since late 1880s.. Now the (mostly young, uneducated, poor) black Americans are in the leading the statistics in lynching now. Yes it does suck. I am pro death penalty. I am saying all that not inflame you or other whites but to state that whites should stop pretending that they are non-violent. HUMANS ARE VIOLENT. I think all people suck. All so called races have blood on their hands. I also believe that most people that are seemingly obsessed with the accomplishments of their own race, have contributed NOTHING as an individual. What does your race have to do with YOU and what YOU have accomplished? Einstein’s discoveries and lifelong research has nothing to do with an arbitrary European Jew or some random guy considered “white”. Hell, Einsteins own offspring with a highly intelligent wife bore the fruit of 1 scientist and 3 or 4 mentally deficient & ill ones. What is wrong with being proud of an individual accomplishments? Be proud that you taught your daughter to play chess at 5 years old. I was. Be proud that you painted your bathroom or the patent you got for the widget that you invented. People should stop “riding the jockstrap” of the people in their race that did all the heavy lifting work to justify the insulting or regurgitation of what they think they know about another race. Change the world by solving the sagging paints or the bombing problem. Smugly, wrapping ones ass in hubris is losing its percieved value and the “I am so superior because of my race” game so lacks merit. The world was crafted through thousands of years by a small number of “giants” and brave souls from all over the globe. Many were known but the remainder just get absorbed into the pool of trillions of people (that is us) that lived through out history as fiber in the mesh. Nothing wrong with having Ethiopian, Irish, Korean, Spanish or whatever “pride” celebrating the individual culture and customs but celebrate because you share lighter color skin? That is the only shared cultural experience that a white Lebanese muslim has in common with a Belarusian atheist. This whole celebrating a social construct just lacks rigor in the worst way. And if you wonder if I am some weak, liberal, sheep and I don’t get it, I can only say I bleed red, white and blue. Just like you.

  5. j norwoody March 9, 2015 at 9:55 pm #

    Watch the Wizard Of OZ again. Ask yourself who is naughty and who is nice? Who is BAD and Who is Good? Who is clueless and who talks with a lisp? Do you have the wisdom to know the answers to the questions?
    The world is full of flying monkeys these days that are more than ready to do what ever they are told. There is always room for one more and all you have to do is believe everything THEY tell you.

    Mr. Frank Sharpe nailed it in this paragraph.
    If you want to do business, be friends, exchange ideas, or share a laugh, I’m open. If you want to accuse me of some absurd harm to you due to my skin color, feel free to go pound sand. I’m not your problem, regardless of what Cornel West and Minister Quanell X says, or whatever level of guilt the latest Quentin Tarantino production attempts to suggest. On the other hand, there’s a great way to make me your problem and that’s to attempt violence towards myself or anyone I hold dear. That I will not abide.

    Just treat other people in the same manner that you would like to be treated.
    Move on if they don’t reciprocate!
    Don’t get your nickers in a twist over things you have no control over, can’t change and probably shouldn’t try.

    Johnny Cash sang it best: Goin’ By The Book. The mystery of Life,1991
    Yea Johnny nailed it too!
    https://www.google.com/search?q=johnny+cash+goin+by+the+book&gws_rd=ssl