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Something has gone terribly wrong in the way we view and talk about race in
America. At present the dialogue is dominated by the extremes. A strange
convergence has emerged between the extremes. On the left the nation is misled
by an endless stream of traps and books and studies that deny any meaningful
change in America's, and I'm quoting titles here, two nations, decry the myth
of black progress, more the dream deferred, dismiss African-American
middle-class and their achievement as volunteer slavery, pronounce
African-American men an endangered species and apocolyptically announce the
latest title, the coming race war.
On the right there is complete, indeed even gleeful, agreement of this
dismal portrait, imagery of fast, losing ground, except that the road to racial
hell has been paved by the very policies intended to help to solve the problem
are painted by the dream and the nightmare of cultural changes in the 60s and
overbreeding and educational integration of the inferior African - Americans
and low class whites and genetically situated on the wrong tail of the IQ bell
curve. [LAUGHTER]
If it is true that a racial crisis persists in America, this crisis is as
much born of perception and interpretation as of actual socioeconomic
inter-ethnic realities. The source of this misperception varies. There is first
the tendency to racialize all problems, problems that are essentially class
problems inevitably become redefined as racial problems.
We have a problem of inequality in this country. The levels of inequality
have been increasing and they are obscene when one contrasts the income of the
average chief executive with the
average worker, but this cuts across all ethnic groups. This
is not a race problem, this is a problem of American economy
and American society and America's attitude towards
distribution of this income.
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