"Of Color" No More?

It's really late, so sorry for the somewhat disorganized post. It's more for the purpose of note-taking for later reference, though. Lots of good links below!

My title alludes to a really good book I once read by Harlem Renaissance author, George Shuyler. In the book, blacks undergo a procedure to become Caucasian in appearance in order to escape discrimination and the condition of being black. Of course, neither of these things changes. A similar process is occurring today. "Persons of color," as the Democrats might call them, who show independent judgment and subsequently abandon the nostrums of the left, apparently no longer "look like" persons of color to the Democrats and their ilk! But they get spat upon and called names just the same.

This is wrong, but rest assured, my friends of color out there, you aren't really being singled out for special treatment. The left hates civilization in general. Their attacks against those with Western values are aimed in every case at making you forget your humanity, and hence, the fact that you have a brain. It is your brain that they fear most. You're black? You're different from the whites, who hold evil Western values. You're a woman? You've been oppressed. You're a man? You are guilty. British? Guilty. In all cases, the villain is Western values, and thus your mind.

Today, I saw a spate of interesting news articles and blogs on multiculturalism and wanted to preserve them somewhere for future reference. There are two common threads in the minority pieces. (1) In some quarters, individuals that Democrats regard as members of collectives called "minorities" are waking up to the fact that it is in their best interests to fully adopt the values of Western civilization. (2) The anti-Western left is responding with encourage-- I mean the anti-Western left is showing that their categorization of Republicans as bigots is psychological projection: they are using racial slurs against these minority apostates! Overall, there is one common thread: the left is fighting against the West on every possible front.

Here's a quick run-down by category, using terms that recovering lefties will recognize.

Minorities "Acting White"

Michelle Malkin, who is one of my favorite writers and who is part of the inspiration for me to start blogging, provides a handy-dandy list of invective emailed at her from brave, tolerant Democrats all over the country. She is of Philippine descent, so I guess they figure that she needs to know her place and what to think.

Being egalitarians to the core, lefties similarly insult black Republicans, like Colin Powell.

Bill Cosby reiterates his message on the role of education and good parenting in a Detroit newspaper. He took a lot of heat for these statements awhile back, as he recounts.

What can the future hold for us with a 50 percent high school dropout rate in many urban areas and with a 60 percent illiteracy rate among inmates and a prison population that's 45 percent black?

I tried to address these issues in a speech at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education.

During my remarks, I made reference to parents whose children had been arrested. And I wondered aloud: "Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18, and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?"

Now those are important questions, even if they make people angry. Too often, the answer to them -- from across the United States, regardless of race, color or creed -- is: "I can't do nothin' with him." Teenage girls become unwed mothers while males are allowed to walk away without taking any responsibility.

Lots of white folks like me here in the South were thrilled to hear that, and not because Cosby is being some kind of Uncle Tom. It's because we really wish to see blacks prospering, but we know from observation that dependency on welfare and drugs will not do the trick. Raise a man as a parasite and you will not get a man.

Oppressive Men who Must be Feminized

And speaking of being a man, there is a really good article on how feminism has attacked the notion of manhood by Terrence O. Moore. The article is about a year old, but it's a really good read and does a good job of showing why there are so many wimps and barbarians now, but so few real men.

Along with that, A Small Victory has a post about one of my pet peeves: women who get offended by men who hold doors for them out of courtesy and respect. Michele describes petty defensiveness on the part of women. The male (though not exclusively) counterpart would be to act like showing common courtesy as a sign of weakness. These people are either rude or try to run you over just because you're polite.

Imperialists

And finally, I'll end with the British! (I did say, "and culture.") For the attempts by the left to shut minorities out of the club of Western civilization aren't the only front on the war they are waging against the West. The other front consists in making those who are lucky enough to have been raised with Western values lose confidence in them. Mark Steyn discusses this phenomenon as it has manifested in the lack of confidence in and respect for their own culture by the British, who are in many ways, the paragon of Western civilization in Europe, and who brought it to the much of world.

I'll end with his words, which generally apply to us all.

The British have always been open to other cultures: that's one reason they made much better imperialists than the French or the Belgians.

But "multiculturalism" is really a suicide cult conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures, but to deny their own. And that's particularly unworthy of the British, whose language, culture and law have been the single greatest force for good in this world.

This isn't merely a question for the history books, but the issue that underpins all the others facing the country today, not least the European Constitution: at a time when the benefits of the Britannic inheritance are more and more apparent everywhere else, how come Britain has no use for them?

I have always been an Anglophile. Mark Steyn and some others have recently helped me understand why.

-- CAV

Updates

1-13-05 corrected numerous typos