May 2, 2022
Dear Friends and Family,
All of the excerpts for this epilogue come from the book Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from the Revisionists and Race Hustlers (2021) which is a series of essays from 24 prominent Black intellectuals, journalists, entrepreneurs, and grassroots activists. The following is an excerpt from the back cover of the book.
In the rush to redefine the place of black Americans in contemporary society, many radical activists and academics have mounted a campaign to destroy traditional American history and replace it with a politicized version that few would recognize. According to the new radical orthodoxy, the United States was founded as a racist nation – and everything that has happened throughout our history must be viewed through the lens of the systemic oppression of black people.
Rejecting this false narrative, a collection of the most prominent and respected black scholars and thinkers has come together to correct the record and tell the true story of black Americans in all its complexity, diversity of experience, and poignancy.
Collectively, they paint a vivid picture of black people living the grand American experience, however bumpy the road may be along the way. But rather than a people apart, blacks are woven into the united whole that makes this nation unique in history.
Next: The next epilogue is titled Wokeness: A New Religion. In it the author Vivek Ramaswamy posits that like Christianity or Islam, wokeness purports to provide a system of beliefs that explains everything. Further, you are not allowed to consider the evidence and pick and choose which part of wokeness you like. Wokeness gives commands, not suggestions, and its disciples are expected to obey all commands. It is the Church of Diversity.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
All of the excerpts for this epilogue come from the book Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from the Revisionists and Race Hustlers (2021) which is a series of essays from 24 prominent Black intellectuals, journalists, entrepreneurs, and grassroots activists. The following is an excerpt from the back cover of the book.
In the rush to redefine the place of black Americans in contemporary society, many radical activists and academics have mounted a campaign to destroy traditional American history and replace it with a politicized version that few would recognize. According to the new radical orthodoxy, the United States was founded as a racist nation – and everything that has happened throughout our history must be viewed through the lens of the systemic oppression of black people.
Rejecting this false narrative, a collection of the most prominent and respected black scholars and thinkers has come together to correct the record and tell the true story of black Americans in all its complexity, diversity of experience, and poignancy.
Collectively, they paint a vivid picture of black people living the grand American experience, however bumpy the road may be along the way. But rather than a people apart, blacks are woven into the united whole that makes this nation unique in history.
Next: The next epilogue is titled Wokeness: A New Religion. In it the author Vivek Ramaswamy posits that like Christianity or Islam, wokeness purports to provide a system of beliefs that explains everything. Further, you are not allowed to consider the evidence and pick and choose which part of wokeness you like. Wokeness gives commands, not suggestions, and its disciples are expected to obey all commands. It is the Church of Diversity.
Happy Learning,
Harley
NIHILISM EPILOGUES – EPILOGUE 2
WOKE PERSPECTIVE OF 24 BLACK AMERICANS – EXCERPTS
NOTE: All excerpts in this segment come from Red, White, and Black (2021)
DEDICATION: No nation is perfect, but America – more than any other – is a place where people from every imaginable background have been able to pursue their dreams and realize their potential. Americans have never met a problem we are afraid to tackle or a challenge we can’t overcome. In fact, those of us who have faced the most formidable challenges in life often become our strongest leaders and our greatest patriots. This is true of black Americans as it is anyone else. During the worst of Jim Crow, we built thriving communities full of families, churches, businesses, and countless civic institutions. On the very soil where we once toiled in forced labor, we found the seeds of our liberation. At a time when many are trying to pull us apart by stoking grievances and sowing discord, the overwhelming majority of Americans remain devoted to our founding principles and to one another. This book is dedicated to those countless millions who love our country, despite its flaws, and long to live together in peace.
1776 UNITES MISSION STATEMENT: 1776 Unites represents a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of hundreds of thousands of writers, thinkers, and activists focused on solutions to our country’s greatest challenges in education, culture, and upward mobility. We acknowledge that racial discrimination exists – and work towards diminishing it. But we dissent from contemporary groupthink and rhetoric about race, class, and American history that defames our national heritage, divides our people, and instills helplessness among those who already hold within themselves the grit and resilience to better their lot in life. 1776 Unites maintains a special focus on voices in the black community who celebrate black excellence and reject victimhood culture and showcases the millions of black Americans who have prospered by embracing the founding ideals of America.
We are intellectuals and journalists, entrepreneurs and grassroots activists, celebrating the progress America has made, the resilience of its people, and our future together. We seek decisive action in restoring our people’s confidence and advancing the cause of actual justice in the face of hostile messages that degrade the spiritual, moral, and political foundations of our nation.
Fredrick Douglas exhorted black Americans to cultivate character above all else. It not only elevated a man but also helped to undercut color prejudice against him. This required a moral effort on the part of black people precisely because it was required of all people. The key to liberation, Douglas never tired of proclaiming, lay within each person. To be sure, government has a role to play, but even the most robust efforts by government to protect the citizenry would avail them little if they themselves did not use their freedom to develop their natural human capacity. An essential theme of these essays is the importance of the individual as contrasted with the more popular emphasis upon group identity. One of the grand ironies of today’s “identity politics” is that the solidarity or collective mindset promoted by appeals to race pride ignores the individual identities of those if claims to elevate. Moreover, it also neglects or downplays the diversity of each individual, whose true identity could never be summed up by reference only to race. In doing so, today’s racial identity mongers undermine substantive advancement of racial minorities by not calling forth their individual efforts to develop their natural capacity for self-government. Simply put, Douglas thought the government of all should be partial to none, and thereby leave each person responsible for the exercise of his or her liberties. Under a government that protects all citizens equally and that operates according to their consent, all can now rise or fall according to their respective efforts.
INTRODUCTION: THE CRUCIAL VOICE OF 1776: Those who promote identity politics fan the flames of animosity and thrive on division, our nation is breaking apart. One of the most virulent and volatile areas of division is race. The purveyors of animosity have fine-tuned their strategy on this issue, creating a villain composed of “white privilege” and “institutional racism” that must be countered through a game plan of entitlements and reparations for its victims.
The weight of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws is said to be the cause of any and all racial disparity that exists today and is declared the source of the devastation of crime-ridden, predominantly black inner cities and skyrocketing homicides, as well as the dissolution of families and communities. Though slavery and discrimination undeniably are a tragic part of our nation’s history, we have made strides along its long and tortuous journey to realize its promise and abide by its founding principles. People are motivated to achieve and overcome the challenges that confront them when they learn about inspiring victories that are possible and are not barraged by constant reminders of injuries they have suffered.
Radical, liberal social activists in the 1960s concluded that one way to reveal the moral shortcomings of capitalism was to flood the system with welfare recipients. In detaching work from income, and thereby diminishing men and the role they played as fathers, welfare dependency, drug addiction, and school dropouts would increase, ultimately “opening the nation up to radical change.” These policies were followed by government action to actually recruit people into the welfare system. These efforts lifted the stigma of welfare as social insurance and replaced it with the idea of “welfare rights,” and in the case of blacks, replaced it with the idea of reparations. Thus, the black family and other families began to decline, followed by out-of-wedlock births and poverty. Prior to this time, even in the face of Jim Crow laws, legalized discrimination, and a lack of voting rights, the black community did not experience the wide-scale despair and destruction that we witness today because of a strong Christian moral code of conduct, a conviction in self-determination and mutual assistance, and strong families and communities. Throughout America, we are witnessing the widespread self-destruction and devastation that is the consequence of the perversion of the values that once united us and protected us from both internal and external enemies. As long as the perpetrators of race grievance are permitted to go unchallenged, this country will continue its social, spiritual, and moral decline.
1776 Unites has enlisted a group of black scholars and social activists who uphold the true origins of our nation and the principles through which its founding promise can be fulfilled. While acknowledging that slavery and discrimination are part of our nation’s history, we believe America should not be defined solely by this “birth defect” and that black Americans should not be portrayed as perpetual helpless victims. A Key theme of 1776 Unites will be to debunk the myth that present-day problems are related to our past, specifically, debunking the myth that slavery is the source of present-day disparities and injustice.
What America is confronting today, with the dominance of race grievance and identity politics, has had, since its inception, and even more sinister purpose: to maintain the political power of the landlord merchant class. Identity is very much the ideology of the professional management class. They prefer to talk about identity over capitalism and the inequities of capitalism. We have an atrocious wealth gap in this country. It’s not a black and white wealth gap. It’s a wealth gap. But if you keep rephrasing it as black/white and shift it to a racial argument, you undermine the possibility of building a working -class coalition. That’s the kind of working-class coalition that identity politics tends to erase.
THE ESSAYS
A Positive Vision: The Agenda of ‘1776’” by Wilfred Reilly: The 1776 perspective can be condensed into one sentence: the U.S. is a flawed but very good country, where it is simply not terribly hard to succeed, given hard work and personal responsibility. As a founding member of 1776, I would personally draw this single thesis statement out into four points:
The Moral Meaning of America: by Jason D. Hill: America was founded as a nation of immigrants – a cosmopolitan melting pot – it not only has provided the cosmopolitan with an existential referent, a home, but also has reversed the trend in political life that has marked human societies since recorded history. It has undermined the degree of tribalism at the heart of citizenship – belonging – and the notion of community by making all such distinctions not just irrelevant, but ethically untenable. Inserted as a nontribal unprecedented phenomenon in the world, the United States has achieved a unique feat of political eugenics. Instead of being an imitator, it is a model for emulation. America has detribalized the world by offering up its model as worthy of universal emulation; it has functioned as an ethical domain in which resocialization of a certain type takes place.
America encourages human beings not to search for their origins, but, rather, their destiny. Identity makeovers are fully possible only in the United States of America. America was the first country that incentivized the individual to prioritize the future over the past, to eschew nostalgia in favor of hope and aspiration. We are a reformed society. Nearly 244 years after its creation, there are no persons or individuals who, on principle, can be excluded from the domain of the ethical and of justice. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the inclusive promise of “WE the People” was finally delivered to all people in this country. The formal debt owed to black people for centuries of enslavement and inexcusable mistreatment and exclusion from mainstream America society was paid.
We Cannot Allow “1619” to Dumb Down America in the Name of a Crusade by John McWhorter: The 1619 analysis is designed to serve as an explanation for disparities between black and white achievement. Our entire self-conception as a race is supposed to be founded on the fact that whites see us as inferior, upon a wariness of how whites feel about us, and even a sense of fellowship as people communally “oppressed” by the fact that whites don’t quite see us with the dignity and precision we would prefer. It is reasonable to surmise that they think this focus on whether it’s “our fault” has some kind of benefit that makes it worth it to battle minimization, that makes it somehow advanced, progressive, to obsess over obstacles, rather than seek to get around them.
The Cult of Victimhood by Harold Black: Those who insist on according black’s victim status, are guilty of perpetuating the caricature of black people. Given that caricatures are parodies, victimhood is little more than an excuse. Convincing some that they cannot achieve because they are black flies in the face of this paradox: How can a high-achieving black person truthfully tell another black person that their lack of achievement is because of their race?
So even though slavery was evil, cruel, and harsh, we are a proud people who have prospered despite the odds. We are only hampered when we listen to people who demean us by insisting that racism prevents us from being full participants in society, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Blacks have a proud history of strength and self-reliance. That continues today, despite the caricatures painted by those demanding reparations.
Living by the Grace of God and the Power of Applying Oneself by Dean Nelson: Learning “white history” in school did not cause any of us to believe we were inferior to anyone, nor did we somehow naively conclude that the world was free of racism. The racism we did experience did not make us think that America and ideals didn’t belong to us, nor did it deprive us of the ability to love our country and work to make it better. And thankfully, we did not enter adulthood looking for pity or thinking of ourselves as helpless pawns in a white man’s world. The fact that we have been able to embrace the principles of the American Founding, despite the hypocrisy with which those principles were first applied to us, should testify to their power, not justify their weakening or destruction. Freedom and progress require work. And each of us must be willing to pick up our own plows and work until our job is done.
A Dream as Old as the American Dream: Why Black Patriotism is More Important than Victimization by Clarence Page: Those who prefer to focus on our victimization don’t always want to recognize it, but the ways our ancestors exercised agency in bondage formed the foundation of their successes (or failures) after they were freed. Americans are optimistic people, but we care more about the future than the past. Our historic victimization must never be forgotten, but it is best remembered through the stories of our groundbreaking victories over oppression through faith, courage, talent, persistence, ingenuity, and hard work. We must find ways to appreciate the contributions that our diverse population makes to American life. We need to study not only the atrocities of U.S. History but also America’s magnificent capacity for self-improvement as we seek the tools and knowledge to help us face our shared future with new hope – together.
Children Achieve the Expectations We Teach: Charging a Path to a More Perfect Union Begins with Our Guidance by Ian Rowe: Central to the thesis of 1619 is that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy; that white racist supremacy is irrevocably intertwined in the country’s DNA; that plantation slave-labor camps were the catalyst for an enduring system of brutal American capitalism. That is what is so disturbing and dangerous about the 1619 Project’s aspiration for children; to create in the minds of students and teachers of all races a vision of America that is imbued with a permanent malignancy that is hostile to the dreams of students of color. It is simply wrong. As educators, we must reject these tired ideas that lead to the soft bigotry of low expectations. We do our scholars no favors by treating them as victims because of a group identity, or by teaching them to become dependent on a government system, such as reparations, in order to succeed in their own live. Shouldn’t our young people be taught to understand the pathways more likely to have them flourish financially, rather than perpetuate the noxious notion that black kids are owed something and that their path to success must be paved by a massive government handout?
An Algorithm of Success: Understanding Black America by John Sibley Butler: American blacks have to celebrate their entrepreneurial history and move away from the failure paradigm that was established in the 1970s and celebrates failure. Self-employments hovers around 10% in America and the foreign-born among all racial groups have higher rates. This pattern is being followed by immigrant Africans. The model is there to make all black Americans in the image of what self-help blacks envisioned. Of course, there are overlaps in all models, but the model of success is there and should be acknowledged and celebrated.
Let’s Arm Black Children with Lessons that Can Improve Their Lives by Coleman Cruz Hughes: To say that white supremacy is in America’s DNA is, therefore, to suggest that it will remain with us forever. What good does it do to tell a black child in 2019, based on nothing but thoughtless pessimism, that the only country he’ll ever live in will forever reject him? In the history of multi-ethnic societies, it is difficult to find a single example in which a minority group rose for poverty to affluence by pursuing a strategy that focused primarily on nursing historic grievances (however valid), seeking atonement for them, and stigmatizing those within its ranks that advocated an inward-looking strategy: avoiding politics entirely and focusing single-mindedly on entrepreneurship and education. Rarely does history offer a lesson as unambiguous as this one.
We Live in an Impure World by Joshua Mitchel: The number of groups whose members count as innocent victims has expanded exponentially since the 1960s. For women, the gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and now the transgendered are counted among them. On what authority would these causes rest in America if the agonizing struggle to heal the wound of slavery during the civil rights era were not their backdrop?
The language we have all used to comprehend this extraordinary expansion is instructive. When black America was our concern, we spoke of government “affirmative action” programs. As more groups donned the crown of thorns that black America wore during the civil rights era, we began to hear the word “diversity.” As we have pushed the conventional boundaries of sexuality to their breaking point, we now talk of “inclusion” and concern for “the marginalized.” With each expansion of the number of groups of innocent victims, and with each modification of our language we have shifted the boundary line that separates the pure from the stained. Today in America, if you wish to be “inclusive” and if you are concerned with “the marginalized”’ you will do well not to defend the conventional generative family containing a biological male and female, who together go to a traditional Christian church on Sunday morning. That family is “hetero-normative,” and that church is “homophobic.” Both are stained.
Can it really be the case, that the conventional generative black family that attends church each Sunday – the very family that was the social cornerstone on which Martin Luther King Jr. relied to awaken America from its long-cultivated slumber – no longer passes the purity test? By the logic of “inclusion,” it does not. Its underlying message is this:
WOKE PERSPECTIVE OF 24 BLACK AMERICANS – EXCERPTS
NOTE: All excerpts in this segment come from Red, White, and Black (2021)
DEDICATION: No nation is perfect, but America – more than any other – is a place where people from every imaginable background have been able to pursue their dreams and realize their potential. Americans have never met a problem we are afraid to tackle or a challenge we can’t overcome. In fact, those of us who have faced the most formidable challenges in life often become our strongest leaders and our greatest patriots. This is true of black Americans as it is anyone else. During the worst of Jim Crow, we built thriving communities full of families, churches, businesses, and countless civic institutions. On the very soil where we once toiled in forced labor, we found the seeds of our liberation. At a time when many are trying to pull us apart by stoking grievances and sowing discord, the overwhelming majority of Americans remain devoted to our founding principles and to one another. This book is dedicated to those countless millions who love our country, despite its flaws, and long to live together in peace.
1776 UNITES MISSION STATEMENT: 1776 Unites represents a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of hundreds of thousands of writers, thinkers, and activists focused on solutions to our country’s greatest challenges in education, culture, and upward mobility. We acknowledge that racial discrimination exists – and work towards diminishing it. But we dissent from contemporary groupthink and rhetoric about race, class, and American history that defames our national heritage, divides our people, and instills helplessness among those who already hold within themselves the grit and resilience to better their lot in life. 1776 Unites maintains a special focus on voices in the black community who celebrate black excellence and reject victimhood culture and showcases the millions of black Americans who have prospered by embracing the founding ideals of America.
We are intellectuals and journalists, entrepreneurs and grassroots activists, celebrating the progress America has made, the resilience of its people, and our future together. We seek decisive action in restoring our people’s confidence and advancing the cause of actual justice in the face of hostile messages that degrade the spiritual, moral, and political foundations of our nation.
Fredrick Douglas exhorted black Americans to cultivate character above all else. It not only elevated a man but also helped to undercut color prejudice against him. This required a moral effort on the part of black people precisely because it was required of all people. The key to liberation, Douglas never tired of proclaiming, lay within each person. To be sure, government has a role to play, but even the most robust efforts by government to protect the citizenry would avail them little if they themselves did not use their freedom to develop their natural human capacity. An essential theme of these essays is the importance of the individual as contrasted with the more popular emphasis upon group identity. One of the grand ironies of today’s “identity politics” is that the solidarity or collective mindset promoted by appeals to race pride ignores the individual identities of those if claims to elevate. Moreover, it also neglects or downplays the diversity of each individual, whose true identity could never be summed up by reference only to race. In doing so, today’s racial identity mongers undermine substantive advancement of racial minorities by not calling forth their individual efforts to develop their natural capacity for self-government. Simply put, Douglas thought the government of all should be partial to none, and thereby leave each person responsible for the exercise of his or her liberties. Under a government that protects all citizens equally and that operates according to their consent, all can now rise or fall according to their respective efforts.
INTRODUCTION: THE CRUCIAL VOICE OF 1776: Those who promote identity politics fan the flames of animosity and thrive on division, our nation is breaking apart. One of the most virulent and volatile areas of division is race. The purveyors of animosity have fine-tuned their strategy on this issue, creating a villain composed of “white privilege” and “institutional racism” that must be countered through a game plan of entitlements and reparations for its victims.
The weight of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws is said to be the cause of any and all racial disparity that exists today and is declared the source of the devastation of crime-ridden, predominantly black inner cities and skyrocketing homicides, as well as the dissolution of families and communities. Though slavery and discrimination undeniably are a tragic part of our nation’s history, we have made strides along its long and tortuous journey to realize its promise and abide by its founding principles. People are motivated to achieve and overcome the challenges that confront them when they learn about inspiring victories that are possible and are not barraged by constant reminders of injuries they have suffered.
Radical, liberal social activists in the 1960s concluded that one way to reveal the moral shortcomings of capitalism was to flood the system with welfare recipients. In detaching work from income, and thereby diminishing men and the role they played as fathers, welfare dependency, drug addiction, and school dropouts would increase, ultimately “opening the nation up to radical change.” These policies were followed by government action to actually recruit people into the welfare system. These efforts lifted the stigma of welfare as social insurance and replaced it with the idea of “welfare rights,” and in the case of blacks, replaced it with the idea of reparations. Thus, the black family and other families began to decline, followed by out-of-wedlock births and poverty. Prior to this time, even in the face of Jim Crow laws, legalized discrimination, and a lack of voting rights, the black community did not experience the wide-scale despair and destruction that we witness today because of a strong Christian moral code of conduct, a conviction in self-determination and mutual assistance, and strong families and communities. Throughout America, we are witnessing the widespread self-destruction and devastation that is the consequence of the perversion of the values that once united us and protected us from both internal and external enemies. As long as the perpetrators of race grievance are permitted to go unchallenged, this country will continue its social, spiritual, and moral decline.
1776 Unites has enlisted a group of black scholars and social activists who uphold the true origins of our nation and the principles through which its founding promise can be fulfilled. While acknowledging that slavery and discrimination are part of our nation’s history, we believe America should not be defined solely by this “birth defect” and that black Americans should not be portrayed as perpetual helpless victims. A Key theme of 1776 Unites will be to debunk the myth that present-day problems are related to our past, specifically, debunking the myth that slavery is the source of present-day disparities and injustice.
What America is confronting today, with the dominance of race grievance and identity politics, has had, since its inception, and even more sinister purpose: to maintain the political power of the landlord merchant class. Identity is very much the ideology of the professional management class. They prefer to talk about identity over capitalism and the inequities of capitalism. We have an atrocious wealth gap in this country. It’s not a black and white wealth gap. It’s a wealth gap. But if you keep rephrasing it as black/white and shift it to a racial argument, you undermine the possibility of building a working -class coalition. That’s the kind of working-class coalition that identity politics tends to erase.
THE ESSAYS
A Positive Vision: The Agenda of ‘1776’” by Wilfred Reilly: The 1776 perspective can be condensed into one sentence: the U.S. is a flawed but very good country, where it is simply not terribly hard to succeed, given hard work and personal responsibility. As a founding member of 1776, I would personally draw this single thesis statement out into four points:
- It is not accurate to claim that the contemporary U.S. is a “systemically” racist society.
- Many of the primary social problems of today have nothing to do with historical racial conflict.
- Individuals are not responsible for the sins of other members of their groups; and
- Basic skills training would do far more to prep both blacks/minorities and working-poor white Americans for the real battles of today than would any amount of training in “grievance.”
The Moral Meaning of America: by Jason D. Hill: America was founded as a nation of immigrants – a cosmopolitan melting pot – it not only has provided the cosmopolitan with an existential referent, a home, but also has reversed the trend in political life that has marked human societies since recorded history. It has undermined the degree of tribalism at the heart of citizenship – belonging – and the notion of community by making all such distinctions not just irrelevant, but ethically untenable. Inserted as a nontribal unprecedented phenomenon in the world, the United States has achieved a unique feat of political eugenics. Instead of being an imitator, it is a model for emulation. America has detribalized the world by offering up its model as worthy of universal emulation; it has functioned as an ethical domain in which resocialization of a certain type takes place.
America encourages human beings not to search for their origins, but, rather, their destiny. Identity makeovers are fully possible only in the United States of America. America was the first country that incentivized the individual to prioritize the future over the past, to eschew nostalgia in favor of hope and aspiration. We are a reformed society. Nearly 244 years after its creation, there are no persons or individuals who, on principle, can be excluded from the domain of the ethical and of justice. With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the inclusive promise of “WE the People” was finally delivered to all people in this country. The formal debt owed to black people for centuries of enslavement and inexcusable mistreatment and exclusion from mainstream America society was paid.
We Cannot Allow “1619” to Dumb Down America in the Name of a Crusade by John McWhorter: The 1619 analysis is designed to serve as an explanation for disparities between black and white achievement. Our entire self-conception as a race is supposed to be founded on the fact that whites see us as inferior, upon a wariness of how whites feel about us, and even a sense of fellowship as people communally “oppressed” by the fact that whites don’t quite see us with the dignity and precision we would prefer. It is reasonable to surmise that they think this focus on whether it’s “our fault” has some kind of benefit that makes it worth it to battle minimization, that makes it somehow advanced, progressive, to obsess over obstacles, rather than seek to get around them.
The Cult of Victimhood by Harold Black: Those who insist on according black’s victim status, are guilty of perpetuating the caricature of black people. Given that caricatures are parodies, victimhood is little more than an excuse. Convincing some that they cannot achieve because they are black flies in the face of this paradox: How can a high-achieving black person truthfully tell another black person that their lack of achievement is because of their race?
So even though slavery was evil, cruel, and harsh, we are a proud people who have prospered despite the odds. We are only hampered when we listen to people who demean us by insisting that racism prevents us from being full participants in society, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Blacks have a proud history of strength and self-reliance. That continues today, despite the caricatures painted by those demanding reparations.
Living by the Grace of God and the Power of Applying Oneself by Dean Nelson: Learning “white history” in school did not cause any of us to believe we were inferior to anyone, nor did we somehow naively conclude that the world was free of racism. The racism we did experience did not make us think that America and ideals didn’t belong to us, nor did it deprive us of the ability to love our country and work to make it better. And thankfully, we did not enter adulthood looking for pity or thinking of ourselves as helpless pawns in a white man’s world. The fact that we have been able to embrace the principles of the American Founding, despite the hypocrisy with which those principles were first applied to us, should testify to their power, not justify their weakening or destruction. Freedom and progress require work. And each of us must be willing to pick up our own plows and work until our job is done.
A Dream as Old as the American Dream: Why Black Patriotism is More Important than Victimization by Clarence Page: Those who prefer to focus on our victimization don’t always want to recognize it, but the ways our ancestors exercised agency in bondage formed the foundation of their successes (or failures) after they were freed. Americans are optimistic people, but we care more about the future than the past. Our historic victimization must never be forgotten, but it is best remembered through the stories of our groundbreaking victories over oppression through faith, courage, talent, persistence, ingenuity, and hard work. We must find ways to appreciate the contributions that our diverse population makes to American life. We need to study not only the atrocities of U.S. History but also America’s magnificent capacity for self-improvement as we seek the tools and knowledge to help us face our shared future with new hope – together.
Children Achieve the Expectations We Teach: Charging a Path to a More Perfect Union Begins with Our Guidance by Ian Rowe: Central to the thesis of 1619 is that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy; that white racist supremacy is irrevocably intertwined in the country’s DNA; that plantation slave-labor camps were the catalyst for an enduring system of brutal American capitalism. That is what is so disturbing and dangerous about the 1619 Project’s aspiration for children; to create in the minds of students and teachers of all races a vision of America that is imbued with a permanent malignancy that is hostile to the dreams of students of color. It is simply wrong. As educators, we must reject these tired ideas that lead to the soft bigotry of low expectations. We do our scholars no favors by treating them as victims because of a group identity, or by teaching them to become dependent on a government system, such as reparations, in order to succeed in their own live. Shouldn’t our young people be taught to understand the pathways more likely to have them flourish financially, rather than perpetuate the noxious notion that black kids are owed something and that their path to success must be paved by a massive government handout?
An Algorithm of Success: Understanding Black America by John Sibley Butler: American blacks have to celebrate their entrepreneurial history and move away from the failure paradigm that was established in the 1970s and celebrates failure. Self-employments hovers around 10% in America and the foreign-born among all racial groups have higher rates. This pattern is being followed by immigrant Africans. The model is there to make all black Americans in the image of what self-help blacks envisioned. Of course, there are overlaps in all models, but the model of success is there and should be acknowledged and celebrated.
Let’s Arm Black Children with Lessons that Can Improve Their Lives by Coleman Cruz Hughes: To say that white supremacy is in America’s DNA is, therefore, to suggest that it will remain with us forever. What good does it do to tell a black child in 2019, based on nothing but thoughtless pessimism, that the only country he’ll ever live in will forever reject him? In the history of multi-ethnic societies, it is difficult to find a single example in which a minority group rose for poverty to affluence by pursuing a strategy that focused primarily on nursing historic grievances (however valid), seeking atonement for them, and stigmatizing those within its ranks that advocated an inward-looking strategy: avoiding politics entirely and focusing single-mindedly on entrepreneurship and education. Rarely does history offer a lesson as unambiguous as this one.
We Live in an Impure World by Joshua Mitchel: The number of groups whose members count as innocent victims has expanded exponentially since the 1960s. For women, the gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and now the transgendered are counted among them. On what authority would these causes rest in America if the agonizing struggle to heal the wound of slavery during the civil rights era were not their backdrop?
The language we have all used to comprehend this extraordinary expansion is instructive. When black America was our concern, we spoke of government “affirmative action” programs. As more groups donned the crown of thorns that black America wore during the civil rights era, we began to hear the word “diversity.” As we have pushed the conventional boundaries of sexuality to their breaking point, we now talk of “inclusion” and concern for “the marginalized.” With each expansion of the number of groups of innocent victims, and with each modification of our language we have shifted the boundary line that separates the pure from the stained. Today in America, if you wish to be “inclusive” and if you are concerned with “the marginalized”’ you will do well not to defend the conventional generative family containing a biological male and female, who together go to a traditional Christian church on Sunday morning. That family is “hetero-normative,” and that church is “homophobic.” Both are stained.
Can it really be the case, that the conventional generative black family that attends church each Sunday – the very family that was the social cornerstone on which Martin Luther King Jr. relied to awaken America from its long-cultivated slumber – no longer passes the purity test? By the logic of “inclusion,” it does not. Its underlying message is this:
Pay no attention to the fact that partisans of purity now condemn the conventional generative family and traditional Christianity, without which slavery could not have been overcome, and without which “the least among us” today have the slimmest of chances of escaping their penury. You are alone and face a vast systemic threat against which your impure and impotent families and churches are powerless. Only the agencies of the federal government can help you.
We Must Scrap the “1619 Project” for an Accurate Account of American History by Charles Love: The project goes on like this, focusing solely on negativity without offering any solutions. Many whites read these essays and are drawn to the logical conclusion that most blacks in America lead bleak, sad lives. This is not only incorrect, but an unhealthy way to view blacks. Yet that is what the 1619 Project does.
With no context, it tells whites, deliberately or not, that they have wronged blacks just by being born; they must embrace their guilt and renounce their “privilege.” Conversely, it tells otherwise happy blacks that they should be angry for being forced to live a sad life they did not realize they were living. Once this toxic message, which is based on critical race theory, is allowed in schools, we have a generation of angry blacks and depressed whites. Yet the push to make this part of a new standard in the teaching of American history to vulnerable youths is gaining momentum. Critical race theory teaches that all situations and outcomes are the result of a racial power struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. It allows for no individual agency. This warped teaching is being done without involving parents or discussing the merits of the project. I suggest we take a different approach than the critical race theory approach of the 1619 Project. If schools adopt critical race theory, they will sadly rob students of the opportunity to receive an education that prepares them for the future and makes them proud to be American.
Critical Race Theory’s Destructive Impact on America by Carol M. Swain: Critical race theory advances a narrative of blame that declares white America guilty for the plight of blacks. It is a worldview and narrative that commands white people to sit in obedience and listen quietly to the arguments about their unjust gains as their obligation to provide a remedy for – in this case – black Americans, whether they are descended from slaves or not. There is no way out for whites when it comes to race. Critical race theory assumes that racism is permanent and affects every aspect of our society, including political, economic, social, and religious institutions. The theory further advances the belief that being born with white skin, in itself, give unearned privileges. Thus, this mistaken reasoning goes, the oppressive system must be dismantled and destroyed. Education is now about white privilege indoctrination. What critical race theory actually “accomplishes” is to created anger, frustration, and despondency among persons in the victim categories who internalize the destructive message.
Keeping the Promise of 1776 by Bob Woodsen and Ian Rowe: The constellation of taboos around race and other questions of identity that America began to call “political correctness” in the 1990s and has evolved into “wokeness” since 2012 is now, in many elite circles, a kind of substitute for morality. It’s no wonder then that serious conversation about virtues, moral character, and civic responsibility has all but evaporated, leaving superficial adherence to the approved platitudes about identity as the true measure of decency.
The protests that erupted after the death of George Floyd had the character of a godless religious revival, with racism as its counterfeit form or original sin and endless, never quite efficacious, rituals of atonement performed mostly by guilty whites simultaneously desperate to confess the shame of their own racism and terrified of standing accused of racism.
Imagine it is 2076. What will our legacy be on the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? Will that be America’s story fifty years from now: a nation gripped by grievance? Or will we be in the midst of a new awakening in which people of all races are learning to embrace the ideals of family, faith, education, entrepreneurship, and hard work, as the pathway to move from persecution to prosperity? Now is the time for choosing.
Source: Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers, Robert L. Woodson Sr., Editor (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
With no context, it tells whites, deliberately or not, that they have wronged blacks just by being born; they must embrace their guilt and renounce their “privilege.” Conversely, it tells otherwise happy blacks that they should be angry for being forced to live a sad life they did not realize they were living. Once this toxic message, which is based on critical race theory, is allowed in schools, we have a generation of angry blacks and depressed whites. Yet the push to make this part of a new standard in the teaching of American history to vulnerable youths is gaining momentum. Critical race theory teaches that all situations and outcomes are the result of a racial power struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors. It allows for no individual agency. This warped teaching is being done without involving parents or discussing the merits of the project. I suggest we take a different approach than the critical race theory approach of the 1619 Project. If schools adopt critical race theory, they will sadly rob students of the opportunity to receive an education that prepares them for the future and makes them proud to be American.
Critical Race Theory’s Destructive Impact on America by Carol M. Swain: Critical race theory advances a narrative of blame that declares white America guilty for the plight of blacks. It is a worldview and narrative that commands white people to sit in obedience and listen quietly to the arguments about their unjust gains as their obligation to provide a remedy for – in this case – black Americans, whether they are descended from slaves or not. There is no way out for whites when it comes to race. Critical race theory assumes that racism is permanent and affects every aspect of our society, including political, economic, social, and religious institutions. The theory further advances the belief that being born with white skin, in itself, give unearned privileges. Thus, this mistaken reasoning goes, the oppressive system must be dismantled and destroyed. Education is now about white privilege indoctrination. What critical race theory actually “accomplishes” is to created anger, frustration, and despondency among persons in the victim categories who internalize the destructive message.
Keeping the Promise of 1776 by Bob Woodsen and Ian Rowe: The constellation of taboos around race and other questions of identity that America began to call “political correctness” in the 1990s and has evolved into “wokeness” since 2012 is now, in many elite circles, a kind of substitute for morality. It’s no wonder then that serious conversation about virtues, moral character, and civic responsibility has all but evaporated, leaving superficial adherence to the approved platitudes about identity as the true measure of decency.
The protests that erupted after the death of George Floyd had the character of a godless religious revival, with racism as its counterfeit form or original sin and endless, never quite efficacious, rituals of atonement performed mostly by guilty whites simultaneously desperate to confess the shame of their own racism and terrified of standing accused of racism.
Imagine it is 2076. What will our legacy be on the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? Will that be America’s story fifty years from now: a nation gripped by grievance? Or will we be in the midst of a new awakening in which people of all races are learning to embrace the ideals of family, faith, education, entrepreneurship, and hard work, as the pathway to move from persecution to prosperity? Now is the time for choosing.
Source: Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers, Robert L. Woodson Sr., Editor (2021)
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| nihl_e2l_black_essays_--_epilogue_2.pdf |