Race and Resentment PDF  | Print |  E-mail
Written by Thomas Sowell   
Wednesday, 05 May 2010 12:00

Racism between blacks and asian americansRecent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students beating up Asian American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America.

While Obama's winning the majority of the votes in overwhelmingly white states suggests that many Americans are ready to move beyond race, it is painfully clear that others are not.

Those who explain racial antagonisms on some rationalistic basis will have a hard time demonstrating how Asian Americans have made blacks worse off. Certainly none of the historic wrongs done to blacks was done by the small Asian American population who, for most of their history in this country, have not had enough clout to prevent themselves from being discriminated against.

While ugly racial or ethnic conflicts can seldom be explained by rational economic or other self-interest, they have been too common to be just inexplicable oddities — whether in America or in other countries around the world, and whether today or in centuries past.

Resentments and hostility toward people with higher achievements are one of the most widespread of human failings. Resentments of achievements are more deadly than envy of wealth.

The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded any hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.

Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan's Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields.

Others who started at the bottom and rose to prosperity — the Lebanese in West Africa, the Indians in Fiji, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, for example — have likewise been hated for their achievements. Being born a sultan or a Rockefeller is not an achievement.

Achievements are a reflection on others who may have had similar, and sometimes better, chances but who did not make the most of their chances. Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke.

In our own times, especially, this is not just a spontaneous reaction. Many of our educators, our intelligentsia and our media — not to mention our politicians — promote an attitude that other people's achievements are grievances, rather than examples.

When black school children who are working hard in school and succeeding academically are attacked and beaten up by black classmates for "acting white," why is it surprising that similar hostility is turned against Asian Americans, who are often achieving academically more so than whites?

This attitude is not peculiar to some in the black community or to the United States. The same phenomenon is found among lower-class whites in Britain, where academically achieving white students have been beaten up badly enough by their white classmates to require hospital treatment.

These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype about differences that are translated into "disparities" and "inequities," provoking envy and resentments under their more prettied-up name of "social justice."

Asian American school children who are beaten up are just some of the victims of these resentments that are whipped up. Young people who are seething with resentments, instead of seizing educational and other opportunities around them, are bigger victims in the long run, whether they are blacks in the US or lower-class whites in the UK. A decade after these beatings, these Asian Americans will be headed up in the world, while the hoodlums who beat them up are more likely to be headed for crime and prison.

People who call differences "inequities" and achievements "privilege" leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate. It would never occur to them that they have any responsibility for the harm done to both blacks and Asian Americans.

Thomas SowellThomas Sowell graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958) and went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968). He is the author of 28 books including his most recent, Intellectuals and Society. Currently he is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

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1484
rprew
May 05, 2010
72.201.107.33
Votes: +2
Racists are like vandals

Thieves and dictators are driven by greed. You have and they don't. They want, so they take. Wealth and freedom have been stolen, but they still exist. A strong man (or society) can get it back.

Racists and socialists are driven by jealousy. You have and they don't. They know they can ever have what you have, so they destroy. If they can't have something, they want to be sure you don't have it either. Wealth and freedom are destroyed.

I don't like them, but I'll take a thief over a vandal any day of the week.

0
DDW
May 06, 2010
173.57.11.190
Votes: +2
Those who stir up discontent

Are most often liars. Along the same lines as rprew, I'd rather be friends (if forced to choose) with a thief than a liar. With a thief, you know you're going to get ripped off eventually; with a liar, you never know what's going to happen.

The words of the Lord Jesus Christ:
"Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?" Matthew 20:16



0
Lal Wynstrom
May 07, 2010
24.8.95.43
Votes: +2
This is madness, part 1

Are certain segments of black American society (or any other misguided, bamboozled resenters today) going to continue to decry "racism,” "everybody hates me" when others come along and, through their own industrious efforts, begin to rise and shine brilliantly?

Stop shouting this madness and start emulating the patterns that have led to success in other communities.

I also think it's time to stop entertaining the doctrines of race and poverty pimps like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, instead uplifting the *real* examples of achievement in the black community- men like Dr. Alan Keyes (political scientist), Dr. Philip Emeagwali (computer scientist), Clarence Thomas, et al, for whatever one thinks of their particular politics/beliefs, these people have blazed trails that can be followed. And they are only the latest modern examples!

Yet it amazes me, not only how few blacks know their names and what they stand for, but also seem almost thoroughly ignorant of their own history of success in this country, despite past racial inequalities beset on them!

It is this willful unawareness that allows predators like Jackson- and even discriminatory racists outside the black community- to continue to keep blacks (and their youth in particular) on the plantation of government control and mental enslavement- causing them to take the racist/eugenicist hypothesis of inherent black inferiority from theory to supposed fact.

0
Lal Wynstrom
May 07, 2010
24.8.95.43
Votes: +2
This is madness, part 2

This supposition is absurd on its face, yet the blacks of this country continually allow themselves to be denigrated by not knowing and teaching their true history to themselves or their descendants.

They cannot, and should not any longer blame "whitey" or anyone else, for the knowledge is there waiting for them to take hold of it. And such educative liberation of black consciousness is *part* of what will invoke true pride, and a desire to replicate and surpass the deeds of previous generations. Further, it will do so without the need for ascent to some imaginary notion of the "black super race.”

Why are there are more whites and others who know more about black history than most blacks in the States do? As I once heard a white American (with no prejudice in his heart) protest to some black Americans: “You don’t even know your history in *this* country. Never mind what happened thousands of years ago.” This gentleman was correct, for even if we subtract ancient black history from the books (which I am not suggesting), the record of success by blacks in the United States alone is illustrious.

It’s time to stop playing a game set upon black people by outside, powerful interests with a goal keeping you in the proverbial dark about yourselves and your ability to achieve and make positive contributions to human progress.

Blacks often cite their “ancestors” as a source of pride in who they are and what they’ve been in the world. So be it and fine. But what would make them proud today are not empty clichés about “kings and queens” of the past, as true as at least a hefty margin of that may be, but stout efforts at moving forward in the societies in which you find yourselves today, advancing to leave a record of success that will be hailed by future generations seeking to follow in your steps.

244
riverroach
May 11, 2010
174.52.28.17
Votes: +0
If you want it straight!

This whole discussion is spelled out by Robert Welch in his timeless speech, "If you want it straight". This speech is available to all in mpg format as well as the rest of the speeches presented in "The insight of Robert Welch" available here:

http://usedbrainacademy.com/The Insight of Robert Welch.html

In the end it is ALL about the use of hatred by the Communists!

These speeches were done by Robert Welch back in the late 60's and early 70's and they are more powerful now than they were back then because one who listens cannot argue with the content of the speeches because they have come to pass!

Pass the speeches along! I have a good friend who was not interested in politics and after listening to "If you want it straight", he immediately joined the JBS! HooDeeHoo!

Enjoy!
JJ Suprise
Sandy,Utah

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