Me me me me me me me And You you you you you you you you

Earlier, I elaborated on some of the root causes of the us-versus-them mentality (which I will now refer to as UVTM) of black America and described why it needs to be overcome. However, I failed to distinguish between the destructive UVTM that haunts the black community and healthier forms needed to replace it.

I suppose it would be nice if we all consistently saw everybody else are part of One Human Family, and in certain respects we both should and do, but I find it entirely unrealistic to expect people not to do so ever. A commenter cited examples of how we do it on the right (O'Reiley's hits on the "secular progressives"), and he's aboslutely correct--we do it all the time. However, there's a fundamental difference between how the left and right categorize, and it's one that must be recognized, for it's a substantial stumbling block keeping the "oppressed" from getting out of life what they should.

Black UVTM stems from the white UVTM of the old South. Whites largely stood by each other and allowed race and class to trump justice far more often than they should have. Blacks therefore came to view institutions like the legal system and business as tools of oppression instead of institutions of achievement, economic development, and justice.

However, as understandable as the causes may be, we're left with people seemingly categorizing themselves according to race. When confronted with this accusation, the left cites the shared experiences of minorities and tells us that there are things that all of them have endured that the rest of us have not, that it's not ultimately about race, it's simply more comfortable to spend one's time with those who've suffered what you have. Again, this is understandable.

Nevertheless, I would argue that this is a reactive form of self-categorization, for that which leads us to wish to sit together in the cafeteria is not what we've accomplished, what we stand for, or what we wish to become, but instead what was done to us. Even if it's not based on skin-color like the right alledges, it's still ultimately letting them categorize you. After all, aren't you excluding yourself because they excluded you first?

The ultimate danger of such groupthink is that it trains us to think reactively. Even if the upper classes view the son of a plumber as little more than the son of a plumber, to become class-conscious, the plumber's son must agree with the upper-classman's fundamental assessment of him. He would undoubtedly disagree with a rich snot's belief that being a plumber's son indicates any inherent inferiority, but he still bases his fundamental self-image on things over which he has no contol, namely, that his background is what really matters. (Likewise, a spoiled rich kid who thinks of himself as superior because of his powerful dad plays the same game and limits himself accordingly--albeit with different consequences. Modern white supremacists merge the groupthink of race-superiority with class-consciousness to allow themselves the status of perpetural "victim-superiors"--but they and the rich snot are for another post)

However, in a free-market society such as ours, social class is fluid, for we can always transcend our socioeconomic backgrounds. The son of a plumber may become president of a bank (yes, I know it's an uphill struggle, but it happens a lot), the daughter of a coal miner can sell millions of records. In regards to whites, the left's categorization of us is transient (if we don't buy into Lennon/Lenin's view of things).

But you can't make yourself un-black, not even if you're Michael Jackson. You can break through nearly every chain set before you, you can straighten your hair and listen to heavy metal, but your skin will still be darker than that of most of your countrymen. If you've bought into leftist groupthink based on class, you can change external circumstances enough to unbox yourself. If you've bought into leftist groupthink based on race, you're stuck, forever, no matter what you do.

Such emphasis on the external has had a devastatingly powerful effect on the black community. "You will always be one of us, for the white man sees you differently than he sees himself."

How white people, rich people, the cool kids, or whoever they may be matters; it would be foolish to assert otherwise. However, one of the fundamental differences between the right and the left is that we believe that under most circumstances, what they do to you matters less than what you do about it.

Again, I don't deny that injustice exists, I just believe that after we've established relative equality under the law that we need to shift our focus to individual initiative. The quest for cosmic justice emphasizes the external, conflating that which should be with what is. Individual initiative emphasizes the need for individual accomplishment within the actual parameters of the here and now, not necessarily waiting for them to get it right before one makes something of oneself.

I know that civil rights leaders sometimes discuss the latter, but they held Don Imus (the establishment, the underlying environment of hostility, the white man, etc.) to a far higher standard than they hold Snoop Dogg, an individual member of the black community with a considerable amount of influence over young people. They may complain about rap lyrics, but I've yet to see any prominent boycotts. I know that in one of my college linguistic books (Chaika's Language: The Social Mirror), black misogyny was explained away and blamed on the oppressors.

The UVTM of black American initially mirrored an UVTM of justice, for blacks were universally and unquestionably oppressed. Even if a black stole something, it could very plausibly be argued that he had so many strikes against him that he deserved shielding from the police. Since then, much progress has been made, but UVTM still defends the likes of OJ Simpson and gang members who terrorisze their own communities.

I remember seeing a Chris Rock stand-up routine in which he lamented that black people were too happy about the OJ Simpson verdict (this may or may not be true, but I was out of the country at the time so I'll have to take his word for it). However, he later said that if Jerry Seinfeld or another white celebrity suffered the same fate that white America would have acted the same way.

Pace Mr. Rock, he was dead wrong about this. I believe that Mr. Rock, like many blacks, thinks we're more race-conscious than we are. Very few of us (fortunately) retain a race-based UVTM. For the most part we have adopted an UVTM based on values. (Yes, lefties, I recognize that we whites don't have to look at the world through the prism of race because we've created the prism and all, but keep in mind that it was whites around the country who saw other whites treating blacks like crap on their televisions and decided to help the blacks they saw as heroes do something about it, thus "turning against our own" for the sake of "social justice.")

I think Rosa Parks was a hero and Ted Bundy was a thug--any me-versus-you going through my mind has much more to do with what somebody stands for and does about it than menalin content or the need to protect "my people." I think both Joshua Lawrence Chamberain and the Tuskegee Airmen were greater men that I will ever be (in large part because I'm a rabbits [sic]). I consider "my people" to be those I respect and admire, and "they" are those I don't.

Not to place myself on a pedastal here, but when most of us of all races look at things this way we'll be much better off. Yes, I know that most black people hate the thugs that make their lives hell, but (and I've seen this happen firsthand) if a white person criticizes the same lowlifes, many blacks start defending the lowlifes. I've watched public access cable shows that white people never watch and seen the black hosts and black callers rip "urban values" to shreds. I've seen those same hosts later tell whites that they have no right to criticize anybody, that we have no right to judge. Race groupthink trumps values groupthink, meaning values groupthink can't ever win, for there's always a white person around somewhere to inspire the need to circle the wagons.

From here I could go into how leftist UVTM ultimately rejects values, the way leftist UVTM inspires a class of annointed who feel like they're doing the right thing and don't notice the harm they do, or perhaps the two groups of semi-heroes who are inches away from being the very types of people who could inspire "oppressed" America to accept and live the American dream, but I haven't decided. Feel free to make a request.