Time to Be Proud of America
I
was stunned recently while reading an op-ed column in The New York Times by an African- American man who lived in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The man was in a frenzy of rage because
the owner of a delicatessen had mistakenly accused a well- known black actor of shoplifting a loaf of bread. The proprietor had quickly and eff usively apologized,
but that was not enough. His mistake, according to the columnist, was close kin to calling the man a racial epithet commonly used in rap songs but now verboten in any other kind of conversation. I was amazed because of the sheer stupidity of the argument — I wonder how many times the deli owner has had items shoplifted and how tight a wire he must have to walk — and I wonder, once the owner has apologized thoroughly, how much more penance he has to make for a simple mistake. I wonder how a small shopkeeper’s error can be equated with a deliberate insult. But I was even more amazed at how times have changed since I was a lad. I am now 68. I grew up in Silver Spring, Md., then a
small, almost all-white suburb of Washington, D.C. Explicit racism, legally sanctioned racism, was a fact
of daily life. My little elementary school, on magnifi cent grounds tended to by us kids, was legally segregated. The only black man on the grounds was the kindly old janitor, Willy, who endlessly shoveled coal into the boiler on winter days, and endlessly swept the fl oors. Even in Silver Spring, which had many Jews, it was
not rare for passing “hard guys,” James Dean wannabes in lowered Mercury cruisers, to shout out “kike” or “Jew bastard” to us Jewish boys on our bicycles. Even my best friend as a child — and he was a good friend, a Congregationalist, very high-end denomination — used to tell me that although he liked me, Jews generally were thieves. Gatherings of my Jewish youth group, he insisted, were basically gatherings of thieves to plan strategy. The lives of blacks even in the nation’s capital were miserable. As I passed their neighborhoods in my parents’ car, a pale 1955 Blue Chevy 210, the economy model for my frugal parents, I saw the ragged black kids suff ering in the cruel Washington summers, opening hydrants to cool off , adults lying drunk on the sidewalks. I remember
N
STEIN DREEMZ
even some of our teachers called black people by horrible names in school class. If I were to wake up as a child of color, I used to think
to myself, I would kill myself. Yes. That was how terrible their lives seemed to me when I was a small child.
ow, fast-forward to 2013. Blacks have every possible door open to them. Blacks can be heads of giant
corporations. They can and do get preferential treatment to the best schools. They are a huge power group on the national scene. Television is largely geared to the black viewer. We have a partly black president. As to Jews, there are no doors closed to us, except
at some country clubs in the nation and co-ops in New York City. Jews are at the summit of national media and fi nancial, business, and political power. The Jews (far from the notions of anti-Semites) are often divided among themselves and have wildly diff erent opinions about key issues, even about Israel, but they are no longer a distinct “out group,” confi ned to earning livings as teachers or proprietors of small shops or as personal injury lawyers. This doesn’t approach what’s happened with women, Hispanics, and Asians. Their horizons are also unlimited. It may play well on academic campuses in some
locales to pretend that there is still racism as a basic fact in America, and it’s certainly big news in The New York Times, but except for rare instances in remote corners of the national life, it’s nonsense. Our son lives with his wife, a woman of Indian descent, in Greenville, S.C., where secession started. You might think it’s all Rebel fl ags and pickups with gun racks and no mingling of the races. In fact, Greenville is the most friendly, welcoming town I have ever seen anywhere — and this is the Deep South. We all know we have terrible problems with the economy, with lingering inequality (which is bound to happen, by the way; people are not of equal talents), with the mistreatment of children, especially unborn children. We all know we have a pop culture that is a trash can of moldering garbage. But when we take inventory of America, let’s not just make up nonsensical charges of a racism that’s long gone. We have had a revolution of righteousness about race. Let’s be proud.
MAY 2013 | NEWSMAX 29
BEN
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92