Charges of racism

Over the years, I've made a somewhat half-hearted attempt to collect asinine charges of racism. If I had been a bit more diligent in my collection efforts, I would be in a position to take the best 100 examples and put them in a book. It would be a guaranteed best-seller and would be featured in the humor section of your local Barnes & Noble where we could all gather to watch patrons blow coffee out of their noses as they read and laughed.

One of my favorite recent examples of absurd charges of racism is of a civil-rights warlord in the Miami-Dade County area who complained the testing regime for aspiring police officers was racist. It seemed that police officials decided to include a swimming test as a part of the recruitment exam. They reasoned that since much of their territory was crisscrossed with canals and waterways, the ability to swim might be valuable to a law-enforcement officer charged with saving lives. Our local race activist cited this requirement as racist because, as everybody knows, blacks just can't swim all that well.

The most alarming example I recall is that of a college professor from the predominately black Atlanta University Center stating that the use of logic in the presentation of an idea or an attempt to solve a problem was racist. Why racist? Racist because, again, as everybody knows, blacks can't deal with complex issues logically. Remember now: This was a black professor from a black institution of higher learning.

Sad, isn't it.

There is no denying the fact that there are racial tensions and difficulties in America. There is also a great reluctance – bordering on naked, trembling fear – to confront these difficulties with candor. We have problems with prejudice, bigotry and racism – problems that need addressing. But, as any first-year business student could tell you, the first step in solving a problem is identifying it. If you address problems of bigotry or prejudice as racism, solutions will be difficult to find.

One of the most crippling race-related problems we have in this country has little to do with white bigotry, prejudice or racism. It's the anti-achievement mentality that permeates urban black culture. This damaging aspect of black culture has been written about extensively. In a Time magazine article, "The Hidden Hurdle" (March 16, 1992), we read "Social success [in black schools] depends partly on academic failure; safety and acceptance lie in rejecting the traditional paths to self-improvement."

When the subject of the anti-achievement mentality is brought up on my radio show, one of the first callers will invariably denounce the concept and argue that all problems faced by black children in our government schools stem from inadequate funding, poor teachers, the legacy of slavery and, of course, racism. As sure as thunder follows lightning, that caller will be followed by a dozen or so black listeners detailing their personal struggle with their anti-achievement peers throughout their education.

One particularly interesting study recently focused on black children from upper-income professional families in the exclusive Shaker Heights suburb of Cleveland. School funding certainly wasn't a problem – nor could academic failure be blamed on broken families and a lack of parental involvement. Yet the test scores for black students remained low, and the harassment of good black students by their peers – harassment for "acting white" – continued.

Is this anti-achievement mentality part of the racial makeup of black students? Of course not. It's not racial, it's cultural, and herein lies a big part of our so-called "race problem" in America. While it is justifiably demanded of whites that they examine their prejudices and feelings toward black Americans, there seems to be no eagerness on the part of black Americans to examine the aspects of their cultures that hold them back from a full participation in our economy.

Civil-rights warlords seem to understand instinctively that their followers are far more eager to believe that their problems and difficulties lie in the attitudes of others and not themselves. As long as those beliefs are nurtured, solutions will remain elusive.