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| Ian Rowe |
That’s Ian Rowe above the author of ‘The power of personal agency’ the other day in the Wall Street Journal. Short form: even given existing racism, it’s better for young people of colour to be told they can make it in America — as indeed they can, because they have agency — than to be told that they are forever victims of racism and cannot succeed in its face.
In case you can’t access the WSJ, there’s an excerpt at ‘The cult of victimhood disempowers’ (With their highlights):
Herein lies the great danger of this moment: The next generation of Americans — black and white — might grow up believing that the entire destiny of one race rests in the hands of another, which must first renounce its “privilege” before any progress can be made. The potential damage is that young people are robbed of their sense of personal agency — the belief and ability they can control their own destiny. — Ian Rowe, American Enterprise Institute.Its easy to see how such a view can be trashed, by victimhood votaries, as being Whites washing their hands of racism. But Ian Rowe is a Black man! Well, he’s exhibiting “internalised whiteness” or some such smear; Uncle Tom, race traitor…
Meantime, we white folk can either accept our deep and abiding racism and seek to atone for it, or deny it, which just proves how racist we are, by exhibiting “White fragility”.
But Ian Rowe is not the only African-American urging his people to have their own agency. There are many others: John McWhorter, Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Carol Swain, Coleman Hughes…
Whereas the BLM movement focuses entirely on white privilege which is by its nature oppressing black people.
RELATED: I’ve just heard the pastor, Rev Raphael Warnock, giving eulogy for Rayshard Brooks, the most recent black man killed by police in Atlanta. He says “we don’t know what to tell our children, to avoid being killed”.
Well, here’s one thing you could tell them, and tell the millions watching: don’t resist arrest.
In 2019, according to statistics kept by the left-of-centre Washington Post, there were nine — that’s single-digit 9 — unarmed Black men killed by police in the United States. That’s nine too many, sure, though it’s also not genocide. My main point: in each and every case, including Rayshard Brooks, these men were resisting arrest.
I’m sure not the only one making this point. It was made powerfully by comedian Chris Rock in his “public service video”: ‘How not to get your ass kicked’. This is a funny black guy talking to his black brothers with a funny, but true vid. Why on earth isn’t it more widely played? It is quite unforgivable that the Rev Warnock tells his flock, the mourners and the watching world that “we don’t know what to tell our children” when we do know the single best thing to do if confronted by police: don’t resist arrest.
Why isn’t that a BLM mantra? Perhaps because ongoing killings suits their agenda, which is radical left, including destruction of the police, an outcome that would be disastrous for the Black community.
