America’s Freedom Has Helped All Lives To Succeed
Many whites are ashamed, saddened and feel guilty about our history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. Many black people remain angry over the injustices of the past and what they see as injustices of the present. But both blacks and whites can benefit from a better appreciation of black history.
All Christians can, with confidence, emphatically say the words “black lives matter,” a statement that is absolutely true. But why should Christians condone the BLM movement that removes the forgiveness, hope, and peace of the gospel and replaces those core values with continual protest, fear, and anger.
Armstrong Williams, a Black political commentator wrote, “Admittedly, the legacy of slavery did shape, to some extent, the struggles and progress of Blacks in this country. But so does the legacy of freedom passed down from the founders — arguably, to a far greater extent.” Often overlooked or ignored is the fact that, as a group, Black Americans have made the greatest gains, over some of the highest hurdles, and in a shorter span of time than any other racial group in history.
“For example, if one totaled up the earnings and spending of black Americans and considered us as a separate nation with our own gross domestic product, we would rank well within the top 20 richest nations. A black American, Gen. Colin Powell, once headed the world’s mightiest military. Black Americans are among the world’s most famous personalities, and a few black Americans are among the world’s richest people such as investor Robert F. Smith, IT service provider David Steward, Oprah Winfrey, and basketball star Michael Jordan. Plus, there was a black U.S. president.”
These are significant achievements. By the end of the Civil War. A former slave would not have believed such progress would be possible in less than a century and a half – if ever. This speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people, whose grit and determination is swallowed up by claims of social injustice. It also says a great deal about the freedom of a nation in which such gains were possible. Nowhere else on earth could such progress have been achieved except in the United States of America. Was America a perfect union at the moment of its inception? Plainly, it was not. But it was unique in that it adhered to a set of laws and principles that enabled it to become more perfect over time.
All of us, especially those who riot under the banner of BLM, need to acknowledge that the civil rights struggle is over and won. At one time, black Americans did not enjoy the constitutional guarantees as everyone else. Now they do. I do not deny the existence of racial discrimination in some areas of our society, but racial discrimination is not the major problem confronting a large segment of the black community. A major problem is that some public and private policies reward dependency and irresponsibility.
Chief among these policies is the welfare state that has fostered a 75% rate of out of wedlock births and decimated the black family that had survived past Jim Crow laws and racism. I discovered that in 1940 the black illegitimacy rate was 11% and most black children were raised in two-parent families. This meant that most poverty is found in female-headed households. This is something I have first hand knowledge of; it is not always their fault, but it is not easy for a single mother in poverty to escape poverty. Meanwhile the poverty rate among husband-and-wife black families has been in the single digits for more than two decades.
“Black people can be thankful that double standards and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and irresponsibility were not a part of the 1920s, ‘30s, ’40s and ’50s. If there were, then there would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and spiritual courage that created the world’s most successful civil rights movement. From the late 1800s to 1950, some black schools were models of academic achievement. Black students at Washington’s Dunbar High School often outscored white students as early as 1899. Schools such as Frederick Douglass (Baltimore), Booker T. Washington (Atlanta), P.S. 91 (Brooklyn), McDonogh 35 (New Orleans) and others operated at a similar level of excellence.”
Self-destructive behavior that has become acceptable, particularly that in predominantly black schools, seems to me to be a betrayal of the struggle, paid with blood, sweat and tears by previous generations. A struggle that made possible today’s educational opportunities, but are now being routinely squandered. I wonder if blacks who lived through that struggle and are no longer with us would have believed such a betrayal possible.