It likewise occurs to me that–rather, I am tempted to say, without bring sure I believe it–that the core tragedy of blacks in this country has not been racism but, paradoxically, the sheer numbers of whites eager and even desperate to be their saviors. Racism has been a given in human history forever. So has slavery. The Greeks kept slaves. The Chinese kept slaves. The Jews kept slaves. Most Africans kept slaves. Most Native American tribes kept slaves.
America, of course, exists in continuity with the cultural flow of time, and the sins of everywhere else, and which predates the arrival of white people, existed here too for a time, until we fought s bloody and horrible, and horribly destructive war because a large number of American were both unwilling to sccept slavery, and unwilling to see the Union severed.
But only here, uniquely here, did an organized group realize that they could win elections on the basis of promises they knew they couldn’t keep. Think about what the Democrats do: they make impossible promises, fail, then blame Republicans, such that they are able both to break every explicit and implicit (I will make car payment, she thought she heard Obama say) promise they make over many DECADES, and continue to ask for votes without getting ridden out of town on a pole.
To be sure, in some respect to the civil rights legislations the Republicans passed in the 1950’s–and to a lesser but real extent the more famous legislation passed under Johnson in the 1960’s–were reasonable responses to real problems. Institutional racism was a real problem. Your race mattered for jobs, where you could live, who you could marry, where you could eat, etc.
But large numbers of people, here and abroad, have dealt with racism and won. The Italians, the Jews, the Irish, and many others faced systematic prejudice. What did they do? They banded together as communities, took care of each other, created safe places for them and theirs, worked hard, and eventually became self evidently equal members of the American experiment and dream.
Blacks, uniquely, had large numbers of people outside their race and culture speaking for them nearly from the outset of the “Civil Rights era”. They were flourishing until this happened, relatively. They had high labor participation rates, low unemployment, high rates of two parent homes. But when white people strayed speaking for them, especially after they lost their best leaders in MLK and Malcolm X, all progress stopped, then reversed.
In my view, this is easily shown demographically. You can show where black self destruction began, and it was in my view when they started getting treated like malleable and stupid children.