Have patience with all things

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.

Saint Francis de Sales

Race Cowards? In Academia, Certainly

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS Posted Monday, February 23, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Attorney General Eric Holder said the U.S. is "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race relations. In one sense, he is absolutely right.

Many whites, from university administrators and professors, to schoolteachers, to employers and public officials, accept behavior from black people that they wouldn't begin to accept from whites.

For example, some of the nation's most elite universities, such as Vanderbilt, Stanford and the University of California, have yielded to black student demands for separate graduation ceremonies and separate "celebratory events."

Universities such as Stanford, Cornell, MIT and Cal Berkeley have, or have had, segregated dorms.

If white students demanded whites-only graduation ceremonies or whites-only dorms, administrators would have labeled their demands as intolerable racism. When black students demand the same thing, these administrators cowardly capitulate.

Calling these university administrators cowards is the most flattering characterization of their behavior. They might actually be stupid enough to believe nonsense taught by some of their sociology and psychology professors that blacks can't be racists because they don't have power. What about Holder's statement that America is "voluntarily segregated"? I say so what.
According to the census, in 2007 4.6% of married blacks had a white spouse; less than 1% of married whites were married to a black.

While blacks are 13% of the population, they are 80% of professional basketball players and 65% of pro football players. Mere casual observance of audiences at ice hockey games or opera performances would reveal gross voluntary segregation.

What would Holder propose the U.S. Justice Department do about these and other instances of voluntary segregation?

The attorney general's flawed thinking is widespread whereby people think that an activity that is not racially integrated is therefore segregated.

Blacks are about 60% of the Washington, D.C., population. At Reagan National Airport, which serves D.C., nowhere near 60% of the airport's water fountain users are black; I'd guess blacks are never more than 5% of users.

The population statistics of states such as South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont show that not even 1% of their populations are black. Does that mean Reagan National Airport water fountains and South Dakota, Iowa, Maine, Montana and Vermont are racially segregated?
If Holder does anything about "voluntary segregation" at the state level, I hope it's not court-ordered busing; I'm not wild about their winters.

Just because some activity is not racially integrated does not mean that it is racially segregated.
The bottom line is that the civil rights struggle is over and it is won. At one time black Americans didn't share the constitutional guarantees shared by whites; today we do. That does not mean that there are not major problems that confront a large segment of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems nor can they be solved through a "conversation on race."
Black illegitimacy stands at 70%, nearly 50% of black students drop out of high school and only 30% of black youngsters reside in two-parent families.

Even though they're just 13% of the population, blacks in 2005 committed over 52% of the nation's homicides and were 46% of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer.

Much of that pathology is precipitated by family breakdown and is entirely new among blacks. In 1940, black illegitimacy was 19%; in 1950, only 18% of black households were female-headed compared with today's 70%. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks.

If black people continue to accept the corrupt blame game agenda of liberal whites, black politicians and assorted hustlers, as opposed to accepting personal responsibility, the future for many black Americans will remain bleak.