Look Out asked:


>>> March 20, 2008
>>>
>>> Obama’s Anger
>>> By Ed Kaitz
>>>> ‘The anger is real. It is powerful, and to simply wish it away, to
>>>> condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen
>>>> the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.’
>>>> – Barack Obama
>>>> Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans
>>>> and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to
>>>> Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise
>>>> beyond his years, we immediately hit it off. I had been working on
>>>> Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in
>>>> southern Louisiana. The boats were owned by the recent wave of
>>>> Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical
>>>> environment after the war. Floating in calm seas out in the middle
>>>> of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from
>>>> ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children,
>>>> lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.
>>>
>>> In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and
>>> like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and
>>> ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had
>>> no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of
>>> Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a
>>> mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.
>>>
>>> They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the
>>> ‘Audacity of Hope.’ Within a generation, with little or no
>>> knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the
>>> fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the
>>> top SAT scores in the state.
>>>
>>> While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a
>>> prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree
>>> in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an
>>> hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these
>>> Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the
>>> language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked
>>> him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon
>>> the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities
>>> that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.
>>>
>>> His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of
>>> a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the
>>> rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way
>>> during election season:
>>>>
>>>> ‘We’re owed and they aren’t.’
>>> In short, he concluded, ‘they’re hungry and we think we’re owed.
>>> It’s crushing us, and as long as we think we’re owed we’re going
>>> nowhere.’
>>>
>>> A good test case for this theory is Katrina. Obama, Jesse Jackson,
>>> Al Sharpton and assorted white apologists continue to express anger
>>> and outrage over the federal response to the Katrina disaster. But
>>> where were the Vietnamese ‘leaders’ expressing their ‘anger?’ The
>>> Vietnamese comprise a substantial part of the New Orleans
>>> population, and yet absent was any report claiming that the
>>> Vietnamese were ‘owed’ anything. This is not to say that the federal
>>> response was an adequate one, but we need to take this as a sign
>>> that maybe the problem has very little to do with racism and a lot
>>> to with a mindset.
>>>
>>> The mindset that one is ‘owed’ something in life has not only
>>> affected black mobility in business but black mobility in education
>>> as well. Remember Ward Churchill? About fifteen years ago he was
>>> my boss. After leaving the fishing boats, I attended graduate
>>> school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I managed to get a
>>> job on campus teaching expository writing to minority students who
>>> had been accepted provisionally into the university on an
>>> affirmative action program. And although I never met him, Ward
>>> Churchill, in addition to teaching in the ethnic studies department,
>>> helped to develop and organize the minority writing program.
>>>
>>> The job paid most of my bills, but what I witnessed there was
>>> absolutely horrifying. The students were encouraged to write essays
>>> attacking the white establishment from every conceivable angle and
>>> in addition to defend affirmative action and other government
>>> programs. Of the hundreds of papers that I read, there was not one
>>> original contribution to the problem of black mobility that strayed
>>> from the party line.
>>>
>>> The irony of it all however is that the ‘white establishment’
>>> managed to get them into the college and pay their entire tuition.
>>> Instead of being encouraged to study international affairs,
>>> classical or modern languages, philosophy or art, most of these
>>> students became ethnic studies or sociology majors because it
>>> allowed them to remain in disciplines whose orientation justified
>>> their existence at the university. In short, it became a vicious
>>> cycle.
>>>
>>> There was a student there I’ll never forget. He was plucked out of
>>> the projects in Denver and given a free ride to the university. One
>>> day in my office he told me that his mother had said the following
>>> to him: ‘M.J., they owe you this. White people at that university
>>> owe you this.’ M.J.’s experience at the university was a glorious
>>> fulfillment of his mother’s angst.
>>>
>>> There were black student organizations and other clubs that
>>> ‘facilitated’ the minority student’s experience on the majority
>>> white and ‘racist’ campus, in addition to a plethora of faculty
>>> members, both white and black, who encouraged the same animus toward
>>> the white establishment. While adding to their own bona fides as
>>> part of the trendy Left, these ‘facilitators’ supplied M.J. with
>>> everything he needed to quench his and his mother’s anger, but
>>> nothing in the way of advice about how to succeed in college. No
>>> one, in short, had told M.J. that he needed to study. But since he
>>> was ‘owed’ everything, why put out any effort on his own?
>>>
>>> In a fit of despair after failing most of his classes, M.J. wandered
>>> into my office one Friday afternoon in the middle of the semester
>>> and asked if I could help him out. I asked M.J. about his plans
>>> that evening, and he told me that he usually attended parties on
>>> Friday and Saturday nights. I told him that if he agreed to meet me
>>> in front of the university library at 6:00pm I would buy him
>>> dinner. At 6pm M.J. showed up, and for the next twenty minutes we
>>> wandered silently through the stacks, lounges, and study areas of
>>> the library. When we arrived back at the entrance I asked M.J. if
>>> he noticed anything interesting. As we headed up the hill to a
>>> popular burger joint, M.J. turned to me and said:
>>>>
>>>> ‘They were all Asian. Everyone in there was Asian, and it was
>>>> Friday night.’
>>> Nothing I could do, say, or show him, however, could match the fire
>>> power of his support system favoring anger. I was sad to hear of
>>> M.J. dropping out of school the following semester.
>>>
>>> During my time teaching in the writing program, I watched Asians get
>>> transformed via leftist doublespeak from ‘minorities’ to ‘model
>>> minorities’ to ‘they’re not minorities’ in precise rhythm to their
>>> fortunes in business and education. Asians were ‘minorities’ when
>>> they were struggling in this country, but they became ‘model
>>> minorities’ when they achieved success. Keep in mind ‘model
>>> minority’ did not mean what most of us think it means, i.e.,
>>> something to emulate. ‘Model minority’ meant that Asians had
>>> certain cultural advantages, such as a strong family tradition and a
>>> culture of scholarship that the black community lacked.
>>>
>>> To suggest that intact families and a philosophy of self-reliance
>>> could be the ticket to success would have undermined the entire
>>> angst establishment. Because of this it was improper to use Asian
>>> success as a model. The contortions the left exercised in order to
>>> defend this ridiculous thesis helped to pave the way for the
>>> elimination of Asians altogether from the status of ‘minority.’
>>>
>>> This whole process took only a few years.
>>>
>>> Eric Hoffer said:
>>>> ‘…you do not win the weak by sharing your wealth with them; it
>>>> will but infect them with greed and resentment. You can win the
>>>> weak only by sharing your pride, hope or hatred with them.’
>>> We now know that Barack Obama really has no interest in the
>>> ‘audacity of hope.’ With his race speech, Obama became a peddler of
>>> angst, resentment and despair. Too bad he doesn’t direct that angst
>>> at the liberal establishment that has sold black people a bill of
>>> goods since the 1960s. What Obama seems angry about is America
>>> itself and what it stands for; the same America that has provided
>>> fabulous opportunities for what my black friend called ‘hungry’
>>> minorities. Strong families, self-reliance, and a spirit of
>>> entrepreneurship should be held up as ideals for all races to
>>> emulate.
>>>
>>> In the end, we should be very suspicious about Obama’s anger and the
>>> recent frothings of his close friend Reverend Wright. Says Eric
>>> Hoffer:
>>>> The fact seems to be that we are least open to precise knowledge
>>>> concerning the things we are most vehement about. Vehemence is the
>>>> expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that
>>>> can never stand on its own.
>>>
>>> Our Republic does not guarantee equality of conditions,
>>> it only guarantees equality of opportunity.

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