The politicians and the establishment, especially those in the three branches of our federal government, are so out of touch with the lives of middle-class Americans. They live in their ivory towers and do not experience the struggles of everyday Americans, the daily grind for survival. This struggle has no differentiation between skin color. Blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos, especially those of the lower classes, experience the daily grind for survival, the need for food, clothing, shelter, transportation and the fight with crime and drugs. Survival is an equal opportunity enterprise. I was recently in a grocery store that caters to Latin American customers in my hometown. The store is stocked with Mexican, Central American and South American products. Spanish is the predominate language spoken in the store. The shelves are neatly supplied, the floors are clean, the interior is freshly painted and shopping carts are clean and kept in their place. Male Latin American workers are drawn by the BBQ aroma during lunch hour to satisfy their need for home cooked meals. Mothers, often with children, shop for their daily rations. All seems happy and energetic with their work. But just underneath the surface, there exists a strong desire to reach the elusive American dream. The struggle for survival in the Latin American community is real.
Another segment of our diverse society is African Americans. Their struggles were years ago during the days of Martin Luther King. Blacks for the most part have made it into the middle class. Local, state and federal government jobs are mostly filled with black. In the legal, medical, political and financial sectors, blacks are successful career opportunists. Blacks dominate the high paid positions in most major sports. Blacks appear much more frequently in ads and programs on television than in the most recent past. Blacks have nice cars, nice homes and eat in nice restaurants. (I rarely see many Latin Americans eating in nice restaurants.) More and more blacks are obtaining college educations and they even have exclusive colleges and law schools dedicated for themselves. Blacks no longer fill the back breaking jobs as they once did. Today, Latin Americans are the roofers, house framer, ditch diggers, field workers and house cleaners. They hold the menial jobs. Latin Americans have become the underclass, slaves, if you will, in our society today.
Sure, European Americans and Asian Americans have achieved the status that blacks have yearned for for years, but blacks have finally reached the upper classes. The blame for the delay can be any number of factors starting with slavery. But that institution was abolished over 150 years ago. No former slave is alive today. During the Civil War, Congress in 1862 proposed returning the former slaves to Africa and Haiti, or in the alternative, creating reservations in the United States similar to the American Indians. (In 1830, the Indian Removal Act allowed the government to apportion land west of the Mississippi River to Indian tribes in exchange for their ancestral lands taken from them.) The idea of colonization never took hold with the former slaves. Instead, the South took the path of legally mandated segregation. Legislators segregated everything from schools, residential areas, public parks, theaters, restaurants, bars, pools, cemeteries, asylums, jails, waiting rooms, buses and even public phone booths and water fountains. In 1896, the United States Supreme Court held in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was constitutional. The ruling established the idea of “separate but equal.” (In 1875 a Republican-controlled House and Senate passed a civil rights bill outlawing discrimination in schools, churches and public transportation. It was barely enforced and U.S. Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional.) It wasn’t until 1954 that segregation of children in public schools was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. Unlike the American Indian, blacks were eventually assimilated into American society. Sure, there exists vestiges of the evil of “separate but equal” but time heals all wounds. Blacks have attained equality.
African Americans have demanded equality for the last 60 years. They ingrained their dream into the American psyche. But equal in what respect? They believe and expect that they must be treated equally in every stage of politics, financial progression and property accumulation. Equality never meant that. There will always be someone who has more money, a prettier wife, a nicer car, a better job and a bigger home than the next guy. African Americans have achieved equality. So now the catch word is equity. If we can’t have the same qualities in every respect, i.e. same skin color, same financial position, same political authority, same amount of money, then, at least, we will distribute the remainder in an equitable fashion, i.e. give the blacks more because they were slaves, as if today’s whites owe the duty of reparations. Their interpretation of equity borders on greed. In the United States we are all equally capable to achieve worldly successes and blacks have taken advantage. Yet we still have differences in political and financial class. Why? What is the cause? Not equality. Every American citizen is equally empowered to achieve political and economic success, but now, the new phrase is equity. The political and economic climate must be “just and fair,” the definition of equity. However, the repercussions of life and living are never “fair.” (Remember the classical outcome of survival of the fittest.) The only hopeful result any political system can offer is justice. Blacks seek justice for the treatment of their ancestors as slaves. But no slaves or slave owners are living today, so they revert to equity arguments. Whites had advantages negros didn’t. Whites had inheritances accumulated by slave labor while negros didn’t. The mantra has become white privilege. This political mantra allows opponents to the republic to flourish with the Skinheads, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter. Socialism/ communism/ fascism ideals have been tried and tested. No political system can provide and establish equity not even capitalism. Only a free economic system with free enterprise under capitalism can direct capital to its most efficient use and hopefully it is equitable. Governments cannot provide equity in jobs, money, property and fortune. Every time the government intervenes in anything, you can be sure that it will muck things up.
Differences in standing between members of society, either sexually, financially, politically or educationally, have always existed in the past, exist today and will always exist into the future no matter how determined the ruling class or political elite are at attempts to achieve equity. Equality is treating people the same. Equity treats people differently in order to remedy a perceived wrong. Blacks initially wanted equality. When they achieved equal protection under the law, they decided they wanted more than just being treated equally as everyone else. They now feel they deserve extra in the form of reparations. Federal and State governments create this entitlement mentality. A California reparations Task Force recently voted in favor of legislation requiring the state to issue a formal apology for slavery and grant hundreds of billions of dollars in payments in reparations.
The blacks of today in America are much better off than most blacks living on the continent of Africa today. Corruption and constant wars and internal conflict on the African continent has caused Africans to be unequal to their African American brothers and sisters. The two groups are definitely not equal. Will African Americans demand equity from their African captors during the slave trade? https://www.historyguy.com/wars_of_africa_current.html https://issafrica.org/pscreport/psc-insights/african-conflicts-to-watch-in-2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Africa What if a slave brought to America was never a slave but escaped his African captors and remained in the bush and lived his and his family’s life in Africa. Either he and/or his descendants would have been exposed to corruption and constant war and conflict to this day. His descendants may still be living in mud huts and pitching spears at their angry neighbors. Yes, slavery was wrong. But that institution survived worldwide since the beginning of time until only recently in modern history. (The sex trade still partakes in slavery today.) My point is that descendants of slaves in the United States are in a much higher social class in America than they would otherwise be if they had grown and expanded their families in Africa. That may be a callous statement, since who would ever want to be the chattel of another human, but there is truth within it.
Maybe the United States needs the convoluted and un-American decisions made by the elites in the Biden administration to reveal to its citizens that the progressive/socialist stranglehold on the democrat party will destroy our republic. Old school democrats, the ancients, like Schumer, Pelosi, Nadler, Biden, Maxine Waters, Hoyer, Feinstein and Leahy (45 years) represent a bygone democratic era where southern democrats (and many northern ones like Joe Biden) were staunch segregationists. These old school democrats still believe in the ideals of America, you know, the land of the free and home of the brave, but deep down inside they are FDR NEW DEAL DEMOCRATS. They keep inside their segregationist past while arguing that government provides all the answers to America’s problems and that government is the only source of help for the downtrodden. But Roosevelt, the heir of a hugely successful merchant and landowner family, passed the new deal to get America out of a depression, the result of the crash of the stock market in 1929. The new deal did not resolve the Great Depression. World War II did. Government action never resolves economic problems, it only tempers the damage that a rising crises presents. Many times, it increases the problem, like the Opioid crisis, covid, inflation, recessions, and wars. Government action always comes at a cost. One group or another will always suffer. Government action is the source of inequality. Freedom is not free. Since the days of our founding fathers in 1776 in Philadelphia (city of love), many men and women gave their lives and fortunes for our ability to enjoy this freedom, even the military today. Where are their reparations?
Government action allows socialist to defund the police and Black Lives Matter to cheer for Critical Race Theory and 1619 Project. It allows Soros to fund liberal/socialist prosecutors who favor no bonds for criminals and no prosecutions of defendants. It allows race baiters like Al Sharpton and Ben Crump to find racism everywhere. Just because these loons have freedom to espouse such nonsense, it does not mean that this disinformation has merit. The unfortunate outcome is that the lives and fortunes of our founders has no value in a socialist agenda. Socialism leads people to believe that everyone must be equal and if not, the government should use equity to even the playing field. That is not how our economic system works. Capitalism rewards the risk takers and hard workers. Equity plays no part. The lazy will always exist, just as the poor will always exist. No political system will ever change that truth.
When do the Latino immigrants receive equality/equity? When I was in the grocery store, there was a girl behind a counter selling Cricket wireless service. I wasn’t looking for phone service but I began a conversation. She showed me a $30 federal government discount on a brochure, presumably paid by the federal government directly to Cricket. And I would also get a free phone. She is from Honduras and has one child who is now an American citizen because the child was born in the United States. This is why the democrats want to import cheap labor. The democrats are building their voter base with Latin Americans with their open border policy. And they like the cheap labor that comes with it. The Latin Americans are just like the African Americans only with a different method of entry. The illegal Latin Americans are now the new generation of “slaves” in this country. (Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas was born in Cuba and escaped the communist regime with his family when he was one year old.) The democrats are slowly losing their African American voter base, as the blacks fill the middle and upper classes. The democrats need to replenish their base. The democrats will use republican opposition to illegal immigration as a means to court future Latin American voters and use reparations to hold onto the African American base. The question is “Will the African Americans support the Latin Americans when they demand equality and equity?”