Race

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by Reid Fitzsimons (note this is a very long article of approx 5,300 words, the first 3,500 being mine and the remainder those of a then pro-life Jesse Jackson from 1977)

Around 45 years-ago I was visiting in-laws deep in Mississippi, this being in the waning days of what we call “Jim Crow.” The in-laws were relatively wealthy, as defined by being two million in debt due to ill-conceived business ventures. They had employees, many of them black, and I befriended a young black man about my age. We had been given an excess amount of pecans and I offered him a bag to take back to his family, which he appreciated. As he was walking away, one of the in-laws, a generation older than me, exclaimed “He’s stealing the pecans!” Knowing this could have an unfortunate outcome, I quickly explained I had given him the bag. The response, in a genteel Southern accent (me being a Yankee) was, “We don’t do that kind of thing down here.”

The political structure of Jim Crow was pretty typical of oppressive societies throughout history, meaning the oppressors needed the oppressed to maintain power. In Jim Crow, there was dangled before the white masses the perpetual threat of “nigras not knowing their place and being uppity.” This had broad and powerful appeal to many of the white masses, who from childhood had been taught that blacks were, simply, inferior. They- blacks- could be dutiful and affectionate pets and treated accordingly, but there was always the fear they would turn on their masters, and the whites holding the power knew how to exploit this fear: one can picture the ugly man, George Wallace, with his ugly promise of “...segregation forever!”

The deluding and the deluded
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by Reid Fitzsimons (Preface: The word “culture” is used frequently; perhaps overused. We have cultural icons, cultural appropriation, and culture wars; a privileged person might view his or herself as being highly cultured for listening to NPR or patronizing expensive sushi bars, and we have cultures associated with black, white and every skin tone in between. In reality it’s difficult to define the word, but I recall the professor from my Cultural Anthropology 101 class at the University of Wyoming in 1977, who succinctly stated culture is “learned behavior.”

In order to make the point of this article I need to be a little autobiographical. I was raised in the almost exclusively white Maryland suburbs outside of Washington, DC. While wealth is always relative, we were certainly well off, not country club/private school rich (there were plenty of those households around), but we had a spacious house, two cars, membership in a community swimming club with tennis courts, and took family vacations. The typical and expected trajectory was to complete high school, graduate from college, perhaps go to grad school to become a lawyer, accountant, or obtain an MBA, get a well paying job, start a family in a nice house in the suburbs, and repeat the cycle.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

The “Hate Crime and Public Order Act” became effective in Scotland on April 1, 2024. One can intuit the nature of this law, which offers special protections to preferred demographic groups, but the essence of the law can be seen in the March 29th statement of First Minister Humza Yousaf: “I would say to anybody who thinks they are a victim of hatred, we take that seriously, if you felt you are a victim of hatred, then of course reporting that to police is the right thing to do.” In other words, the Act is based on feelings and not objectivity, and is selectively applied.

Prior to law law going into effect, I emailed the Scottish tourist agency, VisitScotland, for reasons explained in the text of the email below. Their response, also below, was prompt and courteous, and can be summarized as, “We don’t know.”

Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf on the left. "Hate," of course, is a largely undefinable and subjective word. This is not a great analogy, but imagine a parent who tells the child not to eat candy before dinner, as compared to "don't do anything that upsets me before dinner." The first in objective and can be obeyed, the latter is nebulous and based upon the whim of the parent.

Greetings (or perhaps Latha math) from the US:

My wife and I are long-retired and spent many years living in other countries, but these were always impoverished places in Africa and Central America where we were either volunteering with other organizations or running our own charity project. For quite a while we’ve discussed the time when our life situation would allow us to be regular tourists, and that time has arrived. For years our number one destination desire has been Scotland. I’ve read pretty much every Ian Rankin and Denise Mina book, and almost feel that the fictional character Hamish MacBeth is a distant relative we could visit in The Highlands!

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by Reid Fitzsimons

“The boogeyman is hiding under your bed” is a way for older siblings to frighten their younger brothers or sisters. Of course, it is extremely unlikely there is boogeyman, but there is just enough basis to make it a possibility: in some cases creeps and perverts do exist who harm children. In our current political and cultural world the equivalent of the boogeyman is the white supremacist, proclaimed from the highest levels of government to be a real and present threat, a means to scare the heck out of a gullible electorate, and to coerce acquiescence to favored policies and prosecutions.

The Bogeyman Narrative

The actual white supremacist

The thing is, the term “white supremacist” is never really defined other than a loose association with people who stand up for what might be termed traditional American and Judeo-Chrisitan values. I suspect most people under 50 have never encountered an actual “white supremacist,” and then even rarely. Having spent some time in the waning days of Jim Crow in the deep South in the late 1970s, I did meet a handful of white people who truly fantasized they were of a superior race and loathed black people simply because they were black; they were an unimpressive lot.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” is a cultural fad that is mostly a thing of the elite, especially but not exclusively of the progressive and privileged white elite. It possesses all of the characteristics of really bad religions: dogma and doctrine that must be embraced without question for fear of banishment and accusations of heresy and blasphemy, everyone but the elite are grave sinners and forgiveness is rare...and expensive. A wealthy person- a corporate CEO, a media figure, a celebrity, an academician, a politician- can obtain an “indulgence” with money and chanting the catechism of DEI, but the riff-raff of society, i.e. regular people, are generally viewed with scorn as hopelessly ignorant deplorables.

Brian Moynihan, a prototypical privileged and enormously wealthy white corporate CEO (Bank of America). He is among the multitude of this elite caste who pretend to embrace DEI, but with the primary goal of maintaining privilege and feeling good about greed.

While this is a nationwide phenomenon it has tentacles into even out of the way places such as Susquehanna County, PA This is evident in the controversy with the library system, which has membership and affiliations with the DEI obsessed Pennsylvania Library Association and the American Library Association, organizations for whom libraries, books, etc are simply a basis for activism, with dreams of leading to the imposition of their elite-controlled DEI Utopia. From the PLA opening page banner:

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion: “The Pennsylvania Library Association will actively and intentionally pursue, promote and champion equity, diversity, and inclusion within the organization and within the profession so that our association, libraries, librarians, and library staff will all thrive.”

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by Reid Fitzsimons (note that this is a very long article, but the introductory part is brief and stand alone, followed by profiles of five black cultural celebrities who reflect the subtle and at times overt racism of the Democrat party)

“These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again.” A statement made by Democrat President Lyndon Johnson made when he was the senate majority leader in 1957.

The old guard of black racialist shakedown artists revered by the Democrat establishment, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson
One of the newer entries, Nikole Hannah-Jones of the "1619 Project"

“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Future Democrat President Joe Biden, 2007, in reference to Barack Obama.

The compelling 1989 movie Glory depicted the creation of black Union Army units in the Civil War, specifically the 54th Mass. Infantry Regiment. These units were lead by white officers but otherwise segregated. Under the command of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the 54th became a disciplined and formidable unit, but for the most part the black soldiers were considered as laborers in uniform, and buffoons at worst. In one disturbing scene, while the 54th maintained their formation another black unit was allowed to loot a white plantation house while its corrupt officers looked on, but one of the black soldiers assaulted a white woman and was summarily shot by a white officer. The message was that much of the white establishment believed that black troops couldn’t control themselves, which was okay to some extent, but don’t mess with white women. The 54th went on to distinguish itself at the Battle of Fort Wagner.

This idea- that black people are basically buffoons- persists among some white people this day, those people being privileged and powerful Democrats. Still, blacks can be useful to them as political props and minions as long as the are regulated and controlled, lest they act according to their innate savage nature. This is what Joe Biden was saying when he observed the rare exception of an “...articulate and bright and clean…” black person in his 2007 quote.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

When we moved to South Alabama in 2008 we learned our new neighbor had a sophisticated sounding English surname. Based on this, we envisioned him to likely be a cultivated person, maybe a retired college professor. This image was quickly dispelled upon meeting him: he was an ignorant vestige from the Jim Crow/KKK days, an overt racist and, we later learned, an lifelong alcoholic with anger control issues; his pleasant wife certainly earned to title of “long-suffering.” In America today, of course, accusations of “racism” from people either trying to justify their privilege or victim status (or usually both) spew out like stomach contents at a drunken frat party, but I suspect there are very few people under 50 today who have actually met a real racist. This is because they have largely died off, like our bigoted and imbecilic neighbor of 10+ years ago.

Trevor Anderson of South Carolina, recently fired from his position as a middle school French teacher

More recently, Mr. Trevor Anderson was discharged from his position as a French teacher at a South Carolina middle-school. This was a blip in the news cycle seen at Foxnews.com (link below). In a prejudicial way, as with our Alabama neighbor, I immediately envisioned an educated and serious person, someone certainly able to control himself (I recall elementary school teachers in the 1960s admonishing us to “control yourselves”). It ended up, however, that Mr. Anderson has a avocation as an enraged pro-abortion activist. Apparently in response to pro-life demonstrators near his favorite abortion clinic, the gentleman in question grabbed a megaphone and generously shared his thoughts. Among his litany of passionate outrage were the following quotes: "I teach them French. I teach them that people like you are a piece of s---… I teach them that Christians are f---ing idiots...You're all f---ing idiots.” And, presumably in response to a black pro-lifer, he suggested "You do what all these White people tell you to do, you f---ing c--n. You f---ing j---- boo…Do a little dance for us like your masters want you to." And, to a pro-life woman, "You deserve to be called a c---, you deserve to be called a b----."

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by Reid Fitzsimons

The Roxborough High School football team in a post-scrimmage huddle just before they were ambushed; two stills of the "coon hunters" taken from a video of the deadly incident (full video at bottom)

I would venture to say most Americans have never met an actual, true believer racist white supremacist. I am not talking about someone who doesn’t subscribe to “climate justice” or voted for Trump. I’m referring to white people who truly hate black people and find satisfaction in the oppression, maiming, and even killing of them. I have known, or at least met, a handful of dyed-in-the-wool white supremacists; they are people who don’t believe in the American ideals of equality, justice for all, and E. Pluribus Unum (out of many-one). More to the point, they are deranged losers. In the mid-80s I worked in a Federal prison where there were a few Aryan Brotherhood types, but they were much more violent criminal entrepreneurs than ideologues. When we (my wife and I) lived in South Alabama 2008-2012 our neighbor was a pathetic guy, a lifelong drunk in his 80s, who loved to talk of the KKK glory days of the 1960s (“When niggers knew their place!”).  But it is a recent and tragic event in Philadelphia where several black high school football players were hunted down and shot, killing a 14 year-old boy and wounding several others, that got me to thinking about an honest to goodness white supremacist I came to know a little in the late 1970s.

The fantasies of a true Jim Crow racist

This verifiable racist I met in the 1970s was, curiously, a lawyer in Mississippi. His uncle was a long-serving Democrat Congressman, which might explain his admittance to the Mississippi bar. I recall him wearing camouflage clothing and talking about the joys “coon hunting” and “black topping,” the former meaning hunting down and shooting black people and the latter running over them with a car. I am pretty sure he never engaged in his fantasies, thank goodness. He was simply a hate-filled cowardly ass who happened to be born into social and economic privilege.

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By Reid Fitzsimons

I’ve posted a few commentaries previously about a financial and insurance company called USAA. It is a Fortune 500 enterprise that was founded 100 years ago to serve the insurance needs of military officers. In it’s day, USAA was perhaps the most respectable company of its kind: it was that prized auto mechanic, competent, always honest, and you never have to wonder if he’s trying to get over on you. Sadly, like so many corporate entities run by white and wealthy aristocrats, the CEO of USAA declared himself to have found “social justice” salvation, and became yet another tiresome former “sinner” who, were he a religious zealot, would have said he saw the light of Allah or Jesus or whatever and came to view non-coreligionists as soiled people, worthy of scorn and contempt: “I am so much more righteous than everyone else!”

Traditionally USAA was the financial and insurance ally of military service members and veterans, but as it moved to the extreme left they came to use abuse and exploit the prestige inherent to its member base to further their country club activism. Hence, when the integrity compromised CEO put out a Memorial Day message, I responded on the USAA member forum, then responded to a reply, as follows:

Empty Words From USAA

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an amalgam of black racialist elites and the wealthy and largely white establishment aristocracy. BLM is a vocally and unapologetically anti-American organization. Its demands have been associated with the violent deaths of 1,000s of black people- this is not hyperbole but statistically evident- and the founders and leadership of BLM been repeatedly caught using donations to fund personal luxuries in crass forms of corruption. USAA unequivocally supports BLM and, as a representative of the USAA CEO (Wayne Peacock) told me in August 2020, USAA will never back away from that support.

Statistically, the majority of these increases were among black people
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by Reid Fitzsimons

The office of a Wisconsin pro-life organization firebombed
and vandalized

We respond to bad things, especially the suffering of others, in different ways, ways often meant to shield us from uncomfortable realities about ourselves. Ignorance, either woeful or willful, is effective, and denial and avoidance also work pretty well. There are those who thrive on the suffering of others, and indeed create it. Sometimes these people are referred to as evil. I guess there are degrees of evil, where at the extreme evil people view not just their victims as a hated enemy, but also those who stand up for those they prey upon.

One of the most profound and widely read books of the 19th century was an antebellum novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The author was abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the legend is that when she met Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, Lincoln said, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." I contend that people who consider themselves well educated and informed should read this book (though I was over 60 when I finally did, so I’m not sure how that reflects on me). The story is, of course, about slavery, but it’s not some monolithic sermon against slavery, but rather includes all the pitfalls of human nature mentioned above when people confront, or more correctly ignore, evil. The ultimate antagonist is the brutal slave owner Simon Legree, at whose hands Tom is ultimately beaten to death because he was protecting slaves who had run away from the plantation.

Slavery, regardless of where it existed is one of too many examples in history where life was devalued so as to allow malevolence to be tolerated, and where those who refused to accept the inhumanity of it were marginalized and essentially became the enemy of the institutional powers: slavery is evil in its own right, but to justify hatred of those opposed to it took evil to higher level.

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