Race

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by Reid Fitzsimons (note this article was first published at the American Thinker: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/01/progressives_give_them_just_enough.html)

Affluent progressives have the ongoing challenge of maintaining their wealth and status while keeping up appearances of benevolence and compassion. Regarding race, in post-WW2 America, as the old use of intimidation by Democrats to manage black people receded more subtle strategies were needed. These were mentioned by then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, D-TX) who, in discussing the 1957 Civil Rights Bill with Sen. Richard Russell (D-GA) said: "These Negros, 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 uppitiness. Now we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference..."

LBJ as Senate Majority Leader; he had a reputation for being physically dominating, called "the Johnson Treatment"

To put it another way, Johnson and his peers had to find a way to keep black people disenfranchised while appearing to empower them, and ultimately ensure they voted Democrat in perpetuity. Fooling and manipulating a targeted demographic is certainly not unique in history and this progressive approach proved to work spectacularly: it remains ubiquitous almost 70 years later. Autonomous and competent people are not amenable to manipulation, hence it became necessary to make the targeted demographic embrace the opposite: helplessness, dependency, and victimization.

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by Reid Fitzsimons (Note: This article is primarily about intraracial crime, especially black-on-black murder. It also discusses killings by police. I am far from the mindset of "police can do no wrong," but to concentrate only on the small fraction of black people killed by police - sometimes truly in cold blood- and ignore the 1,000s upon 1,000s of black people murdered by other black people demonstrates that, to the elite, black lives really don't matter)

LeBron James is a black basketball player of renown with a net worth in 2025 around $1.2 billion. In April 2021 he posted on Twitter, in part, “I’m so damn tired of seeing Black people killed by police.” This was in response to a shooting of a 16-year-old black female by a white Columbus, OH cop. The associated headline on NPR (4/21/21) stated, “Columbus Police Shoot And Kill Black Teenage Girl,”and their URL for this story was, “16-year-old-black-girl-who-called-for-help-fatally-shot-by-police-ohio-family-said.” It wasn’t until the 8th paragraph that NPR mentioned something kind of pertinent, which will be discussed in a moment.

Other headlines included (CNN) “ Ma’Khia Bryant was shot 4 times by officer, autopsy shows,” and the Columbus Dispatch newspaper “Ma'Khia Bryant was helpful and kind, her friends and family say.” Lebron James preceded his “I’m so damn tired...” post by one that included a photo of the cop involved and stated "YOU'RE NEXT:"

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by Reid Fitzsimons (note that an edited version of this article was, I'm happy to say, published at The American Thinker: (www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/08 the_sin_of_calling_something_a_sin.html )

There is a Christian guy in Denver, CO, Jamie Sanchez, who felt “called” to open a charity project for homeless people in 2012. It was named Recycle God’s Love (www.recyclegodslove.com/) and gradually expanded, but remains small in financial terms. The “non-profit” charity world can be, and often is, a cutthroat place of greed, deceit, and essentially money-laundering: putting millions in the pockets of wealthy people while pretending to do something meaningful, but Recycle God’s Love seems legit, operating in the $100,000 range and the people who run it do so without pay. Besides the usual meals, they provide homeless people (in the 300-400 range) clothing, wound care, hygienic supplies, help with obtaining official ID, even haircuts (and, of course, the Gospel). In 2023 they opened a cafe as a way to provide employment and job skill opportunities. Of note is they receive no government funding.

Jamie Sanchez, founder of Recycle God's Love, with family. I believe the woman pictured is his wife who died of cancer in 2018

They have an 800 word statement of “what we hold to be true,” and 18 of those words are “We believe that a homosexual lifestyle is contrary to God’s Word and purpose for humanity and is sin.” They list a number of other sins, including thievery, murder, extra-marital sex, adultery, and hating your neighbor. Their statement adds, “Moreover, this organization is instructed to Love those living such lifestyles. We Believe that showing hate towards people in these communities is not the way Jesus would respond. Therefore, although disagreeing with the lifestyles we believe to be sinful, we must show love.” All in all, this is pretty standard true Christian doctrine.

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by Reid Fitzsimons

In regards to violence

In April 2024 eleven people were shot, one fatally, at a family celebration Chicago; a 39-year-old suspect- Octaviano Romero- was arrested. The mayor stated, “Today, we mourn the loss of an 8-year-old girl whose life was tragically taken from her by gang violence. This heinous and cowardly act of wanton violence that leaves our city mourning children is beyond reprehensible and has no place in our communities.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson marches in the 52nd annual Chicago Pride Parade on June 25, 2023.
Left: Brandon Johnson, Mayor of Chicago, Right, mugshots of Octaviano Romero from 2022 (felon in possession of a firearm, et al), then from 2024 after his arrest for murder, etc

In Dec. 2024 eight people were shot, three of them fatally, at a “social gathering” in Chicago; all of them Hispanic. As of May 2025 two suspects were in custody, both young males from Venezuela, and both in the US either illegally or as “asylum seekers,” depending on one’s point of view. At the time of the shooting the activist mayor of Chicago, who combines the qualities of both haplessness and fecklessness, stated, "On behalf of the entire city, I want to extend my condolences to everyone impacted by the mass shooting that took place in Gage Park. We as a city are praying and grieving for all the victims, survivors, and their families. There is no place in our city for senseless acts of violence.”

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By Reid Fitzsimons. Note: The weekend of April 5th and 6th brought widespread and at times large protests under the banner of “Hands Off!” These were mostly directed at Donald Trump and Elon Musk, expressing opposition to reducing or eliminating a large variety of government expenditures. Though I could find no demographic data regarding the protesters, a review of the many photos available on the internet suggests a very significant portion we’re socioeconomically advantaged white people. In fact, to find a non-white person is almost a Where’s Waldo exercise: there doesn't even seem to be many token non-white people, as is evident in the photos that accompany this article.

Around 20 years ago, as my spouse and I were laying the foundation for our rural children's charity project in Honduras (which opened in May, 2007), we did a few R&R overnights on Utila Island. As we were strolling along the water’s edge we came across a rustic touristy beach bar that had a sign stating something like, “Funded by a grant from USAID.” I wondered aloud why in the world USAID would be involved with a tourist bar on a Caribbean island, but put the memory aside. It recently emerged, however, with the Trump administration shutting down USAID because of spending tax dollars on questionable, and even pernicious, things.

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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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