Andrew L. Urban
As the Black Lives Matter mantra sweeps the world, there is a view held by some that that there is no doubt African-Americans are seriously disadvantaged, and that this disadvantage arises from the brutal history their forebears suffered.
But anyone doing their research will discover that this is merely an acquired, uninformed emotion, not fact. I suggest that successful African Americans – of whom there are millions – are evidence to the contrary. The disadvantaged African Americans tend to be those who come from broken homes without fathers present, usually in poor neighbourhoods and who end up on the streets as petty crims or gang members – not in schools forging themselves a useful future.
The drugs and alcohol that decimate these communities are part of the ‘brutal present’ they suffer. Racism is now a concept so odious that anyone labelled as one is deplatformed and cancelled (to use today’s idioms). There is no institution in the US – or in Australia for that matter – where you find systemic and authorised racism. It’s officially dead. Yet even some of the most astute observers cling to the racism-damaged history – and doing so, they avoid facing the actual problems of the present.