Black Lives Matter protests led many people to want to do something useful to reduce racial injustice. Now racial justice groups are being flooded with money, and big companies have made multimillion-dollar donations.
"Bad idea," says black radio host Larry Elder in my new video.
"It is condescending ... and not helpful. I urge white people to chill. Stop helping us, because you're making things worse."
Making things worse, he says, because it supports the activists' claim that "blacks are victims of racism. [But] if racism were in America's DNA, Obama never could have got elected. Racism has never been more insignificant a factor in one's success than right now."
I push back: "It must be a huge problem, or there wouldn't be all this protest."
"Well, they're being lied to," Elder responds. He says teachers, black activists and the media give "young people the impression that racism remains this huge problem in America, when it is not."
It's not, he says, because today any person who does three things can succeed: "finish high school, don't have a kid until you get married, get a job. Do those things, you will not be poor."
The biggest problem facing the black community today, says Elder, is the absence of fathers. In the 1960s, most black children were raised in two-parent households. That changed when our government's War on Poverty began.
The handouts sent the message that it's the government's responsibility, not yours, to take care of you and your kids. "A mother with two children makes more money than she would make on minimum wage because of all the goodies she gets through the welfare state," says Elder.
Now, Black Lives Matter actually encourages the breakup of families. Their website does say, "... disrupt the Western-prescribed, nuclear family."
That's a Karl Marx idea straight from "The Communist Manifesto." Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors proudly describes herself as a "trained Marxist."
Elder calls her and the anti-capitalist protesters "phonies."
"Do they really want socialism?" Elder asks. "Do they really want inferior products? They are all wearing Nike and using Apple products. They're hypocrites."
But they're winning!
They are even redefining what racism means. Today's "anti-racists" say racism means "any policy with an effect that is disproportionate." So even a tax deduction is racist because on average, whites deduct more than blacks.
"Anti-racism presumes things about the world that simply can't be true," says Kmele Foster, lead producer at Freethink. "We are all, at bottom, whatever our race, individuals. Anti-racism takes that and flips it on its head."
Recently, Washington's Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the taxpayer-funded Smithsonian Institute, posted that "white culture" meant things like "nuclear family," "self-reliance," "rigid time schedule" and "delayed gratification."
The poster is "despicable," says Foster. "It's offensive to suggest that black people can't aspire to or possess all the values outlined in a document like this. Black people can be punctual. Black people are, in fact, successful in this country."
The poster was removed after complaints.
I wanted to ask Black Lives Matter about things like that. I contacted all 14 U.S. chapters. Not one would agree to an interview.
Too bad. I wanted to ask the "anti-racists" if they notice that they and white supremacists now support similar segregationist policies, like blacks- (or whites-) only spaces. Foster points out that both white supremacists and anti-racists believe "race is an immutable attribute of who we are."
He prefers Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision: a nation where "people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
"Black Lives Matter leaders don't really want the vision of MLK," says Elder. "They want a color-coordinated society--as long as they're the ones who do the coordinating."
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John Stossel is author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.
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