I love museums. Historical perspectives enrich our current perspectives…sometimes even change them. Recently, I went to a museum that, literally, touched my soul—Motown Records. I had a little time to explore as I was in Detroit to keynote an event for my nonprofit Radiance Foundation. How could I possibly pass up the opportunity to see where Motown—and so much of the music I love—was birthed back in 1959?
The Motown Museum was a potent reminder that giving up was never an option, for founder Berry Gordy or any of his artists—many of whom would become an inseparable part of Americana. Motown Records’ success hinged on phenomenal musical talent and a multiracial business team in a world that was poisoned by segregation. I wasn’t alive then. Black and white Americans, including those at Motown, fought for dignity in ways that I will only read about, see in a museum, or be captivated by in stories about hidden yet remarkable figures.
The world became a better place because so many challenged real injustices which were fueled by inexplicable ignorance and hatred. They faced racism, undaunted, with dignified determination. As an American who happens to be biracial, I am the beneficiary of their sacrifices. We all are. I cannot let the evangelists of victimhood pretend that those sacrifices were in vain.
You can’t fight racism with racism. Social justice warriors, apparently, haven’t gotten the memo. They want to reinject society with the poison of self-segregation.
Harvard held its first black student graduation this year. If this had been created and implemented by white students/faculty, there would be endless cries of racism. But because it was black-led, it’s merely “pride” to separate by pigmentation. According to The Root: “This is not about segregation. It’s about fellowship and building a community,” explained Harvard graduate Michael Huggins. What if white Harvard graduates wanted to fellowship and build community with a separate white graduation? It would never fly.
Another black student involved in this segregated event, Courtney Woods, explained: “There is a legacy of slavery, epistemic racism and colonization at Harvard, which was an institution founded to train rising imperialist leaders. This is a history that we are reclaiming.” The school was actually established to train missionaries. But let’s not let historical facts get in the way.
Huggins and Woods are Harvard alumni who enjoyed an Ivy League education that few ever get to experience. This isn’t the 1950s. Dr. Mildred Jefferson was the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School (who went on to become the first female surgeon at Boston Medical). It was 1951. And the school didn’t hold a separate ceremony to celebrate all she had to face, in a truly hostile culture, to achieve such a monumental distinction. Currently, Harvard has the highest black graduation rate of any university in America—97%. The white graduation rate is 98%.
Stop being a victim.
I think of so many of our forebears and how they navigated a world rife with racial injustice, but never gave up. Motown’s Stevie Wonder journeyed through a childhood of poverty and blindness, during an era full of deep-seated racism, to become an incomparable music icon. It’s 2017. American culture has had tectonic shifts. Go make your mark!
Liberals are still in denial about it all. They want to keep waging a race war (the one form of war they can’t seem to get enough of) and don’t seem concerned with the casualties (except for the few lives they’re willing to exploit). Black lives matter? Not the conservative ones. The only voices that are validated (at least by the majority of mainstream media) are those that paint a perpetually and hopelessly racist America, full of “privilege”, devoid of opportunity, and littered with the victims of white patriarchy.
So how do you solve alleged oppression? Become the oppressors.
Evergreen State College. Mayhem recently broke out in the Pacific (insanely liberal) Northwest because (gasp) white students and faculty wouldn’t exit the campus en masse for a “Day of Absence”. Progressive professor, Bret Weinstein, became a victim of his own ideology pushing back against the effort to create a campus-wide “safe space” for black students.
Let. This. Sink. In.
Can you imagine any university, across this liberally divided country, demanding blacks leave campus for a day? Mainstream media would swarm like vultures waiting to pick at the carcasses of racial integration.
Some liberals think the best way to celebrate their version of “diversity” is to celebrate separately. At the same time they blame America for racial discrimination, they’re busy hyphenating and categorizing people into their assigned—and segregated—groups.
Black Lives Matter NYC recently held a BBQ: black folk only. They refused to allow white people to attend, calling it an “exclusively black space". Tucker Carlson took on #BlackLivesMatter apologist Lisa Durden in an interview that can’t be described any other way than just plain crazy. Tucker’s white, for those who don’t know the Fox News host, and Lisa is black. Her racist diatribes won’t be denounced by so-called “progressives” any time soon. They’re not interested in racial reconciliation or reason.
These SJWs are constantly chanting “no justice, no peace". They’ve got it all wrong. True justice is the heart of God and is defined as the “conformity to truth, fact or reason”—none of which marks today’s self-proclaimed “Resistance” movement. Nothing will peaceably change when there’s an us versus them mentality. As with any issue, it should always be right versus wrong. We can’t move forward physically segregated and ideologically divided. No just us, no peace.
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