The True Intellectual

Long ago a respected professor of mine once said, “A true intellectual never reacts; is slow to conclude – and is willing to replace held views even completely if evidence calls for it.” 

Meaning behind this for me has grown ever-the-more since I started conducting graduate work in researching human nature.  It has also enjoyed significant adornment recently from the scholarly perspectives of bold individuals such as Thomas Sowell, Scott Plous, and Jonathan Haidt.

I don’t know if I can live up to my professor’s advice perfectly but I have and continue to strive to.  There is nothing I’ve undertaken that I’ve labored more in this regard than developing my understanding and views on racism and racial disparity. 

Along my journey I’ve stood on the work of others and have considered all views and all sources of evidence – especially the most recent.  My view has started to distill to a level of confidence I feel I can write about.  Why this is interesting to share comes from what I found in comparing my views to the views conveyed in the writings of some popular civil rights activists and views people take away from published productions on race.
What I found in this comparison was discouraging, and I became uncertain whether I should share what I found.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), my inclination to ignore social/political dangers rendered me unable to ignore certain data simply because they do not jibe with the popular views.  Moreover, I care too much to quit.  Since I’ve gotten more involved in the community, statistics now have names and faces.  I also have mixed race grandchildren who along with those I am involved with, given the current path of civil rights movements, are sure to suffer needlessly.  Consequently, I feel I have no choice but to share my view.

Jesse Jackson is right – racial disparity and race-related social issues are growing – and it calls for immediate attention.  Determining the best courses of action, what and where attention is given, and what solutions are implemented, should get the lion’s share of our efforts.  It cannot be a political thing because politics is about winning, involving tactics of persuasion – not solving problems.  A main tactic of politics is blaming so blaming White America for Black America’s woes has become a popular marquee.  The only tangible results stemming from this is yet more legislation.

But there is only so much legislation can do – or is there?  Can it make the situation worse for blacks even with good intents?  What affect on racial disparity and race relations has legislation targeting these problems had over the last 50 years?  Some economists argue that the more the government regulates our lives, the poorer our citizenry becomes.  But this is not simply about the malfeasance of government intrusion – or the political capital harvested from an increasingly poor, black population.

This is to advocate action – but not any action, or even popular action.  This is to advocate appropriate action – action that has the power to solve the problem. 

We need to stop talking about symptoms and start talking about the disease in all its nasty glory.  We have to stop talking about civil rights and start doing something realistic about them.  We have to stop dressing the wounds and start curing the disease.

As we’ve seen in recent productions such as Race: The Power of an Illusion and Race: Are We So Different? genetics is not a factor in race.  There is no superior race – in fact race is not a biological trait but rather simply a social construct – end of story.  Educating every person everywhere about this fact is critical.  Moreover, it is important to understand its origins in our country’s history and how remnants of that persist even in subtle messages in our culture.  This movement should continue and should sweep through the country like a dead brush fire.

However, these movements are quite incomplete and only address a fraction of the problem.  Consequently, they may not make a sizable enough dent in the growing problem -- and millions more will suffer poverty and mediocrity at best while the percentage of society's human resources will be wasted.  Civil rights movements for blacks are no new deal yet racial socioeconomic disparity has greatly increased over the last half century.  A main culprit of racial disparity is free to continue its crime spree.  Consequently, racial problems are growing, and civil rights activists blaming White America is making it all the more worse.

Given recent advancements in science and corollary discoveries, genetics is now irrelevant in determining who and what a biologically normal person becomes – regardless of skin color or national origin.  What remains is not just the environment but the views of themselves people of color hold - and thus how they spend their time.  Are we considering all aspects of the problem? I argue vehemently: NO!

The productions described above educate us on fragments of a tiny bit of environmental history.  It is good but is not the whole story.  There is far more critical data about the history in this country that is not presented – and these movements do not educate us about these topics found throughout recorded human history.  Furthermore, little to nothing is being done to understand and address all causation in current environment!

In this gap poverty, gangs and racial tensions are growing.  Interestingly, locally, the highest tensions occur between non-white groups – not colored groups against white groups.  The differences in skin color and appearance are miniscule compared to the differences in behavior and their culture.

The really sad thing is how many of those youth do not stand a chance yet all have the potential for accomplishing great things – and this does not change because we are missing the root causes.  By not tackling all of the root causes we are by proxy destroying a vast majority of human kinds’ future civilization.  This is a travesty of the greatest proportion – and knowingly or not, those in or aspiring to be in the political blame game are fueling the problems.

You may say, OK, I get it – now what?  What is missing and how do we address it?

We need a holistic approach and to have courage to cite all major sources of the problem while being objective.  In my view, there are two main elements missing: implicit attitudes (how non-whites view themselves, and how whites view them), and how the underprivileged/underachieving/impoverished spend their time.

With family culture, the issue lies in family dynamics, and whether children learn adaptive or maladaptive habits in how they perceive, think and behave - their approach to handling life.  Likewise, the environment others create that stem from their perceptual and cognitive habits and resulting behavior associated with their view of and responses to members of other races.

In other posts I addressed mainly the implicit side of human nature – the latter of the two elements mentioned above.  This element creates barriers – barriers that can be overcome with education.  Given how race relations started to improve in the late nineteenth century and retrogressed in the twentieth century, it is obvious there is more to the picture.