Only In America: Dynamic Racial Progress
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS<http://www.ibdeditorials.com/AuthorProfile.aspx?id=302219735245159>|
Monday, May 11, 2009 4:20 PM PT
What to call black people has to be confusing to white people.
Having been around for 73 years, I have been through a number of names.
Among the polite ones are: colored, Negro, Afro-American, black and now
African-American. Among those names, African-American is probably the most
unintelligent.
You say, "What do you mean, Williams?"
Suppose I told you I had a European-American friend or a South
American-American friend, or a North American-American friend. You'd
probably say, "Williams, that's stupid. Europe, South America and North
America are continents consisting of many peoples."
*White Africans*
You might insist that I call my friend from Germany a German-American
instead of European-American and my friend from Brazil a Brazilian-American
rather than a South American-American and my friend from Canada a
Canadian-American instead of a North American-American.
So would not the same apply to people whose heritage lies on the African
continent? For example, instead of claiming that President Obama is the
first African-American president, it should be that he's the first
Kenyan-American president.
In that sense, Obama is lucky. Unlike most American blacks, he knows his
national heritage; the closest to a national heritage the rest of us can
identify is some country along Africa's Gold Coast.
Another problem with the African-American label is not all people of African
ancestry are dark. Whites are roughly 10% of Africa's population and include
not only European settlers but Arabs and Berbers as well.
*Insult To Blacks*
So is an Afrikaner who becomes a U.S. citizen a part of the United States'
African-American population?
Should census takers and affirmative action/diversity bean counters count
Arabs, Berbers and Afrikaners who are U.S. citizens as African-Americans,
and should they be eligible for racial quotas in college admittance and
employment?
Are black Americans a minority group? When one uses the term minority, there
is an inference that somewhere out there is a majority, but in the U.S. we
are a nation of minorities.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2000 census, where people
self-identify, the ancestry of our largest ethnic groups is people of German
ancestry (15.2%), followed by Irish (10.8%), African (8.8%), and English
(8.7%) ancestry. Of the 92 ethnic groups listed in the census, 75 of them
are less than 1% of our population.
Race talk often portrays black Americans as downtrodden and deserving of
white people's help and sympathy. That vision is an insult of major
proportions. As a group, black Americans have made some of the greatest
gains, over the highest hurdles, in the shortest span of time than any other
racial group in mankind's history.
This unprecedented progress can be seen through several measures. If one
were to total black earnings, and consider black Americans a separate
nation, he would find that in 2005 black Americans earned $644 billion,
making them the world's 16th richest nation — just behind Australia but
ahead of the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland.
Black Americans are, and have been, chief executives of some of the world's
largest and richest cities, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
*Remarkable Gains*
It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, appointed chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in October 1989, who headed the world's mightiest military
and later became secretary of state, to be succeeded by Condoleezza Rice,
another black American.
Black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities, and a few
are among the richest. Most blacks are not poor but middle class.
On the eve of the Civil War, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have
believed these gains possible in less than a mere century and a half, if
ever. That progress speaks well not only of the sacrifices and intestinal
fortitude of a people; it also speaks well of a nation in which these gains
were possible. These gains would not have been possible anywhere else.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=326934363291161
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
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