On Diversity (Part 4)
Our Nation Is Passing Through Treacherous Waters
The new industry that was born solved an important problem. On the one hand, it merged the American tradition of independence from British tyranny with the liberation of slaves from the tyranny of their masters. On the other hand, it elevated the slave culture that many “white” Americans genuinely and justly rejected into a new form of artistic expression that could be, and was, much more easily tolerated. What is more, it was achieved in the context of voluntary, free markets where both sides of the cultural divide could reap an economic benefit from the promotion of “black” culture. It was no longer the jazz and blues of an enslaved people of the American South, but it was a new pop culture of liberation that resonated with “white” America’s own historical traditions. Surely, the racial and cultural divide persisted, but the barrier to assimilation had finally been breached, but not in the manner that many had predicted. The assimilation, although asymmetric, was now bi-lateral.
Unfortunately, the market was not powerful enough to rectify the damaged caused by the misguided government policies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations. What had begun as “imported” slave culture to the North was quickly transformed into a cultural of poverty that combined both “white” and “black” Americans alike. Out of President Johnson’s so-called War on Poverty arose a wide array of market alienating policies including, in part, the classification of all Americans into specific racial and ethnic groups, the introduction of forced integration, and the granting of special privileges according to the color of one’s skin, ethnic upbringing, and/or income status. Rather than celebrating the cultural break-thru achieved in the market place by talented “black” Americans and the market genius of entrepreneurial “white” Americans who could see past the racial divide in both the North and the South, our government purposefully drew lines between us and placed us into boxes that would brand each and every citizen according to his race and/or ethnicity. It was a sick, anti-American ploy dreamed up by the same people who saw segregation as the only way to overcome the domestic clash of cultures that had been set into motion by Lincoln’s War of Consolidation. This domestic cultural clash was intensified by Nixon’s so-called War on Drugs that imprisoned a large swath of the American public for non-violent drug crimes that placed a disproportionate number of our nation’s northern emerging “Black” into prison.
This said, there was no turning back in the market place, and what continued to emerge was a blending of the now more acceptable American slave-culture of the present with mainstream American culture. This contemporary market blending was reminiscent of the admixture of the cultures of America’s original inhabitants with the cultures of Europe that our European ancestors — mostly British, but by no means entirely — brought with them to the North American continent in the early 17th century.
Voluntary, free markets are a powerful force that — despite the state’s best effort to shackle, if not destroy — somehow prevail, if only we insist. By 2008 America had elected its first non-“white” president, and a “black” American entered into the White House as our nation’s First Lady. The American “Black” was now an accepted citizen in American society and considered by the vast majority of American citizens as an equal under the law.
Yes, there were some “white” Americans who clung — and still cling today — to the notion developed by several of our founding fathers and subsequent great statesmen of the South who insisted that the “black” races are inferior to other races, and that slavery was a means of protecting these inferior races from the competitive throes of greater “white” American and British society. Surely though, these remnants of America’s historical past were no worse, nor better, than our contemporary “black” American “brethren” who still believe that their own failure to get ahead in the world is brought about by their continued oppression by the world’s “white” races. Unfortunately, this naturally occurring, two-sided, lingering remnant of racial bigotry is not being called out as it should. And, I am compelled, as a result, to believe that its failure is purposeful.
The most obvious indicator of this failure is the current push for DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and CRT (critical race theory) in our schools and legacy national media. It has infected our educational system, human resources departments, military, corporate board rooms, and all echelons of American government. It is a cultural disease that has spread across the United States, much of Europe, and other parts of Western culture. Unfortunately, there is no single source to which one can point. This said, its ultimate goal — surely unconscious among many, but clairvoyant among the most powerful — is singular in nature: world dominance and control. The strategy is stealth, diversion, and division.
Surely you have noticed that there are certain things about which Congress always agrees no matter the will of the American people. Primary among these is ever more government expenditure and war. Both of these activities strengthen the power of the American state. The DEI and CRT — and we may add to these Climate Change — have been proposed and are ardently advocated by the unAmerican political Left who is seeking to remake America into its own image and subjugate all of America to the mission of world dominance and control set forth by our world’s global elite. Hopefully it is clear to everyone that the World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations (UN) view voluntary free markets and the consent of the governed as a blight on the future of humanity. Like the “Progressive” Movement in the United States, these urban planners on steroids have taken over the reigns of global power, and we must do everything within our power to stem this vicious attack on the governing principles that guided America until the advent of Lincoln’s War of Consolidation.
America is passing through treacherous waters. Many of us have lost faith, and for many others religious faith is all that they have left. The question that remains is faith in what? Cursing the mistakes that were made by our forefathers is not a solution, for the past cannot be undone. We must, if I may borrow a phrase from the French existentialist writer, Simone de Beauvoir, “intégrer le mal”. In other words we must look our past in the face, admit to our having erred, correct for it, and move forward — forward in the spirit of our original founding.
In liberty,
Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas - The Story of Real Money