The Cure for Racism

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If I were something like the Pope of black America and had the moral authority to make such suggestions, I would propose that no African American use the terms racism or racist. The words are a feckless indulgence, corrosive to blacks and whites alike and to relations between them. Such rhetoric has given blacks a leadership that has built its career upon mere race-grievance agitation, and is therefore profoundly, almost unconsciously committed to its perpetuation. As in a hateful Strindberg marriage, each party somehow requires the abuse of the other. It is a catastrophic pattern. The lingering ghost of the plantation haunts it.

The word racism has degenerated to being a mere ritual term of abuse and self-pity, part of the Kabuki of manipulation. Any grownup knows there is racism in America. There is racism almost everywhere in the world. The Chinese refer to Africans as hei gwei, or "black devils." (They refer to whites, by the way, as "white devils.") The Chinese were used as virtual slaves in the American West during the 19th century. In Egypt (which many African Americans embrace as the founding mother of black civilization), even people with moderately dark skins refer to themselves as "white." In the Dominican Republic, citizens despise Haitians with an appalling frankness. Racists? Try Russia. Visit Japan. Tour the world. Racism is an evil constant. America stacks up better than most societies on this subject.

At the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King said he looked forward to the day -- his "dream" -- when his four little children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. He was right then, and now. But from the time of King's death to the present, the country has sunk deeper into the swamp, the essential error.

It is time to regress to Martin Luther King's ideal. The content of one's character, not the color of one's skin, is the sole decent American criterion.