In his column entitled “I have a dream” published in the Sept. 29 Signal, Steve Lunetta discusses “the plight of the black segment of our population.”
Unfortunately, I think he reaches some wrong conclusions in his discussion of the issue.
He wrote: “What would happen if we assigned SpaceX and Bank of America to work with Black Lives Matter. “
How are you going to “assign” any company to work with anyone in a free society? Why would it?
On top of that, the idea of BofA and BLM “working with” each other flies in the face of human nature. One’s a hierarchical institution, and the other’s anarchical in nature. You may as well wish for water and oil to mix.
“We would insist that a respectful tone be maintained. If anyone can’t comply, they get a timeout. Yep, just like a little kid.”
How do you plan to enforce that? Particularly with groups who have no interest in maintaining decorum (Yes, I’m looking at you, BLM and Occupy). You’re not talking about people who want a place at the table; they want to overturn the table, throw the silverware at the walls, and track mud all over the carpets.
But let’s broaden the context for comparison purposes.
Asians, particularly Chinese, were also brought to this country as, essentially, “slave labor” to build the railroads. Japanese-Americans were stuck in concentration camps during WWII. Both groups suffered under racial bigotry.
Yet both groups have successfully assimilated into American society. Why? Because they recognized the rules of the game, played by those rules, worked hard, educated themselves, and made a success of their efforts.
More than anything else, they didn’t demand that society change to accommodate them. They weren’t the tail trying to wag the dog.
Blacks were moving in the right direction and achieving a lot of success through the MLK era. But then LBJ and his acolytes hit the scene, and it all came to a grinding halt with the Great Society boondoggle, which encouraged a breakdown in traditional societal advancement by rewarding out-of-wedlock births, educational sloth, and other rips in the societal fabric of the black community.
In the LBJ era we had the left encouraging this group of people to ignore the societal norms of this country and now we’re seeing the result, aggravated by a president who thrives on sowing racial discord.
True success depends on mainstreaming into the parent society, not creating “sub-cultures” that balkanize and disrupt the social contract. That’s just the way it is – part part of human nature.
“E Pluribus Unum.” Out of many, one. Our national motto. But that’ll never work when it’s reversed.
Reversed, it’s a description of national entropy, and ultimately destruction.
Brian Baker is a Saugus resident.
