(ThyBlackMan.com) After reading my article, “The African American Black Man: The New Neanderthal?,” a very well-meaning gentleman said the following:.
“I see what you’re trying to say, Eric, but your reference to Darwin in this context, however metaphorical, is disturbing. White supremacists have long invoked pseudo-Darwinian notions to justify their racism, and I can easily imagine some racist nodding his head as he reads this and concluding that the black men are criminal by nature. There are still echoes of this idea floating around the American court system (or I should say the Texas court system).”
In response, I take the position that I’m not going to limit my ability to express certain concepts over my concern that some racist idiot might take offense or twist my words in order to promote his own agenda. Society is being forced to be far too politically correct, and many well-meaning people are being forced to walk on far too many eggshells, in a futile attempt to avoid offending people who specialize in being offended. As a result, some of the very issues that scream to be addressed are being scrupulously avoided by some of the very people who can look at these issues with fresh and objective
eyes.
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For that reason, racists are irrelevant to me – and I mean racist of every stripe – because they’re racist through ignorance, and on a subliminal level they know it. Thus, people who are predisposed to the racist mind-set are going to find a way to embrace it with or without being able use my words as a pretext for doing so. So in order to address society’s most vexing problems we must be prepared to follow truth wherever it leads and regardless to whose ox it gores. Thereafter, if we don’t like where truth leads, we must change the place, not the truth.
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You see, racist are desperate individuals. One of the primary reasons that people become racist in the first place is because they recognize their innate mediocrity as individuals. As a result, they want to believe that in spite of their personal shortcomings, they’re special by virtue of some benevolent gift of nature that’s been bestowed up them. In short, since they see themselves as having very little personal value, they base all of their feelings of self-esteem upon being a part of a ‘special’ and exclusive club.
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That’s why racists – both Black, and White – hate Obama so intensely. Obama’s superior intelligence is an assault on the self-esteem of all racists – both Black and White. For White racists, Obama’s very existence destabilizes the lie of innate superiority that they depend upon to maintain their self-esteem. Black racists tend to hate him for the same reason. They tend to believe that they’re an aberration, and an accident of birth made them innately superior to their own people. Therefore, they hate Barack Obama because his very presence clearly demonstrates that they’re nothing special. So essentially, Obama represents a pie in the face of their delusions of grandeur.
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So why should we limit complex thinking, and avoid discussing certain subjects in order to defer to the lowest common denominator of society? That’s like checking with your dog before making an important business decision. Yeah, I know. It’s a brutal metaphor, but when it comes to people who embrace ignorance as a way of life, I’m something of a bigot myself. There are only two kinds of people in this world – good people, and bad people, and I consider anyone who lacks the intelligence to recognize that fundamental fact of life as beneath me, and therefore, doesn’t warrant any more consideration in this, or any other discussion, than my dog.
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But the gentleman mentioned above begged to differ with me regarding the limited intelligence of racists. He said, “History is full of brilliant racists – scientists, artists, philosophers, statesmen, and theologians. These people were hardly the ‘lowest common denominator of society.’ And unfortunately, many of these people found pseudo-Darwinian race theories persuasive.
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In response to his assertion, I’d like to acknowledge that there are exceptions to every rule, but as a rule, and by definition, bigots are ignorant – that’s why they’re bigots in the first place. Further evidence of that is, it’s no accident that the most bigoted part of this nation is in the Southern Bible Belt, which is also the most undereducated part of this country.
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And with regard to these so-called “Brilliant” men, we should never confuse credentials and notoriety with intelligence. Some of the greatest minds I’ve ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores. On the other hand, some of the weakest minds I’ve ever known roamed the halls of academia in pursuit of credentials over knowledge. Socrates, who is widely acknowledged as the father of modern thought, was among the former. By today’s standards he would have been considered a shiftless hood rat who didn’t want to do anything but hangout on the block and cut it up with his homies.
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So there’s a huge difference between being “learned,” and being intelligent. To be learned is merely having the ability to regurgitate the thoughts of dead White men (according to our educational system, White men seemed to be the only ones who had an original thought), while intelligence is having the ability to take the thoughts being regurgitated by the so-called learned, and then manipulating them in a unique and meaningful manner. Thus, many of the men who we regard as brilliant were merely verbose. That’s the point that I’ve been trying to make regarding Dr. Cornel West.
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Thus, I would modify the above comment to say, “History is filled with illustrious idiots who have been given far more credit for brilliance than they deserve.” Because much of what we refer to as history is nothing more than the romanticized account of ordinary men engaged in routine stupidity.
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The fact is, if we’d wash the goober dust out of our eyes and looked at history objectively, we’d find a few significant flashes of insight interspersed between vast expansions of gross stupidity. Even as we speak there are people in the process of modifying history to reflect Ronald Regan as a towering icon of political brilliance that he never was, nor, was he capable of ever becoming.