| |
Chapter 39
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Interview with this wino:
"I think everybody was born naked, so we're all human beings. But
until I find someone that was born with clothes on I'm not going
to think they're any more than me. That's the way I feel about
it." |
| |
|
|
| |
This type of "Give a damn about your fellow man" - journey through
Harlem illustrates in all its saccharine sentimentality the white
liberal way of seeing the ghetto.
From the paternal, almost loving
care of blacks by the Southern plantation aristocracy there is a
direct link to the endless talk about helping one's fellow man
among Northern liberals.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Many liberals do a great and tiresome job in the
ghettos, but whether we breast-feed or bottle-feed our outcasts
the result is the same:
We are actually blaming
the victims themselves by trying to adjust them to their unhappy
casteless fate in an unjust caste society - instead of
changing ourselves. We do not consider blacks inherently inferior
as do the conservatives.
|
| |
|
|
| |
Instead we see them as functionally inferior as a
result of the injustice, slavery, and discrimination of a distant
past. After having experienced this presentation we will
ask with despair: "What can we do?"
|
| |
|
|
| |
But we will do nothing which would threaten our own privileges and the present distribution
of society's goods.We do not have the courage - or
are paralyzed with fright at the thought of looking into the
depths of the soul to get in touch with our abyss of pain.
That pain which makes us into such powerless, but effective
oppressors. |
| |
|
|
| |
Thus we liberals, in fact, are among one of the
most important tools of racism and continued oppression.
We help the
underclass to adapt itself to an oppression which renders it
functionally inferior enough to satisfy our own need to
administer paternalistic care to the "untermensch" (subhuman). |
| |
|
|
| |
The underclass blacks have no time to spare for
the liberals' condescending attitude and constantly try to provoke
forth our true conservative face. |
| |
|
|
| |
They refuse to see it as progress that the knife
in their back is pulled back from four inches to only two inches
and would rather stab the liberal back to the age-old "white
backlash" where he belongs. |
| |
|
|
|
The blacks' own view of Harlem is directly
opposite the white liberal one since they cannot see only the
dismal in the ghetto without going insane.
|
| |
|
|
|
In order to survive you must look at the positive
sides.
|
| |
|
|
|
For instance, they will not emphasize that 10% of
Harlem's youth are bloody criminals
terrorizing the streets. |
| |
|
|
| |
They will turn it upside down and be encouraged by
the incredible fact that in spite of this criminal environment,
90% of the youth have not been in conflict with the law.
|
| |
|
|
| |
They will look at the flourishing culture thriving in the midst of
the oppression, be heartened by the fact that the
majority of Harlem's population are surviving - see the many roses
that manage to grow up in this jungle. |
| |
|
|
|
|
| |