Is Racism America's Greatest Problem?
by Larry Elder

Yes, according to director Spike Lee. In a speech in Pullman, Idaho, sponsored by Washington State University and the University of Idaho, Lee named racism America's greatest problem, "I still feel it's something this country has not dealt with. 'm not just talking about African Americans. I don't think this country has owned up to what it has done to Native Americans. It was genocide."

So the director, never reluctant to take a swipe at "white America," goes to near-lily-white Idaho, picks up a $22,000 speaker's fee, while scolding students on racism. Not bad for a racist hellhole.

Lee married a corporate lawyer, lives in a New York mansion, and sends his kid to private school. He's signed multimillion-dollar, multi-picture deals with studios, films TV commercials, and attends Knicks games in pricey courtside seats. Tough life.

But racism must be America's most vexing problem. After all, didn't New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, during the 2000 presidential campaign, lecture us about "white male privilege"? A new poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies paints a very different picture. The organization asks blacks, "What do you think is the single most important problem facing the country today?" The concerns of blacks mirrored the concerns of whites. In descending order of importance, blacks named education; prescription drugs/health care; crime, violence, drugs; the economy; Social Security/Medicare; morals/moral crisis; and gun control. Where did racism place? Number 8, with only 2% of blacks calling it the nation's most important problem. In fact, a "Time"-CNN poll, showed that white teenagers perceived racism a bigger problem than did black teens!

But this does not stop the so-called black leadership from seeing the world through race-tinted glasses. Let's go to the videotape.

Here's NAACP chairman Julian Bond on the new Bush administration, "Instead of uniting us, the new administration almost daily separates and divides. They select the nominees from the Taliban wing of American politics, appease the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and chose cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection." Bond also said that Bush "had his picture taken with more black people than voted for him in last year's election." Huh?

Here's former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Reverend Joseph Lowery, "We don't need to demean or belittle the new administration." They're doing a good job of that all by themselves. We're here to proclaim that the mean-spirited, retrogressive forces that run the Republican Party are not now invisible, they have become visible."

Here's Gerald McEntee, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees president, "Brothers and sisters, Florida and America were cheated on November 7. We were cheated when African American voters faced police roadblocks at polling precincts in Florida. Cheated! Cheated!...When registered voters, mostly people of color, were turned away on Election Day, told that they were dropped from rolls. Cheated! Cheated!" Never mind that the Justice Department so far failed to turn up evidence of "targeting" voters for disenfranchisement.

Here's Roger Wilkins, the son of a former NAACP head, during a discussion on "anti-black" Ronald Reagan, "[Reagan] brought in his persona kind of a nostalgia for the pre-60s America, which sat very well with a lot of conservatives, and then he also brought with him a lot of anti-black populism, which is very popular, worked for him, kept his party together but I think was quite bad for the country."

Never mind that another conservative, Attorney General John Ashcroft, recently named his top three goals: step up gun prosecutions; "reinvigorate" the war on drugs; and end racial discrimination. Ashcroft also said, "It's wrong for police to stop people based on race." Not exactly a call for the re-enactment of slavery.

Is racism more devastating to the black community than the phenomenon of "children having children"? Declining school standards? The hundreds of thousands of dollars left on the floor because black workers cannot invest their Social Security earnings in private markets? Is racism a more important issue than rethinking the war on drugs, a war that under the Clinton administration sent more blacks to prison than during the "evil" Reagan and Bush years?

Today's welfare state does more to destabilize black families than did slavery and Jim Crow. Researchers long established a link between the absence of fathers and pathologies like crime, dropping out of school, and producing a child out of wedlock. Is it too much to ask that today's "leadership" cry, "Work hard. Behave responsibly. Accept the consequences for your own actions. Decide who and what you want to be, and devise a plan to get there. A goal without a plan is just a wish."

Yes, such a "leader" risks losing popularity. But isn't that why we call them "leaders"?

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