RESEGREGATION

Guest Post by Ol’ Remus

Zack Linly said, in an article at the Washington Post entitled “It’s Time to Stop Talking About Racism With White People”,

Black people, it is long past time for us to start practicing self-care. And if that means completely disengaging with white America altogether, then so be it.

Would that it were so. Now that we’ve tested the alternative, a general reset seems an attractive option. Resegregation is becoming a “thing” among blacks lately, all very high-minded of course, except the part about how it would be financed. Zack Linly describes himself as “a poet, performer, freelance writer, community organizer and activist living in Atlanta”. There’s your answer.

Somehow I don’t believe his prospective recruits will contribute much more than running their mouths either, but notice Black Lives Matter now has a budget of $133 million, none of it from bake sales. Mr. Linly’s notion of complete disengagement may be good for much more. It’s a brilliant business model, wide appeal on all sides, relatively untilled ground, high “wow” factor.

But beware. Disengagement from white America has a track record and it ain’t good. Detroit for one, a self-selected reservation entirely supported from the outside by the unwilling. Forty years now. On a bigger scale, any country in sub-Saharan Africa.

Whitey hasn’t kept blacks down. Whitey props ’em up and begs them to succeed. They don’t. Perhaps they can’t. There’s a typification making the rounds that goes, “Give whites a pile of bricks and they’ll make a city, give blacks a city and they’ll make a pile of bricks”. I’d be happy if it were otherwise. The evidence says it’s not.

In all of the “civil rights era” I have next-to-never heard an argument that was rational and coherent rather than clever and evasive. This example should be familiar: “You can’t judge a whole people by the action of a few. I work with a black guy, he’s okay in my book.” Well, okay. Works one way but not the other. Got it.

At bottom, “disengagement” is another clever gimmick, the latest in a long series of ’em. Keep an eye on this one, it has “next big thing” written all over it, with enough exploitable peaks and slippery slopes to waste another generation.