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Guest post by Christopher Wright
Arlington, Virginia — Slavery is wrong, we all agree. Abe Lincoln observed that as he would not be a slave, so he would not be a slave owner. But what the woke progressive Left says today about slavery has nothing to do with slavery. They have hijacked slavery for their own present-day purposes. The Left is misusing race as a weapon to advance its collectivist, statist and redistributionist agenda. This article will lay out several ways to deal with the slavery narrative coming from the Left.
In this article, I’m going to completely debunk the Left’s attempt to weaponize slavery. What do I mean by weaponize? I’ve seen slavery used to argue against voter ID, an issue that has nothing to do with slavery. I had a black tour guide at Colonial Williamsburg who talked about the life of slaves there in colonial times. Then he came out with this: “Voter ID is modern-day slavery.” That’s preposterous, but it shows you one way the Left weaponizes slavery today.
I will debunk the slavery diversity narrative in three ways: (1) it’s a game; (2) it’s a communist technique; and (3) it’s the road to mental illness. I’ll have some tough love for our black brothers and sisters along the way.
I. It’s a Game
Here’s the game: The Left is misusing race as a weapon to advance its collectivist, statist and redistributionist agenda. Slavery - - and the diversity narrative more generally - - is just a club that the Left uses to beat people up. They’ll use it as long as it works. When it stops working, they’ll pick up another club and beat you with that. It’s who they are - - It’s what they do. Which is why I can’t take their slavery and other racism arguments seriously. I know it’s just a game.
They constantly harp on the fact that America’s Founders had slaves. We knew that already. We’ve heard it a thousand times. So ask them - - Why do you keep bringing it up? You must have a purpose. There is only one possible reason: You hate America and you’re trying to destroy it.
The game includes the money game. The race hustlers and poverty pimps have made an entire industry out of this. There’s big money and careers to be made. Don’t believe me? Consider this - -
In 2023, the federal government and the military paid outside diversity trainers over $16.3 million.
That’s just in one year. They are racist grievance-mongers and victimology shakedown racketeers.
If you throw in all Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, the total amount spent was $270 million from 2022 to 2024. Ibram X. Kendi gets paid as much as $35,000 a speech to harangue people about race. Nikole Hannah-Jones made $1.2 million in speaking fees off her debunked “1619 Project,” and that doesn’t even count her book royalties. There’s big money in slavery. The slavery crowd is financially self-interested. Which is why I ask - - are they saying these things because they really believe them? Or because they’re paid to say them? And they are paid a lot to say them.
It’s all a big game and I’m not playing. I’m happy to address legitimate grievances that people may have today, but I’m not going to start the conversation with things that happened 400 years ago.
II. It’s a Communist Technique
The second pillar of my argument: It’s a communist technique to use race to bring down the system.
How do we know this? Because a communist leader let the cat out of the bag.
Manning Johnson was a black man who was a CPUSA leader in the 1930s who later left the party. The “CPUSA” is the Communist Party in the United States of America. In 1949, Johnson testified to Congress on the "Communist Infiltration of Minority Groups". Johnson said the goal of the party was to: “cripple the black community in America and incite racial division. This division would consequently weaken the nation as a whole and provide the opportunity for Communists to gain power.”
In 1958, he wrote in his book “Color, Communism & Common Sense:”
“Everything was interracial, an inter-racialism artificially created, cleverly devised as a camouflage of the red plot to use the Negro.”
Johnson wrote that:
1. Communists engaged in “the incitement of racial warfare….” They placed “all the ills of the Negro at the door of the white leaders of America. Capitalism and imperialism are made symbols of oppressive white rule….”
2. “placing the blame for all the Negroes’ ills at the door of the white leaders … is to remove all responsibility from the Negro. This tends to make the Negro: (1) feel sorry for himself; (2) blame others for his failures; (3) ignore the countless opportunities around him; (4( [make him] jealous of the progress of other racial and national groups; (5) expect the white man to do everything for him; and (6) look for easy and quick solutions as a substitute for the harsh realities of competitive struggle to get ahead.”
“The result is a persecution complex — a warped belief that the white man’s prejudices, the white man’s system, the white man’s government is responsible for everything. Such a belief is the way the reds plan it, for the next logical step is hate that can be used by the reds to accomplish their ends.”
He made a couple of other points that are interesting in light of recent history:
1. The communists are “fanning the flames of racial tension in order to raise money which they poured into promoting more tension.” Isn’t this exactly what the SPLC did in funding the KKK? Also, there’s a direct line from this to the “Black Lives Matter” financial scandals. Criminal cases were brought and the Justice Department is still investigating. Which is why I say BLM stands for “Bilking Liberal Morons.” Don’t forget, BLM self-identifies as “trained Marxists.”
2. Another thing Johnson wrote that is of interest is how the CPUSA deliberately attacked black business. They didn’t want black people to be self-reliant, because that would undermine their argument that blacks are oppressed by white people. Remember the concept of self-reliance. We’ll come back to it at the end.
I’ll finish this part of this article with two other communist techniques that are part and parcel of the slavery and diversity narrative:
1. The first is the idea of class enemies. In the Soviet Union, the peasants were always right and the farm owners were always wrong. They said: “Kill the Kulaks!” In the slavery and diversity narrative, blacks are always right, and everyone else is always wrong. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. Blacks should always come out on top now because, you know, 400 years of slavery.
Shoplifting? No problem. It’s just a little redistributive justice.
2. The other communist technique is “struggle sessions.” This is straight out of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. This is where you have to confess all your errors in front of a room full of people who decide whether you are sincere enough in your repentance. Where have we seen this recently? In the United States military under Biden, where whites were forced into diversity trainings where they had to confess their so-called “white privilege” to a room full of people.
There’s more to document the fact that the slavery and diversity narrative is a communist technique,
but we’ll move on now to the third pillar of my argument.
III. It’s the Road to Mental Illness
The slavery and diversity narrative exhibits at least six indicia of mental illness:
1. All-Consuming Hate and Anger
It is bad mental health to stay fixated on all-consuming hate and anger, and never forgive. The Left has snookered some people into fixating on slavery and racism, and staying angry about it. As a result, they can’t move on with their lives. Booker T. Washington was a former slave who went on to make something of his life. It’s remarkable what he accomplished. He did not hold on to his anger. No American black alive today was ever a slave. So the question to ask is: If Booker T. Washington could throw slavery in the trash can and get on with his life, what’s wrong with YOU?
People fixated on their anger will never be satisfied. Nothing will ever be enough. What a miserable existence – the inability to think happy thoughts because you are so fixated on perceived racial slights and injustices.
2. Delusional Thinking
Many in the black community have become slaves to what I call “Racial Centralism” - - Everything is about race. This is delusional. It leads them to believe, among other absurdities that: (1) the roads are racist; (2) the trees are racist; (3) all whites are racist; and (4) all school discipline is racist.
How crazy is that? It’s all manifestly crazy.
3. Breach of Individual-Responsibility Principle
Individual responsibility means we hold you accountable for what you do. It does not mean we hold you accountable for what somebody else did in the past. You are not responsible for injustices others commit. Breaching the principle of individual responsibility is when the mischief starts. But that’s what the slavery hustlers do: You are guilty because of what other people did in the past.
That’s collective guilt. I don’t do collective guilt. I don’t do white guilt. Collective responsibility? Two can play that game.
Let’s turn it around: All blacks are responsible for making inner cities unlivable. Including blacks who never lived there. Including blacks who are fine upstanding citizens. Or how about this:
The Democrats were the ones who perpetuated slavery and started a Civil War over it. Therefore, all present-day Democrats are responsible for slavery. Send the bill to them. That’s the mischief that starts when you breach the principle of individual responsibility.
4. Cognitive Dissonance
There is a psychological toll of having to believe absurdities. In the topsy-turvy world that the Left has created: (1) all Asians are “white;” (2) conservative blacks are “white;” (3) color-blind thinking is racist; (4) unequal outcomes are intrinsically racist, no need to prove discrimination; (5) refusal to believe in systemic racism means that you are racist and racism is worse than ever; (6) some blacks succeed, but that doesn’t mean anything; and (7) blacks who are not fixated on racial justice suffer from internalized oppression. What a struggle to hold all that in the mind at the same time!
5. Learned Helplessness
The race hustlers promote cultural scripting that encourages blacks to de-equip themselves to deal with life. It’s a tragedy. The Smithsonian Museum of African American History. criticized ordinary ingredients of a good life as “too white:” (1) punctuality; (2) hard work; (3) planning for the future; (4) self-reliance; (5) rational thinking; and (6) proper English.
But how can you have a good life if you show up for your 3 o’clock surgery at 5 o’clock when all the doctors have gone home? And how can any human being live a decent life without being able to plan for the future? How can you expect to have food on the table if you don’t go to the grocery store? Planning ahead is too white? That’s crazy-talk.
Other types of destructive cultural scripting hold that: (1) success is “too white;” (2) achievement is “too white;” and (3) you can’t make it on your own – you need a priestly class to intercede on your behalf. The race hustlers promise to do just that – for a modest fee: $35,000 a speech.
Learned helplessness – how sick is that? By inducing learned helplessness, the race hustlers are deliberately keeping people down, so that the hustlers can get paid for bloviating about racism and the Left can grow the government and eventually crash the system.
6. Toxic Thinking
The Civil Rights laws of the ‘50s and ‘60s were necessary. They were simple justice. But every idea that came after the Civil Rights Era in civil rights thinking has been destructive and corrosive:
(1) Starting with affirmative action: (a) it was supposed to be temporary but has dragged on for 50 years; (b) it discriminates against some people to benefit other people; (c) that’s not right, because you can’t fix discrimination with more discrimination; and (d) competent blacks in the workplace have to suffer the indignity of people wondering: “are they there because of their own merit or because they’re a diversity hire?”
(2) After affirmative action came systemic racism: the whole country is racist, no proof necessary.
(3) After that, white privilege and white supremacy.
(4) Cultural appropriation: funny how they use computers and the Internet to claim cultural appropriation when black people didn’t invent those things. Who is appropriating whom, I want to know.
(5) Then came implicit bias, a whole house of cards based on differences of microseconds in the length of time it takes white people to respond to pictures of black people than it does for them to respond to pictures of white people. You might find that persuasive, but I don’t. Justice Kennedy fell for it, he called it “unconscious racism.”
(6) Then there’s redistributive justice which holds, among other things, that shoplifting should not be prosecuted, and finally we get to:
(7) anti-racism, which says that you are a racist unless you are a social justice warrior and harangue people all the time 24/7 about their racism.
One bad idea after another – each more toxic than the last. Each more divisive and corrosive. They are iterations of what the communists started in the ‘30s to use race to bring about the revolution. Civil Rights thinking is getting sicker and sicker. But there is hope. There is a path to healing.
IV. The Path to Healing
The first step is to get out of the self-esteem trap. There’s a difference between self-esteem and personal competency. A District of Columbia school teacher once told me a story: the school principal came on the Public Address system at the start of every school day to say: “how are all my beautiful black African children this morning?” trying to give them self-esteem.
But my friend the math teacher told his pupils – once you learn math, nobody will ever be able to take it away from you. Nathaniel Branden (Ayn Rand’s colleague) – was a psychologist who wrote a book arguing that personal competency is good - - indeed, essential for your mental health. Of course every individual has dignity and worth, but you are not worthy of special respect because of your race. You are worthy of respect when you live a good life, or accomplish something. Like George Washington Carver, who invented almost the entire economy of the State of Georgia in his day, with his discoveries about the uses of the peanut. Like Stevie Wonder, who made great music and sold millions.
Personal competency is healing. Competency enables self-reliance. I told you we would get back to self-reliance. Self-reliance is healing. Booker T. Washington was all about self- reliance. He wrote: “No man who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives is long left without proper reward.”
Respecting the accomplishments of the ancestors is also healing. We have worked with a gentleman of mixed race for many years. He has a great insight: Successive generations of black Americans completed the Founders vision that all persons are created equal. These generations worked to improve their standing in society. They worked toward a more perfect Union. They did not view America as permanently flawed. They built up; they did not tear down. The slavery and race hustlers of today – all they do is tear down.
So my message to American blacks is this: Stop waiting for whitey. Screw whitey. It’s your world, too. Stop living in a prison of your own making. Don’t be a slave to slavery – it’s an addiction, it’s a crutch. Put slavery where it belongs – in museums and history books. Free yourself from Racial Centralism and get on with life. You’ll be much happier, and you’ll make the world a better place for you and everyone else around you. Like I said, tough love.
