Steve Skojec

As I read through my copy of the Examiner this morning, a familiar theme emerged that began to bother me. The first story, entitled, “Some residents see search for guns as targeting blacks,” dealt with D.C.’s ridiculous new plan to send police door-to-door to perform voluntary gun searches. Apparently the idea is that any guns found that are illegally owned will fall under an amnesty provision, as long as the gun isn’t linked to a specific crime. The police just take the gun, the illegal owner faces no charges, and there are no hard feelings on either side.

Riiight.

Southeast resident Ed Harris, a Vietnam veteran and a National Rifle Association member who lost his son to gun violence, said the police will never enter his home without a warrant.

“I didn’t get wounded in Vietnam to let someone come into my home and search and seize any weapons,” said Harris, a U.S. Post Office employee. “It’s turning D.C. into a police state under the guise of amnesty.”

Harris said he was offended that the District was targeting predominantly black neighborhoods.

“It assumes that black people commit crimes,” he said.

I agree with Mr. Harris on his observation that this kind of action is turning D.C. into a police state. I respect his service to his country, and I support his notion that it’s an insult to a veteran like him (or any U.S. citizen, for that matter), to be subjected to this tyrannical treatment under the auspices of voluntarism. What I find bizarre, however, is his inidignation at the suggestion that blacks are committing a higher proportion of crimes in relation to the general populace. Statistically, this is unavoidably true.

Anthropologically, the explanations for this are varied and complex. More blacks are living in poverty, for example, or are coming from single-parent households. There are factors that help to shed light on the reasons why this happens, but to deny that it happens is wishful thinking. And it’s the kind of wishful thinking that permeates race politics.

In a recent column on Barack Obama, Rev. Wright, and the issue of race in America, Pat Buchanan lamented this:

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

Of course, some will immediately say that yes, as a result of slavery, white America is responsbile, and that white America is subsequently obligated to do something about it. It doesn’t matter that no white Americans living today took part in slavery, or that many didn’t even have ancestors who did. The collective guilt of slavery, segregation, discrimination and racism are laid at the feet of any American with white skin who refuses to embrace the racially charged entitlement politics of the left.

But why the double standard? Take, for example, another piece in the Examiner this morning - a report about students who held a rally in Maryland advocating in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants who have graduated from Maryland high schools.

The lower-than-expected band of about 60 arrived from around the state to support a bill currently stalled in a committee with Monday night’s deadline in Annapolis looming. Similar legislation has failed since 2003, but the debate has continued.

“The vast majority of these kids were brought here by their parents,” said Del. Saqib Ali, a Montgomery County Democrat. “We shouldn’t penalize them for the actions of their parents.”

When it’s convenient, those who favor leftist policies call foul when their own policies apply to them. The difference is this: while slavery has at best an indirect association (through a perception of ancestral guilt) with those living in America today, the children of illegal immigrants in this nation are, along with their parents, actively in violation of the law. And they simultaneously are trying to claim benefits that belong to citizens!

Of course, illegal immigration remains endemic here. Staying within the same newspaper, we see a report that 34 illegals were arrested yesterday in a federal raid in my new home town. While I see this as a good thing, those (like me) who oppose illegal immigration or support efforts to stop it are again labeled “racists” for their desire to see the law upheld and their country protected from invaders, economic or otherwise.

The race issue continues to cloud politics, and our obsession with it seems doomed never to diminish. I’ve defended Obama’s pastor on some of his comments about foreign policy, but his race rhetoric is despicable. While I don’t think it’s the smoking gun the media (and the Clinton campaign) want it to be for Obama’s campaign, race politics like are divisive, not unitive. They create conflict and hard feelings. They disseminate false information. They defy logic and intellectual consistency. They segregate the population into warring ethnic and racial camps.

If we want to fix the race problems we have in this country, we have to first be honest about them. For a very long time, much of white America was guilty of victimizing minorities. I’m sure evidence could still be found that this is happening in some quarters, though I believe it’s grown far more rare than those who traffic in racial offenses would like us to believe.

It’s time, now, for the black community (and other groups who claim victim status) to be honest and forthright about their own contribution to their problems. I worry that they are too unwilling. When Bill Cosby tried to do it, he was considered by many to be a traitor. Alan Keyes and Clarence Thomas are pariahs. If you advocate personal responsibility and conservative values - particularly the values of common sense and personal accountability - does that make you an enemy of your race?

I don’t share much in common with my father-in-law in terms of beliefs. I do, however, respect him for what he has accomplished. After immigrating to the United States from China when he was 14, he worked to support himself, served in the U.S. Navy, bought and built businesses, and provided for his family. At 76 years old, he still works hard, but he now has the luxury of enjoying the fruits of his labors. He started with nothing, a poor, young, brown-skinned minority without the benefit of a complete education, let alone the requisite English to survive in America. He spent fifty years working in this country before he had his first opportunity to go back to China to visit his mother again.

And yet, despite the hardships he’s faced, I’ve never once heard him complain about being a victim. Somehow, he knew the secret - that the only key to success would be found within himself, and blaming others would only waste precious time he could be using to get ahead.