Blaming Racism Won't Cut It

Let’s be honest about the real sources of inequality

BLAMING RACISM WON’T CUT IT

Let’s be honest about the real sources of inequality

John Washington

One morning in 1962, on my way to high school, I came across an old black man who had had his throat cut. This was outside a hole-in-the-wall whites-only bar that was always open at 8:00 in the morning whenever I passed. I could always smell the stench of rotten beer through its door. The two white drunks who had slashed the guy were laughing at their victim, who sat slumped at an angle against the outer wall, whimpering softly.

Despite what I had seen, I didn’t try to find a cop. Why not? First, because at that time in that part of America—Asheville, NC—I couldn’t inform the law on a white man. Second, a cop was already there. He was just as happily involving himself in the drunken celebration, laughing and jubilating with the black man’s attackers. It was as though they had collectively executed a noble and heroic deed.

The man’s throat wasn’t cut deeply. The cut was about three inches long, unlikely to need stitches, and the bleeding had stopped. I caught only a glimpse of the wound as I hurried past the scene, sticking to the middle of the street, focused on not becoming another casualty myself. The thought struck me: had I arrived just 10 or 15 minutes earlier, I might have been the one leaning against that wall.

If you assume this is just another cry of racism in America or an expression of black victim consciousness, rethink. What I wish to address here is the overuse of too many “wolf cries” of racism to distract from deeper issues in black America. Racism is often invoked to cover up social pathologies that, according to statistics on the black family and education that I will discuss below, lie at the core of the problem.

I present this one incident out of an array of similar scenes from early in my life to prove that I have seen racism in its worst form, when laws and law enforcement backed it. I have drunk from “colored” water fountains, ridden at the back of the bus, and had the N-word and other insults hurled in my face. Worst of all, I have been beaten by angry white men—an incident too painful to recount here, which is why I chose instead to share the one above.

Thus, I am flabbergasted that I hear more screams of racism now than I did at that time in my early life. If the crushing weight of legalized racism could not break us before the Civil Rights era, why should its weaker, post-Civil Rights version still imprison the minds of some of my people? We are stronger than this.

Are our most pressing struggles now really rooted in racism? Sure, racism is still here, especially in the current administration’s attempt to redraft it into law. But I answer my own question with a “no.” We are the designers of some of our own damnations in far too many ways. They arise from the absence of middle-class values—strong family life, self-reliance, and respect for academic success—that are essential for success in an American culture built on these foundations. By failing to confront this reality, we too often resort to empty cries of racism as an alibi. That, I believe, is the deeper issue.

Consider recent history. Under the Biden administration, we saw blacks in the positions of Vice President, White House Press Secretary, House Majority Whip, the Secretary of Defense, two Supreme Court justices, a governor, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the senior officer of all military branches). These are positions of immense power and authority.

The 17-year-old me hurrying past that slashing scene would never in his wildest dreams have believed such a black power base could arise. Never. Additionally, in my hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, today black leadership controls the positions of mayor, five of the nine city council members, and the police chief. Plus, until a month ago, the county sheriff was black.

Growing up under Jim Crow, when my family was finally able to buy a television, seeing a black face on screen was like witnessing a UFO. Today, though we are just 12 percent of the population, there’s a black presence in nearly every commercial and few programs lack a black character or newscaster, including Fox News.

Clearly, racism no longer delivers the same sting or wields the same authority it once did. So why do so many of our people continue to struggle? One answer lies in the erosion of the black family, the very institution responsible for transmitting the middle-class values I just mentioned. Far more of our offspring are born without fathers and raised by single females than is true for any other racial or ethnic group.

The current black family. For out-of-wedlock births, see here. For single-parent families, see here.

But in 1945, the decade of my birth, black families headed by a single woman were only 18 percent.

Human evolutionary history shows why this matters. With the evolution of large, capacious, but slowly developing brains, children came to rely on adults for their care and enculturation for well over a decade, unlike animals that have evolved to be able to fend for themselves shortly after birth. Survival demands not just food and protection but also the passing on of language, skills, and cultural knowledge. The two-parent system was nature’s answer to the problem posed by our slowly developing brains: one parent to provide resources and defense, the other to focus on child-rearing and teaching. This cooperation ensured survival, preserved culture, and laid the foundation for civilization. Without it, our species might not have endured, just like so many other hominids that disappeared.

The family unit is the transmitter of survival knowledge. In hunting-gathering societies, children learned to track animals and identify plants. In agricultural societies, they learned farming. Today, with survival knowledge far more complex, the fractured black family often fails to pass on the skills needed for modern life, especially behavioral skills such as basic manners.

The one-parent household is almost the norm in the black community, with devastating consequences. Children raised in such circumstances are more likely to experience poverty, educational struggles, behavioral problems, greater exposure to crime, and poorer health outcomes. Worst of all, the cycle repeats itself. These children often miss out on the socialization required to integrate successfully into an increasingly complex society.

Yet our black elite—the ones with the microphone—rarely sound the alarm about the breakdown of the family. Instead, they point almost exclusively to systemic racism. But the absence of middle-class values, traditionally transmitted through the family, is the more pressing issue.

Take education, for instance. Racism certainly contributes to underfunded schools, biased disciplinary patterns, and rigid tracking systems. But even with the best-funded schools, what happens when children return to homes where education is not emphasized, homework is neglected, respect for teachers is absent, and even basic needs like food and clothing are unmet? Frederick Douglass had no school building, yet he taught himself to read and rose to an intellectual stature equal to the greatest minds of his time.

The truth is that both racism and family breakdown matter—but we hear only about the first. Rarely do we examine how little effort many of our children put into their own education. A recent study shows that Black students spend less time on homework than any other group, while Asians, at the other end of the spectrum, spend by far the most.

Average daily time spent on educational activities by race/ethnicity (in minutes).

Disciplinary data tell a similar story: Black students face suspension and behavioral issues at far higher rates than their peers. And don’t give me that crap about racist teachers. A lot of them are black. My daughter and my ex-wife are teachers and will testify that these suspension stats reflect real behavioral and academic issues, as will my current wife, who was a teacher and is retired from a principalship.

Suspensions by Race

Test scores, too, reveal an academic gap that persists into the senior year of high school, leaving many of our students unprepared for college without affirmative action programs. Despite having the same brains as anyone else, our 12th graders fail at higher rates than all other races according to the latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Percentage of 12th graders who did not meet national standards by race

Our racial image is soiled owing to these statistics. We are called stupid behind our backs. Yet instead of seeing it as within our agency to rectify the problem, we yell racism to mask the reality. We have the potential to score as Asians do. We simply don’t actualize that potential.

The fact that we are no longer in the 1960s is something some of us can’t wrap our heads around. But even under the Biden Administration, when black people were running the country at the highest levels, we still got commercials on MSNBC from the likes of the Southern Poverty Law Center with the theme “We Shall Overcome.” And we’ll probably continue to get such things again after this administration is out of office.

We no longer live in the world that I saw on my walk to school that morning. It’s a damn good thing, and it’s time we all acknowledged it and started to face up to the primary sources of our problems, such as the decline of the family and a lack of interest in academics. Whites aren’t the only ones getting “black fatigue”—some of us blacks are as well.

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John Washington is an octogenarian who has earned his daily bread, first, as an Army paratrooper and then, later in civilian life, as a computer support technician, two careers from which he has now achieved a double retirement. In and around these occupations, he fed his family with janitorial work, factory labor, and long-haul trucking, while also managing the completion of 2 years of college during the journey. Though he is not academically credentialed, he feels his short school life expanded his ability to think broadly and enhanced his analytical thinking skills. As a center-left liberal, he holds firmly that values like family commitment, self-sufficiency, and personal responsibility are not merely conservative but also deeply liberal ideals. His article “Black Culture and the Euro-American Collective Brain” appeared in the Journal of Free Black Thought and his article “AWOL Black Fathers” appeared in Quillette. He lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina.