Book Review: The End Of Racism 


This is one of the best books I've read in the past decade, a thoroughly researched and thoroughly logically explained treatise that clarifies that which I had sensed intuitively, but had no concrete evidence to go by until reading this book. 

THE END OF RACISM
BOOK REVIEW
Written December 10, 1997

I just finished a FABULOUS book called "The End of Racism," by Dinesh D'Souza. I first heard about this book a couple years ago when it came out because it caused such a storm of controversy. D'Souza dared to say the things that others would not say, particularly those in academia, and the liberal establishment didn't like what he had to say.
I *highly recommend* this book because it takes all the arguments of the people who cry "racism!" and shoots them down hard. The book is 550 pages of reading and 150 pages of documentation--what he says is not only very logical from a philosophical argument standpoint, but it is also thoroughly documented. In other words, he's not just making this stuff up! He's not just blowin' a bunch of hot air! This book can help you respond to comments of people who want to see every white as a racist and all of blacks' problems due to slavery and racism. The author is not white, but rather of South Indian descent, which gives him more credibility-- people can't charge him as being a white male who's scared to lose his power.
I'm going to give you the main theses of the book, in his words, with a few added comments of my own. I hope this whets your appetite for this awesome book.

THESIS #1: "Is a racism a Western idea? Yes. Contrary to popular impression, racism is not universal. Indeed there are no clear examples of racism anywhere in the world before 1500 A.D. Racism arose in the West during the modern era as a rational and eventually scientific ideology to explain large differences in civilizational development that could not be explained by environment. Thus racism originated not in ignorance and fear but as part of an enlightened enterprise of intellectual discovery. The good news is that since racism had a beginning, it is conceivable that it may have an end."
When I first read the above paragraph, I disagreed with the statement that racism is not universal. I could think of many examples. So I thought. But he showed that what I was thinking of as racism is really what I'll call "culturalism"--thinking your culture is superior to others'. True racism is *only* about race, not about culture. So ultimately I agreed with him.
It fascinating to learn that it was the intelligentsia that developed a theory of racism. The author takes the reader back to those times and what their understanding of the world was at that time, and it's easier to understand how they developed their theories. What was even more interesting to me was the way Darwinism made racism even stronger--the social Darwinism that said whites are superior because they have evolved as the strongest--"the strongest survive." The author pointed out that Christians in the 19th century rejected such a belief, holding on to the belief that all are created by God and are equally human.

THESIS #2: "Was slavery a racist institution? No. Slavery was practiced for thousands of years in virtually all societies: in China, India, Europe, the Arab world, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. In the United States, slave-owning was not confined to whites: American Indians and free blacks owned thousands of slaves. Thus slavery is neither distinctively Western nor racist. What is uniquely Western is the abolition of slavery. The American founders articulated principles of equality and consent which formed the basis for emanicipation and the civil rights movement."
This section of the book was very encouraging. Instead of blacks holding this forever scorn against whites because "your ancestors enslaved my people," this author takes the opposite angle: The blacks should be thankful for Western society, because until the Founding Fathers' ideas came along, slavery was considered a normal thing! It was whites who ENDED slavery!!! This bitterness toward whites is all twisted around. The author also gives a detailed history of the roots of the black slave trade, and it was blacks conquering other blacks to make money by selling the other blacks as slaves that developed the slave trade. Today's African American mainstream likes to blame whites for the slave trade, but it was the African blacks' desire to make money off of selling others that got the whole thing going.
To read all this is a great relief. First of all, like most whites, I think in more individual terms and do not feel it's right to be blamed for something some white people did long before I was ever born. But to blacks, who are more of a group culture, they don't see it that way. However, knowing this history further releases me from this collective guilt that blacks want to put on whites. It was the most encouraging section of the whole book.

THESIS #3: "Why did white liberals and black activists abandon color blindness as basis for law and policy? The civil rights movement in which both groups participated embodied from the outset the assumptions of cultural relativism: the presumed equality of all cultures or groups. Martin Luther King, Jr., emphasized one serious problem faced by blacks (racial discrimination) while ignoring another equally serious one (cultural deficiencies) which inhibited black competitiveness. Thus equal rights for blacks could not and did not produce equality of results. Consequently, many liberals and civil rights activists involked equality of results to prove that white racism continues unabated. They supported affirmative action and racial preferences in order to fight the effects of past and present racism."
This section was also very enlightening, especially in terms of history. The author traces today's "equal results" mentality to 100 years ago. He points to two important characters in history at the time, each with opposing viewpoints on how to end blacks' problems. One was Booker T. Washington, who felt that blacks should separate themselves until they developed their own skills in a superior manner so that whites would want them for their skills. The other was W.E.B. Du Bois, who favored political protest. Du Bois won out. His ideas are based on cultural relativism, an ideological base made popular by Boas. Cultural relativism assumes that all cultures are inherently equal, so if in our country there are not equal numbers of races in all parts, then that shows there is racism, according to their beliefs. This author shows the faults in this logic with historical, philosophical, and statistical proofs. I can't begin to do it all here--after all, he took 550 pages to explain all this, but let me assure you, it's definitely worth the reading.
It was also interesting for me to discover that today's moral relativism was based a lot on this early 20th century academician, Franz Boas. Multiculturalism also has its roots in this guy's theories (D'Souza shoots down multiculturalism, too, showing how it's actually an American ethnocentric idea and not the open idea that it claims to be). I used to wonder how it could be that suddenly in the 1960s morality fell apart. A couple years ago I read about trends in teaching in universities that began in the late 19th century that were actually building the basis for this moral breakdown, and this book shows some more of that, giving a lot of the blame to Boas.

THESIS #4: "Why have charges of racism multiplied while clear evidence of racism has declined? There is now in place a civil rights establishment which has a vested interest in making exaggerated accusations of racism. Promiscuous charges of bigotry are used to cajole and intimidate whites into acquiescing in programs which financially and politically benefit the civil rights establishment. If racism were to disappear, many of these activists and bureaucrats would be out of a job."
This section was discouraging, not encouraging, but it shed light on why we keep hearing about all this racism in the media even though we see very little of it with our own eyes. The scariest part is this Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which considers companies guilty of racism unless they can prove innocence, which is hard to do. The courts support them, too. This is a windfall for people wanting free rides. It also shows the growth of government--when the EEOC was formed, it had 17 employees. Now it has thousands. They don't want to lose their jobs, so they have to go hunt for discrimination!

THESIS #5: "Why is the black underclass worse off while the black middle class is better off? As the main beneficiary of affirmative action, blacks with better skills and motivation have moved out of their old neighborhoods, taking with them middle-class norms and social and financial resources. Consequently, in the inner city, civilizing institutions such as the church and small business have greatly eroded. Moreover, the civil rights establishment has a vested interest in the persistence of the underclass, because the scandalous pathologies of poor blacks create the public sympathy that legitimizes continuing subsidies to the black middle class."
A very interesting and revealing section!

THESIS #6: "Can blacks be racist? Yes. Many liberals find it difficult to recognize black racism because they are ideologically committed to view it as a mere reaction to white racism. In fact African American racism is a coherent ideology of black supremacy, promoted in Afrocentric courses and institutionally embodied in the Nation of Islam. In an increasingly meritocratic society, black racism becomes a rationalization for black failure. Thus African American antagonism is most vehemently directed against groups such as Jews and Asian Americans that have no history of persecuting blacks but that outcompete them."
This section is good for learning the origin of some the ideas you hear today, such as all civilization comes from blacks--the whites just stole it; D'Souza is excellent at pointing out the shams in this false history. You can also see clearly that blacks can be *very* racist.

THESIS #7: "Does contemporary liberalism have a future? No. Many white liberals are so embarrassed by low levels of academic performance and high levels of criminal and antisocial behavior by blacks, that they are destroying liberal institutions such as free speech, race neutrality, the legal presumption of innocence, and equal rights under the law in order to compel equal results for racial groups. Ultimately white liberals are trapped in a logic in which they must blame themselves for African American problems, and condone the demise of their cherished principles [freedom, for example] in order to camouflage black failure."
Examples abound in the text.

THESIS #8: "Is racism the main problem facing blacks today? No. The main contemporary obstacle facing African Americans is neither white racism , as many liberals claim, nor black genetic deficiency, as Charles Murray and others imply. Rather it involves destructive and pathological cultural patterns of behavior: excessive reliance on government, conspiratorial paranoia about racism, a resistance to academic achievement as 'acting white,' a celebration of the criminal and outlaw as authentically black, and the normalization of illegitimacy and dependency. These group patterns arose as a response to past oppression, but they are now dysfunctional and must be modified."
Examples abound in the text. Reading about testing was really interesting. The SAT and other tests have been made so culturally in blacks' favor that it actually culturally discriminates against whites if you want to put it that way, yet the whites still do better on the tests. All other factors come out the same--same income level of blacks and whites, whites do better. Put middle class income *and* families with two parents and whites still do better. In many ways the author shows that it has nothing to do with racism but is something that blacks need to face up to and change themselves.

THESIS #9: “Are you saying that racial discrimination no longer exists? On the contrary. Evidence for the old discrimination has declined, but there are many indications that black cultural pathology has contributed to a new form of discrimination: rational discrimination. High crime rates of young black males, for example, make taxi drivers more reluctant to pick them up, storekeepers more likely to follow them in stores, and employers less likely to hire them. Rational discrimination is based on accurate group generalizations that may nevertheless be unfair to particular members of a group."
When you read about the crime figures and employment habits in this chapter, you can see this very clearly. It makes you realize that white fears of crime and fear of hiring are not just unfounded ignorant fears, but based on reality. That is not racism; it's a statistical reality.

THESIS #10: "If racism is not the main problem for blacks, what is? Liberal antiracism. By asserting the equality of all cultures, cultural relativism prevents liberals from dealing with the nation's contemporary crisis--a civilizational breakdown that affects all groups, but is especially concentrated among the black underclass. Many liberals continue to blame African American pathologies on white racism and oppose all measures that impose civilizational standards on the grounds that they are nothing more than 'blaming the victim.' Meanwhile, pathologies persist unchecked."
What makes this book so encouraging to me is that it gives some HOPE for our society. It's really depressing to read the stuff of these extreme multiculturalists, who view the world through race to such a degree that they say only blacks can understand the black experience, only Hispanics can understand the Hispanic experience, etc. In another book I'm reading, when the author asked an Asian-American student at Berkeley about what it was like to grow up in America as Asian-Americans, the student just responded angrily, "You're white, you can't understand!!" and refused to talk to him. In the liberals' world, racism is institutional, basically meaning that's it's impossible to eradicate, so affirmative action is needed to overcome it. In the liberals' world, there is no hope because there's so much hatred and blaming and demands to make up for "past wrongs" forever. This book was encouraging because it dared to highlight the problem in a way that is certainly not popular in academia or the government or the press. For us to solve problems, we have to recognize what they are first. The final section of this book points out many of the problems that the Christian Right has been pointing to, but also some additional ones that are found primarily in black culture, and how we need tackle our civilizational breakdown rather than blaming everybody. Oh, I love this book!!!!!

His concluding remarks of the introductory chapter: "Can you really demonstrate any of this, and if so, what should be done about it? Read the book."
That's what I say too. This book was so good that on nearly every page there was something that I wanted to share here, but if I did, I'd be doing the whole 550 pages. It's that good. I say it too: Read the book! 

Posted: Wed - December 10, 1997 at 06:13 PM          

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