Education and "Acting White"

Berman James Watts, November 1997


Absent overt segregation how might the education of minorities be compromised? Given a putative "equality under law" a means that can be made to appear the fault of the minority is highly desirable. What if such education -only for such minority - can be made to appear futile or even disadvantageous? Then those who overcome the considerable barriers to higher education can be rejected for positions freely given to whites of much lesser qualification. Indeed such too persistent thus educated minorities can be attacked under the blanket license for racial inequity of result given by white controlled process and white popular opinion. By such negative examples of white's true appreciation for minority education it is communicated to minority youth that much formal education may well be -for them- not only a waste of time but a stigma marking them for special negative white attention.

There is an easier path for a limited number of minorities to popular "acceptance" by whites. Ability in the nominal field of endeavor is irrelevant as long as the proper political stance is made. Such stand is, of course, antiminority as revealed by ever racially skewed destructive result even if piously cloaked as anything but discrimination. Although useful as an example of the majority "lack" of bias, such minorities can enhance their acceptance in direct proportion to their usefulness in attacking other minorities and especially the minority community. Much as the Nazis used Quisling and the Vichy French as "native leaders" even as their populations were conquered and enslaved, so do white supremacists use certain blacks as point men in the anti-affirmative action and other similar efforts. It is not that black students uniformly attack those who seek to learn as trying to be white. It is that a tiny minority of traitors in professions primarily requiring only rote memorization and regurgitation appear to have been highly "educated". In fact they are a disgrace to true practitioners, their race and all men of conscience and honor as Quislings ever are and must always be.

Clearly pursuit of anything whose denial is sought by such devious and persistent means by a majority with the history here exhibited is to the advantage of the minority population. Once it was a crime for blacks to learn and, for anyone to teach blacks to read. Later "separate but equal" was camouflage for educational sabotage. Now tracking within and defacto segregation without supposedly integrated public schools serves the same purpose even as alleged conservative elements propose means leading to the ultimate destruction of a public school system that is the primary means for the basic "education" of blacks.

When the considerable effort of overcoming such white imposed obstacles to effective education is exceeded , white imposed limitation upon such blacks as a negative example is used to discourage such effort by others. But the wider and the more acute the effective education, experience and, developed abilities of any people - the more capable of competition and the less subject to white controlled workplaces they are. Where are the black auto makers? Steel mills? Tool and Die makers? Machine shops? The black aircraft makers? Chip makers? Computer makers? Biotechnology companies? Telecommunication firms? Where are the financial firms of sufficient capacity and willingness to capitalize them? For blacks in America such need is great. Blacks are the focus of a continuing "racial economic and social guerrilla war"- centuries in duration-that has ranged from violent popular majority suppression to the more subtle means of today. Given the immense non-white markets black America could be much more fully employed and richer were there black businesses to displace less appreciative and equitable white firms.

If getting an effective education as possible had been sacrificed in the past, where would black America be? Under slavery some runaways ,lost and ignorant of how to find their directions, welcomed their pursuing re-enslavers as saviors. Thus it would seem ignorance makes attractive slavery and exploitation - of one kind or another.