“Our debate is going nowhere; and the latest development in this holding pattern that is masquerading as a dialogue is the reparations movement, which in recent years has gathered alarming momentum in the African American community.”

-John McWhorter

The New Republic (July 23)

And if the above is not sufficiently lugubrious, McWhorter, who teaches linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley (who let him in?), adds that the American debate on race is “an eternal stalemate.” And that is on a good day.

McWhorter’s comments in The New Republic are part of his review of Randall Robinson’s “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks,” a book that does its best to legitimate the fallacy that whites are not satisfactorily apologetic for black enslavement.

Robinson’s thesis, which has surfaced sporadically throughout the 20th century, likely will be a topic at the U.N. Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, if you will, which convenes on Aug. 31, in Durban, South Africa. Robinson and kindred spirits (speaking of which, where is the Reverend?) believe that descendants of black slaves are owed reparations (money) to help compensate for black enslavement at the hands of whites.

Set aside the more blinding deficiencies in that belief, and consider some of the logistics:

How much money? Millions? Billions? To whom is it given? When would the reparations end? Will a black person born in 2050 get his share, since he is equally entitled to the money?

McWhorter calls the debate on race an “eternal stalemate,” but he is too generous. A stalemate is an impasse, a point at which nothing happens. But in the debate over race, as the push for reparations shows, much is happening, much that is bad.

In today’s America of Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison, Tiger Woods and Colin Powell, doomful minds continue to disseminate self-congratulatory theories about the pervasiveness of white racism and its vitiating impact on the black community.

Here is what one student, whose views are symptomatic, wrote in last semester’s The University News: “Because one man’s body produces more melanin than another does that make him less than human? Does his darker skin allow him to be put into bonds and become property? In America the answer was and is yes.”

Distilled, the message transmitted to blacks is: You are a herd of victims, and your blackness is, in McWhorter’s words, “an irredeemably tragic condition.” (McWhorter, by the way, is black.) Thus blacks grow up assuming that their success comes primarily from without, not from within, that their achievements are contingent upon others’ philanthropy, not personal initiative. Worst of all they are taught that people like Clarence Thomas or Condoleeza Rice are at best exceptions, at worst, “sellouts.” Betrayers of their race.

The true heroes of the black community then become men like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre., rappers who encourage listeners to think of women as toys, to think of promiscuous sex as a noble demand of manhood and to think of drugs as an ideal way to dissolve the severities of life.

For many whites the debate over race inculcates hyper-insecurity. In most areas of life where blacks are not equally represented with whites, no matter how removed from racial issues, usually someone must answer to charges of racism. For example, last year it was pointed out that the NFL had few black head coaches, which led some to the “discovery” of the racism of white owners. Are there racist owners? Perhaps. But is it fair to automatically assert that a dearth of black coaches is the result of prejudice?

The movement to secure reparations will fail, but its presence has nonetheless presented a suitable time to reflect on the difficulties embedded in the debate over race, and the opposition those difficulties are imposing on meaningful progress.

But, alas, some things are not difficult. Some things are pristinely simple, like the fact that blacks are autonomous, talented individuals who do not need crushing condescension, disguised as compassion that comes from misguided do-gooders.