Thursday, May 3, 2007

Believe in White Racism and Attract Bad Things

As I read Joe R. Hicks’ “Drop the Race Card” (Outlook, April 15, 2007), I thought he’d hit the right note, especially as a reformed race-baiting adherent of “orthodox civil rights view” that silently argued against blacks thinking for themselves. With greater sobriety, Hicks realized that civil rights pundits (like well-paid “leaders” like Jackson and Sharpton) were lobbing about the race card liberally and wrongfully. Although he’d stopped drinking the toxic brew called “black victims,” his article lacked something.

First I liked Hick’s sobriety. Now free to think for himself, Hicks impliedly asked if pundits like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were really different from the self-interested politics of Nifong, the humanistically-challenged Imus, and the existentially-wrecked Michael Richards, all of who used racially-charged language or motives to promote themselves. He concluded that they were not. They didn’t use phrases like “nappy-headed hoes.” Rather they used Imus and Richards to pour the dark-poison of racism back into present-day America. The upshot: blacks beware, for white racism lives! Hicks, and I, rejected this pogrom. In a recent interview with Tavis Smiley, Eddie Glaude argued: “somebody gets hurt, somebody creates some noise, and somebody gets paid.” Who? Pundits like Jackson and Sharpton. What of black folks? Still the so-called black victims. On this point, Hicks argued: “[I]t is an agenda of racial opportunism that promotes the view that blacks are powerless victims of white racism. In this view, blacks are always in need of government intervention to save them from white hostility.” Glaude and Hicks got it right.

Second, Hicks’ sobriety avoids new analytical depths. If pundits like Jackson and Sharpton are effectively exploiting blacks for their personal gain as he and Glaude would argue, then are they encouraging blacks to use their considerable emotional energy to believe in white racism and black victimization so that they can draw bad things to them, all of which confirms that America hates them, and that so they need pundits like Jackson and Sharpton? Are they promoting fear? Few race scholars have made the link between beliefs, emotions, and experiences. But if they did, they’d come to realize that by so doing, blacks are using their consciousness to serve a well-worn but outdated orthodoxy that co-creates what they actually fear – victimizing experiences. This rabbit hole is too frightening, for it may explain Jim Crow violence and the current state of so-called black America. Yet, we must have Alice’s intrepidity. We must dare to take back our power, not just from do-wearing pundits like Sharpton, but also from neo-cons and wealth maximizing politicians whether they are Democrats or Republicans.

Didn’t “The Secret”, the New Age DVD campaign that trumpeted the Law of Attraction principle, declare that we get what we emotionally believe? Emotions – love or fear – are the fuel that attracts people, things, and experiences to us. In “Law of Attraction,” Esther and Jerry Hicks tell us that this Law works in our lives even if we don’t accept it. If so, they argue, we might as well use this Law deliberately to bring happier experiences and financial abundance to us. Or we can co-create by default, that is, place our emotional energy in the service of someone else’s agenda. Think about the never-found WMD, the flawed invasion of Iraq, or the rights-destroying war on terrorism! Weren’t you fearful?

Anyway, do pundits like Jackson and Sharpton have an orthodox agenda that keeps the fear of white racism, black victimization, and governmental dependence hammered into the minds of blacks? Many blacks believe in Jackson’s and Sharpton’s orthodox, even if they refuse to elect them to a public office. Are blacks co-creating experiences of racial fear that do not exist for many of us? If so, people like Jackson and Sharpton get served by this fear.

This Law applies to fears of white racism and black victimization. Despite Hick’s sobriety, he does not follow Alice down this rabbit hole. He said: “Jackson and Sharpton, among others of their ilk, are dinosaurs fighting only to maintain a patina of relevance.” Hicks quoted Cosby for its implications: “There are people [who] want you to remain in a hole. . . . [Y]our job is not becoming victims. We have to rise up and fight on all levels to succeed.” How can blacks succeed while living under the weight of their self-oppressive, agency-robbing fears? By serving these dinosaurs, blacks keep themselves in a present-day “Jim Crow”.

The Law of Attraction links beliefs, emotions, and experiences, and this principle gives blacks a tool to take personal responsibility for what they fearfully co-create: white racism, black victimization, and governmental dependence.