The following is Blog number forty and is part of the ongoing Racial Reconciliation in America Series. It is entitled: Race in America – Paul Ryan, Why Do You Do That?

RACIAL RECONCILIATION

PAUL RYAN

WHY DO YOU DO THAT?

Ryan's Race Flap Even Worse Than It Looks

www.huffingtonpost.com

Our first real job after leaving the University of Kansas was called a Social Advocacy Planner with the Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission (METROPLAN), in Kansas City. This was ’69 and Martin Luther King had been killed in ’68; many cities around the nation had been set ablaze in riots. This was the true beginning of our eyes being opened to public policy in America as a nation.

Our function at Metroplan, was to act as the voice of the inner-city community to those tasked with the delivery of federal government resources in an organized fashion to where Black folk lived. We did a great deal of work with organizations like the Model Cities Program, another government program within President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” effort.

To Black folk like the Social Action Committee (SAC 20) as they were called, we were considered as the White folk’s nigger, until they got to know me. Then we became a friend that they wanted to protect and did in two dangerous situations involving the Black Panthers and KCMO Police. Dangerous times indeed those were.

Being involved in efforts that were actually desirous of positive change for Black folk we were also near the sources of decision. As such we were also able to see how folk change decisions. There is no time here for all of that. The point that is to be made here is simply this: that public policy as a matter of history is actually made by White folk.

Today there is opportunity for public policy to be driven by the actions of Black folk. The challenge and the quest for all people of goodwill must be to reverse the institutional racism that has been embedded into American public policy. House Representative Paul Ryan, among others stands at the gate of change prevention. These are maintain the status quo people!

Keeping an open mind and a desire for discovering how we got to this place of racial tensions today is very important if we are to change the atmosphere. One is well served by attempting to look at history from the beginning; up to today to discover the truth about keeping Black and Whites in racial turmoil. The following represents our case:

1. As an institution, African Slavery in the United States can not be overlooked when discussing the current reality of Black folk. And their relationship today with White folk. Nor can the history of the Jim Crow laws and the “Black Codes” be overlooked. Please go to the following link for your own discovery and what is simply a very quick and interesting read. The take away is that there is codified within our nation of laws, the matter of racism that cannot be overlooked. Racism is a word and a reality that we as a people must stop running away from if ever we want to grow as a people of many colors and cultures. Racism in America is part of our national reality. Institutionalized racism remains as part of who we are. We just have to figure out a way to get rid of it altogether! : http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html
2. [“Through an overt practice of denying mortgages based upon race and ethnicity, the FHA played a significant role in the legalization and institutionalization of racism and segregation. The Underwriting Manual established the FHA’s mortgage lending requirements, ultimately institutionalizing racism and segregation within the housing industry. The following presents information about the national context of redlining and is not specific to Greater Boston.”] This particular quote is taken from a discovery process in Boston but is actually a national reality and we strongly endorse the findings.

What this study represents is an overview of how the critical asset of housing is affected by public policy. The notion that Black folk do not have a work ethic and are a slothful people is refuted. While the realities of White exclusion through the use of “barriers to entry” techniques, lend credence to our assertion that:

a) There is in America, a history of public policies that constrains Black financial productivity and asset development,

b) There is a history of public policies that can be seen as institutional racism if one is simply honest in their assessments of public policy, and

c) There is a paper trail in America that clearly explains that it is change in our public policies that must become the focus of all people of goodwill. Later we will deal with the issue of Redlining more thoroughly!

http://www.bostonfairhousing.org/timeline/1934-1968-FHA-Redlining.html :

3. The following link is posited to offer what we believe is an extraordinary overview of the impact of the race riots in the 1960’s on Black property values and on the issue of Black employment consequences. These activities of the 1960’s reverberate into this current hour. When one says that the fault of the race riots is that of those who own the property and who live in the riot stricken area we contend that one is being thoughtless. The Black property owners were the ones penalized by the actions of those living under the burden of oppression as they perceived their lives. http://www.nber.org/digest/sep04/w10243.html

Often we are just perplexed by the level of ignorance that is produced within the White race regarding Black folk. This ignorance is a result of our society remaining mostly segregated. The majority of White folk in America above the age of fifty have very limited daily contact with Black folk. Those above the age of sixty in some parts of the nation really do not care that much about any interracial contact and would rather that the whole race problem would just go away.

Generally speaking, for White folk, most understanding of Black folk is from what they see on the television. Television is the indoctrination system of America. Television informs this nation and has done so since the early 1940-1950’s.

Certainly what White folks see on the television is different from their actual relationships with Black folk if they actually have one and it is a positive relationship. Typically the knowledge of Blacks does not come from a close and daily relationship with someone who is Black; a relationship defined by positive experiences. You know a normal everyday life.

In every form of communication, the portrayal of Blacks for the indoctrination of Whites: during Slavery and unto freedom; in freedom and unto assimilation; as assimilated and yet segregated; there has been a constant portrayal of Blacks as a slothful buffoon, a dangerous criminal and someone intellectually inferior to White folk.

The indoctrinating message to Whites has always been the same: 1) stay away from this Black creature and 2) you are superior to this creature! The purpose of the indoctrination was to devalue Black humanity. The purpose was to justify Slavery and the economic system that it upheld.

The purpose of the indoctrination message today is to desensitize Whites to the current realities of Black life, thereby placing all the blame on Blacks for any type of achievement gaps between them and Whites. The purpose remains: absolving Whites and the U.S. Government of all blame for historical conduct that may have contributed in some small way to the current condition of Black life in America.

In other words the indoctrination is designed to make White folk believe that they and all Black folk started the achievement race with equality, at the exact same starting line; that Slavery nor any other deficit creating reality post-slavery, contributed to the head start given White folk in America!

These stereotypes of slothful buffoonery, dangerous inferior creatures have been the images painted of Black folk throughout American history. As a function of communications strategies these images are for maintaining the Just Us Philosophy that is the underpinning of Western Civilization. These stereotypes help reinforce the realities of White privilege.

Every method of communication has been used to project these Black images and stereotypes. This communications strategy and the resulting indoctrinations reinforce our racial separation and maintain a disharmony between the races. These images help to keep Black and White folk from being unified in any common purpose and goodwill.

   The recent words of Congressman Paul Ryan are rooted in these stereotypes of the Black community and Black men in particular. Now when one is confronted with the words of insult and offense from the mouth of a man like Congressman Paul Ryan, one must be mindful of the full context of not only who he is, but also the forces who he represents. We suggest that those forces are the age old forces of White indoctrination against Black folk.

Congressman Ryan is a known follower of the philosophy of the atheist Ayn Rand whose simplistic idea is human social survival of the fittest. This is an ungodly philosophy and does not comport with the teachings of Jesus Christ, as delineated throughout the Book of Matthew in Holy Scripture.

Far worse than this Ayn Rand nonsense, however, is Mr. Ryan’s admiration for the so-called social scientist of the generation, a Mr. Charles Murray. Mr. Murray has posited that Black folk are intellectually inferior to White folk. Further he posits that it is the “Great Society Programs” of President Lyndon B. Johnson that is the cause of all of the nation’s social ills. To Murray and Rand the entire "Social Safety Net" should be dismantled.

There is nothing more dangerous than a “looks like the boy next door thrilled to take home to Daddy type” that Ryan represents; spewing out Black stereotypes for the continued indoctrination of White folk. This is a Congressman who also just happens to be on the wrong side of history and the principles of Jesus Christ! The person that Ryan is a follower of; who he is so enamored with is Charles Murray. See who Murray is at the following link, please read it:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/profiles/Charles-Murray