Killing Them With Kindness
Treat each other as equals. Don't overcompensate.
Killing Them With Kindness
“Overcompensating means trying too hard to correct a problem, which can lead to creating a new issue. It often involves excessive actions to make up for feelings of inadequacy or to balance out a perceived deficiency.” --AI Assist
That must be a correct definition, because AI is so smart.
So what, you ask? Why write about it? Well, what if people banded together to overcompensate, thereby destroying entire cultures as a result. The Nazis felt that they had been abused both by the German leadership, which had gotten them into WWI, and by Germany’s current adversaries, England, France, etc. The Nazis were right, actually. But they couldn’t just address the issues directly, they overcompensated. We know how that worked out.
The Salem witch trials took place as people were continually concerned that their less-than-pure hearts might condemn them all to hell. It was believed at the time that entire communities might all go to hell as a result of the actions of the few. You could see it coming. The populace became concerned that they weren’t pure enough to escape eternal damnation. In order for the community to escape the throes of hell, it must purge itself of each and every evil person. We know how that worked out.
In the French revolution, well, in the French revolution there was a tad bit of overcompensation.
Whenever you see a massive movement, consider overcompensation.
In the South, after the civil war, Southerners were PO’d. Their very lifestyle had been repudiated, and they were forced into a Northern system that was quite foreign and offensive to them. The South was used to a top-down aristocratic system. There were accepted levels of hierarchy. It wasn’t impossible for a black family to sit at higher levels, but they had to accept the hierarchy, looking down on lower class blacks. Many of the overseers on the plantation who cracked the whip over slaves, were slaves themselves. That’s hierarchy for you.
After the civil war, all Southerners were forced to see blacks not just as political but also as social equals. Many blacks were themselves upset at this repudiation of their culture. I don’t say this with sympathy, but as an observation. None of this was black people’s fault, but blacks paid the greater price in overcompensation, in the form of the KKK. The KKK was southern white overcompensation for the intrusion of northern values into their system. The irony is, prior to the civil war, blacks and whites largely had peaceful, agreeable relations, with the caveat that blacks must accept their second-class status.
It must be difficult for an entire class of people who have looked upon themselves as innately superior to the lower classes to find themselves in an atmosphere of equality. Imagine. Many in the lower class were upset as well. They felt comfortable where they were. Now they must find a new place to be, culturally and even physically. Southern social and political leaders found that both they and their views were persona non grata in their own land. What to do? Overcompensate.
It started with the KKK, but eventually the KKK was busted. Now what? No, don’t give up your feelings of superiority, simply rework those feelings into outwardly acceptable bigotry. That really wasn’t much of a reach. The Antebellum south had always had kind feelings for their servants and slaves. As long as they knew their place and did as told, they would be treated well. One hundred years later, slavery was long gone, the KKK was in shambles, but the two-tier culture was alive and healthy. Racists had gone from the Antebellum practice of treating blacks and other poor with kindness, even as they oppressed them, to persecuting and terrorizing them under the KKK. But now that the KKK was crushed, the racists went back to oppressing blacks with kindness.
How does that work? How can that be? Don’t racists hate that other race and persecute them violently? Only sometimes. The rest of the time they merely subjugate them, make them understand that their only chance of a peaceful life is to comply. The only chance of the subjugated person advancing in life is to willingly comply, even to the point of thanking and praising their oppressors. [Who remembers Patty Hearst and the Stokholm syndrome?]
In such tranquil circumstances, how do you tell who the true oppressors really are? Simple. Don’t comply. Those who really don’t care whether you comply or not are not the problem. Those who become outraged that you would disrupt their system are the oppressors. They’ll tell you that they aren’t, but they are. They will tell you that they have nothing but the kindest thoughts for the minority. And they do, as long as that minority does as they are told.
The USA of today is full of racists, but they aren’t who you think they are. I am a racist, according to some, because I insist that blacks are intellectually and culturally as capable as any other race of maintaining their own culture. I make excuses for no one. Not myself; no one. If a grown adult who should know better does something wrong, well that’s that. I don’t believe, as some do, that a white person should have known better, but black people are too unintelligent and culturally backward to understand. Common mythology, that some people’s ancestors being slaves 200 years ago precludes personal responsibility in the present is, say it with me, overcompensation. BTW, I have just read Adam Coleman’s “The Children We Left Behind”. Coleman makes an irrefutable case that the biggest problem facing today’s society is not racism, but the breakdown of the family. (If you won’t take a white guys word for this, maybe you’ll take a black guy’s word for it). And feel free to read anything by Thomas Sowell. He, too, has had it to here with the mythology of black disadvantage.
Consider this quote, which I am attributing to no specific person.
“I may be a little bit racist, but I’m working on it. I won’t hold those black people to white people standards. They are and have been a disadvantaged people, and we must not expect too much of them.”
Overcompensation. If you have ever said those words or thought any such thing, you are not just a little bit racist, you are racism on steroids. You are the problem. If you are black, and buy into that crap, you are not free, you are a self-declared second class serf of the progressive elite. If you are a ‘successful’ black progressive you are, in fact, an overseer, just as in the slave days.
In 2000, George Bush talked of the “…soft bigotry of lowered expectations.” He was not conjecturing; he was observing reality. I took a graduate class in the 1970s in which a black student was clearly plagiarizing, giving a presentation in class where he couldn’t even pronounce some of the technical terms and didn’t entirely comprehend what he was reading. I would never have gotten away with that. But I didn’t resent the guy, I felt sorry for him. He would likely never rise higher than the lowered expectations of progressive racism.
I saw a movie, in the 1980’s. Unfortunately, I can’t think of the name, and can’t find it. I suspect it’s been pulled from circulation. The movie features a black student in a community college. He gets good grades, gets along with the teachers, and they all encourage him. But when he applies for transfer to a four-year school, nobody will accept him. He finds out that the teachers have been ‘shining him on’; they have been giving false encouragement, giving good grades for substandard work. The teachers’ encouragement and tolerance for inferior work have set him up for failure. Today, in reality, black students are regularly accepted to college, and nearly as readily drop out after a semester or two. I think I know why.
Believe it or not, I often join a discussion group consisting almost entirely of progressives, and me. We are all white. Occasionally someone will observe this and suggest that we should find some black people to invite to our group. I in turn suggest that we find some black people and ask to join their group. The progressives invariably fail to get my point.
If you think of blacks as a different group of people, apart from any other race; if you think it’s racist to expect equal performance from blacks relative to what you expect from anyone else, you are a racist. Stop overcompensating.
I, at least to some extent, share these sentiments with Billy Preston. In his 1974 song, “Nothing from Nothing”, Billy declares that he is a “one man army in the war on poverty.” Listen to it, and imagine Billy following along with some progressive social program.
The story you tell about the black student in the graduate course is very sad. No one is fairly served in a situation like that. The same with the student who found that his professors were "shining him on." Lowered expectations based on race are, as you said, a form of racism. Agree strongly with your view that the disintegration of the family is at the core of the problem.
Very good! I always like Thomas Sowell, as well as Walter E. Williams.