Is this racism?

[PanzerJaeger]

The problem with race in America today, specifically in regard to blacks, is that it has become an industry. All the legitimate goals of the Civil Rights movement were attained long ago, but the people and organizations that made that happen never went away. The movement became a livelihood. And like any industry, it must generate demand for its product. Unfortunately, that product is victimhood. Black people make hundreds of millions of dollars each year making other black people feel disenfranchised and discriminated against. Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition folks make their money shaking down big corporations while Sharpton and his people have turned a history of shameless race baiting into a lucrative protest circuit. Reverend Al has even secured himself a sweet gig on MSNBC. The NAACP is anachronistic as its name, but still fleeces black people across the country through scare tactics and contrived fights with Tea Party types. The president himself built his political career on black victimhood, and has never hesitated to invoke the language of the Civil Rights movement to serve his purposes.

But those are just the figureheads. Underneath them lies a network of people making money off of perceived white racism. From the African American studies departments that have sprung up in colleges around the country, to the government workers who toil away each day counting employees and issuing fines and threats of lawsuits to small businesses for not making racial quotas, to the community organizers in the countless umbrella groups in cities across the country working hard to make sure black people get out and vote for democrats, there are hundreds of thousands of paychecks dependent on black oppression. If that oppression goes away, it’s all gone. The money dries up. The community organizers will have to go back to flipping burgers.

We have reached a point in this country where black leaders are incentivized to promote black victimhood and white guilt. There is no money to be made in a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The truly sad thing about the current state of race relations in America is that, as always, blacks suffer disproportionately. Sure it sucks when a white kid loses his spot at his number one college to a black kid with worse grades, but he can at least settle for his number two or three picks. The black kid who decides not to even bother with college because he’s grown up immersed in a culture of victimhood that constantly reinforces the belief that he cannot be successful in anything other than sports or media because of white oppression really suffers.

There is a body of research that supports the idea that such outside pressures create a vicious cycle where black people (and other protected classes) conform to their own social expectations. In essence, black leaders have created an environment of constant perceived oppression. The struggle, which by most measures was ostensibly won many years ago, is made to be endless. (The election of the president, which was played up to white audiences during the election as a symbolic end to the movement has been used to reinforce its importantance to black audiences ever since.) They are told that they live in a country where they can be smarter and work harder than white people and still do worse and many live their lives accordingly.