by
Fred Reed

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Yes, alas,
it is true. Oh, I am a poor sinner, and have offended against the
Lord, and lived in the dark night of racism, and it presses hard
upon my soul. Oh, how it does. But now, having seen the light of
goodness, I repent and will own like a man to my transgressions.
Yes, I will say it here, before God and man:

I have believed
that things should be done without regard to race, creed, color,
sex, or national origin.

The shame,
the shame.

I will make
a clean breast of yet more. I have been against all discrimination
by race or sex, against affirmative action, racial set-asides, special
treatment for women, quotas, and favoritism by the government and
the media. Oh the guilt I feel! I have been a beast, worse even
than the Grand Flagon of the Invisible Umpire of the Ku Klux Klan.

There is still
more. I have read, and believed, and steeped myself in the pernicious
theories of known racists, such as Martin Luther King, who once
said openly, “I have a dream that my four little children will
one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color
of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Yes, yes, I
too thought this and – oh, woe – was even proud of thinking
it. I believed that behavior counted, not race – that if a
mob of teenagers gang-robbed a convenience store, they should be
horsewhipped, regardless of their race. I thought they should be
judged by the content of their characters. I could not see the injustice
of equal justice. I did not yet grasp that being against racism
was proof positive of racism.

Understanding
was not yet upon me. I thought before my salvation that people should
take responsibility for their actions. If jackbooted Nazis beat
a black unconscious because of, well, pretty much anything, I figured
the newspapers should publish their names and photographs, and the
courts should give them a minimum of thirty years, no parole, in
which to ponder the wisdom of doing it again. Crimes should not
be hidden, I believed, nor the criminals protected, according to
race. Or anything else. The same laws for everyone, I told myself.
Oh, fool that I was.

I was wrong.
I now see that a belief in equal treatment under the law is the
foulest form of racism. It discriminates unfairly against criminals.
All I can say in defense of myself is that other racists, such as
Thomas Sowell, led me into these moral swamps.

Sowell:
“Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs
against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls
or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York,
Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles and other places
across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try
to sweep these episodes under the rug, as well.”

In Washington,
where I once worked, Intensely Good people encouraged me to correct
my thoughts. For example, I was told repeatedly by my moral betters
that crime and illiteracy flourished among our black population
because blacks were deprived and oppressed. I didnÂ’t believe
it. No. Instead I hearkened to Walter
Williams, a perilous Simon Legree and known Klansman. A very
devil, he wrote “I graduated from Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin
High School in 1954. Franklin’s students were from the poorest North
Philadelphia neighborhoods – such as the Richard Allen housing
project, where I lived – but there were no policemen patrolling
the hallways. There were occasional after-school fights – rumbles,
we called them – but within the school, there was order. Students
didn’t use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.”
He also asserts that the kids could all read. Racism, pure and simple.

This, note,
was when discrimination and oppression were real. So why, I asked
myself, heartless racist that I was, canÂ’t black kids read
and behave now when discrimination favors them?

Yes, I know,
now I know, when it is too late, that only a racist could think
that black children could learn to read, and therefore damned well
ought to if other people were paying for it. You see, I was in those
days socially dangerous without realizing it. Being a racist, I
thought that everyone could learn to read, obey the laws, avoid
beating people into brain damage, and behave civilly.

Now, permit
me to turn to the environmental consequences of racial virtue. This
is a more serious matter than many know. It is a question of clogging.
When I was in the nation´s capital, a strange, gummy, yellowish
substance began washing up on the banks of the Potomac. It killed
fish. Chemical analysis showed it to be PSAG, Polymerized Self-Admiring
Goodness.

The sources
seemed to be the neighborhoods around the Washington Post,
and the socially conscious regions of upper Connecticut Avenue and
Montgomery County. I began to study the racially virtuous whites
who lived there.

I found that
those who were most vehemently Self-Admirigly Good regarding blacks
didnÂ’t know any blacks. They didnÂ’t send their children
to the cityÂ’s black schools. They stayed out of black neighborhoods.
I had known some of them for twenty years and never been with them
in a restaurant with more than a token black or two. Thais, Chinese,
Italians, Salvadorans, yes. Blacks, no. They had no black friends
that I saw. I didnÂ’t ask them when they had last gone to dinner
with a black family. Being a racist, I didnÂ’t think I needed
to ask.

The devastation
wrought by PSAG. Fred with the last alligator of Lake Chapala, MexicoÂ’s
largest lake. A lot of gringos live in the hills above the lake,
many of them self-admiringly good, and PSAG washes into the lake
in the rainy season. Note that the alligator appears to be gagging.

In fact, these
Righteous Washingtonians seemed to have no interest in blacks at
all, other than avoiding them, but just wanted to feel good about
themselves. If I mentioned that the black schools of Washington
were horrible, which they were and are, the response was to call
me a racist. Which I was, of course. But how does that help black
kids who, generation after generation, are being turned into adults
whose only ability is to produce similar generations?

Being deeply
in error before my enlightenment, I mistook their hypocritical condescension
to blacks for hypocritical condescension to blacks. This latter
is a known ingredient of Polymerized Self-Admiring Goodness. Everything
fits.

Now I shall
go and slit my wrists.

July
2, 2012

Fred Reed
is author of Nekkid
in Austin: Drop Your Inner Child Down a Well, A
Brass Pole in Bangkok: A Thing I Aspire to Be, Curmudgeing
Through Paradise: Reports from a Fractal Dung Beetle, Au
Phuc Dup and Nowhere to Go: The Only Really True Book About Viet
Nam, and A
Grand Adventure: Wisdom’s Price-Along with Bits and Pieces about
Mexico. Visit his
blog.

Copyright
© 2012 Fred Reed

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