III: Foundation-Funded Racism: Jeremiah Wright and Michelle 107which studied the causes of the ghetto riots of the mid-1960s concluded that “white racism” was
the cause of black discontent and of the race problem in America — white racism alone, and not
slums, low wages, wretched schools, nonexistent health care, and unemployment. The Kerner
Commission report was the voice of the white and inept US ruling elite scapegoating white
workers and the white middle class for its own sorry record.
Originally, racial quotas and affirmative action were supposed to represent redress for past
discrimination. After a decade or two, that was transformed into the need to enhance diversity among a
series of artificial, bureaucratically defined “cultures,” including African-Americans, Asians and
Pacific islanders, Hispanics, Native Americans, and whites as the five official variants. Race quotas,
preferences, set-asides, offsets and the rest of the dismal apparatus of multiculturalism amount to a
sophisticated and insidious counterinsurgency strategy which fosters the co-opting of talented black,
Hispanic and other organic leaders into an artificial stratum of clients of the ruling elite.
Multiculturalism, it must be stressed again, has not led to economic development or to broad-front
improvement in the condition of any ethnic group. Multiculturalism is tokenism. Black and Hispanic
ghetto victims have not been helped by this approach. Multiculturalism has delivered material
advantages for the few, and has betrayed the hopes of the many. In the world of education, the
irrationalist attempt to justify quotas and discrimination has debased the quality of intellectual and
cultural life, which cannot escape the fact that the hopes of the majority of all ethnic origins have been
betrayed. Barack and Michelle Obama are examples of the greedy opportunists who have been the
winners under affirmative action.
SALVING THE BAD CONSCIENCE OF THE BLACK OVERCLASS
Forty years later, these policies have resulted in the creation of a black overclass made up to
some degree of the beneficiaries of affirmative action, racial quotas, set-asides, preferential
treatment in government contracts at all levels for minority-owned businesses, and the like. This
black overclass likes to portray itself as the authentic representatives of the black community as a
whole, but in reality it looks down on the black underclass caught in the cycle of ghetto inner-city
poverty as if it were a completely separate group. More accurately, the affirmative-action portion of
the black overclass regards the oppressed black underclass as a useful political commodity which
can be exploited for the purposes of obtaining more concessions from the white establishment —
concessions which should flow into the pockets of the black overclass, and never reach the
sidewalks of the inner-city ghetto. The black overclass thus combines a militant black nationalist or
black empowerment ideology with extreme forms of economic individualism, rent-seeking, and
personal aggrandizement of all kinds. It is a cynical exercise in duplicity, and is at least one of the
contributing factors for a situation in which the inner-city black ghetto is getting poorer, while the
income gap between the black overclass and the black underclass is also rapidly expanding.
What then is the psychological consequence of such a situation for the individual member of the
black overclass? The black overclass is rapidly accumulating mansions, BMWs, mink coats,
diamond jewelry, and the other apparatus of conspicuous consumption. The black ghetto victim, by
contrast, is sinking deeper and deeper into abject poverty. In the face of the situation, however, the
black overclass continues to demand additional privileges for itself, while continuing to neglect the
urgent material needs of the vast majority of the black community. The kind of black liberation
theology purveyed by Dwight Hopkins, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the Trinity United
Church of Christ provides a kind of answer to the resulting psychological tensions. The more
BMWs you have in your garage and the more mink coats you have in your closet, the more
vehemently you must complain about the Atlantic slave trade, apartheid and the Sharpeville