Consider this observation from a political scientist, Michael Cromartie, who works at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
“A lot of the problems…do not have political and legal solutions. They are really moral, cultural problems that cannot be addressed by legislation. And I think that’s going to create a lot of frustration for people because they’ll want a political solution to a problem that’s really moral and cultural.”
The “problems” to which Cromartie referred are rampant in Black communities. They include babies born out of wedlock, single-parent households, criminal activity, a lack of formal education, and a generalized rejection of the values of hard work, respect for the law and for the rights of others.
These problems are readily apparent to Black activists, but they tend to blame them on external factors, such as racism and capitalism. As such, these Black activists believe (or claim to believe), the problems can be solved through political and legal activities. But we in Oakland know, after more than a generation of such activity, that political and legal actions of the kind promulgated by Black activists do not work. If anything, they make matters even worse, as we witness what has happened to Oakland since the 1960s and 1970s. The problems that plague the Black community are only worsening.
And yet these problems actually do have solutions. They lie in the moral and cultural sphere, not in the legal or political spheres. Human beings ultimately are free agents who, unless they’re severely mentally ill, make decisions about how to live their lives and what to do (and what not to do) at every moment. The fact that we have free will places a dramatic, somewhat terrifying responsibility upon us. At every moment of our lives we can choose to exert malign, baleful impacts, or benign, constructive ones. Everyone knows, in his heart of hearts, the difference between right and wrong. One can justify anything to oneself, including the most heinous acts of predation and murder, because the mind has an amazing ability to fool itself. But no amount of political activity, no laws crafted by the legislatures of mankind, can induce an individual to act in accordance with the Golden Rule. Only morality can do that.
When morality is folded collectively into the general population, we call it culture. But the same is true when immorality becomes part of the fabric of that population. Culture, then, can be moral or immoral. Clearly, culture can change, even in relatively brief periods of time. We saw a huge culture shift in the 1960s as the American people widely agreed on the purposes and means of the Civil Rights movement. We saw a similar shift with regard to gay rights, when the American public evolved from widespread homophobia to an acceptance of gay rights. So cultural shifts can happen.
What is needed now is a cultural shift within the Black community. Single motherhood must be perceived as what it is: antithetical to health and safety. Dropping out of school must be fiercely resisted by positive elements in the Black community: pastors, responsible adults, mentors. Peer pressure must be applied against youth who clearly are headed in the wrong direction: prison or death. The passion of Asian youth provides a good role model of what Black youth should aspire toward. A fierce respect for the law and for the rights of others must inspire Black youth, as it inspires youth of my own Jewish culture.
Why then do Black activists continue to insist that their community’s problems can be solved by legal and political means? Are they blind to morality? I’m ready to accept the truth—hard, bitter though it may be—that many Black activists are literally immoral. Some people are. History is littered with asocials who caused immeasurable harm due to their immorality, or amorality as the case may be. A Carroll Fife is amoral because she is unable to see the horrors that her political ideology has caused in her own Black community—horrors then launched upon the greater community we call Oakland. Sheng Thao is amoral because she saw only one thing—personal gain—which she prioritized over the oath she took when she became mayor. Cat Brooks is amoral because she advances an insane movement that gives birth only to crime and Black resentment of White people and Asians.
When Black activists are ready to make the move away from political lies and towards rehabilitation and redemption, let them denounce, by name, these nemeses of culture.
Steve Heimoff