As far as examples of the attitude:
Even the incidents he sees as uncomfortable results of race relations: A white girl loses her blackberry and facebooks people asking people if they knew who took it. If I got such a message, I would probably be insulted too. But because the girl who was insulted was black, it's seen as a racial incident. The teacher who inadvertently creates a to do by calling a child "boy" - the boy subsequently becomes incorrigible because he thinks no one can touch him. That incorrigibility due to percieved immunity is certainly not a racial trait, which I'm sure teachers from Scarsdale and Newport Beach would happily confirm.
His overpolite-ness when encountering black people in the Wawa: that's no one's issue but his.
His description of the "seemingly permanent black underclass." That in itself is a value judgment. We all know now that the underclass today is pretty permanent. Whether you are black or white, we know that if you are in the underclass you have smaller chance of escaping from it than at any point in our history. That isn't a function of the "black underclass" or of blackness. That's a function of the underclass, because we have destroyed social mobility in our country.
The BMW law school Russian woman: "Blacks use skin color as an excuse." The contractor's Panamanian wife saying "there is a moral poverty among inner city blacks." Don't even get me started. Have we not gotten to a point where we can dispense with these ignorant spoutings as valid discussion? Is the writer really giving these arguments credence by putting them forward as valid? As I say. I am often in these neighborhoods. I see bad people and good people. In Scarsdale and Newport Beach, there are people with moral poverty, just as there are in the neighborhoods in the article. Moral poverty is not a characteristic of any group, but any group has members who are morally poor. To paint "inner city blacks" with that brush, or to quote someone who does as having a valid point of view, is ridiculous.
I could go on.
But thanks for the correction. I'll edit.
= new reply since forum marked as read
