Their leaders talk a good game. They promote themselves, hide behind rhetoric, and when the time comes, they do nothing for their own people unless their own personal benefit is included. Unknowingly, their behavior supports the agenda of the racist councilmember and the agenda of the enemies of this country. The enemy from within is present in ourselves as well as in our country. People often wallow in self-defeating prophesies, in fear of success, or self-induced impediment. It’s not easy to see, but we find personal ego and fair rivalry in competition combined with envy. They seldom recognize personal resentment which says, “I made it this far, I don’t want you to take my place or diminish my gains,” while pretending to fight for a mutual cause. 

Worse yet is the evolution of good laws created from the Civil Rights Act, an Act drafted by Republicans, then opposed by Democrats, and finally signed by a Democrat President. Some people claim that at that time ideologies were shifting between Republicans and Democrats, north and south, liberal and conservative, rich and poor, slavery and non-slavery, rich landowners and laborers, and the left was beginning to reach out for control, by using only lip-service intent to make it illegal to discriminate based on gender, race, and ethnicity. The congressional members that enacted the Civil Rights Act had reasons to believe it would be a way to redress past oppression and injustices. To a great extent, it did. However, if we look closer, the Democrats took over ownership, and with implementations and amendments to the Law, have diverted from the original intent. Now they have delegated a permanent favored status to those they now qualified as victims for being considered disadvantaged groups, or minorities. Here I take notice. Such grouping and distortion resulted in what originally may have been palatable, but is now expanding into a Frankenstein; Affirmative Action for example. Furthermore, to gain power in numbers and a few desired perks, all Hispanics are thrown into a melting pot for entitlements based on their favored victim status of ‘minorities’. Thus, they victimize everyone equally and deprive real personal power of anyone who does not conform or plays the game. Could the same, or better, educational benefits have been obtained through much more equitable and uplifting means? Yes! By using no victimization, please. I don’t see that gains have been made in large or small Democrat controlled cities compensating such amount of money, words and posturing allocated to improving civil rights.

There is power in these type of victim numbers but most often only for the leaders and politicians. The rest of the victimized minorities only get handouts, with well-advertised exceptions and surprisingly many seem happy with it! It becomes a numbers game, which is based on deceit, and we fall for it. There is only one political party that does this, the other one is mute, (fearfully castrated?), worthless in dealing with this distortion, thinking aimlessly that to each his own. After initial success from taking over claims to the previously opposed Civil Rights Law, Democrats use it now to further their economic agenda. This comment comes not from a dislike of Democrats, but from observation of the results.

A policy intended to remedy institutional prejudices is often soon distorted to replace one prejudice for another. Policies are necessary, but policies often lose their way because the solution remains at the individual performance, and by the educational effort, and not by pretending to treat all ‘lesser’ groups on unequal ‘lesser’ basis, and then raising the role of creating group inequities by favoritism and agenda driven selection. Again, the best example of this distortion is Affirmative Action.

Ray’s keen observation pointed this out to me one day. “It is inherently patronizing to assume that all Hispanics are deprived or victimized.”  

At that time, I thought that was a stupid comment, but then what happens if we succeeded at raising the standard of living of Barrio residents to a healthy normal level, but if they can’t shed society’s labels of minorities, victims, disadvantaged. They will still be treated with demeaning prejudice by their own and others and the elite when we could have been a society envisioned in not doing so anymore, a society ready to eradicate social discrimination once and for all. Worse still, what if the minority buys into believing it themselves? What a catastrophe! It would erode their basic strength, their inner pride, the foundation of their power, and all our efforts. What an impairment this minority label has become! You often wonder if it’s not done on purpose. Piss on it! Don’t believe anyone who says you can’t raise yourself up by your bootstraps.

Some people may criticize me for saying what follows, but I have seen healthy, helpful, and selfless support for such minorities coming from members of what forms the majority. Then without distinguishing between the real and the fake, they get badmouthed with negative generalities and epitaphs, such as racist or sexist which stifle the desire of moral people to continue doing the right thing. In the future, even to good people in the majority will be denigrated as racist. This will complete a vicious cycle back to them, and will stop any effort for solutions. There is a warped and perverted strategy that reads, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” A modern way of organized efforts to create conflict, very effective, a negative move, as we will see used on me.[xvi] Behind all the noise, supporters of good causes are about equal in numbers as detractors, but one side is louder than the other. The media fails us grotesquely here, as they are on the side of the loud ones, the obfuscators.

I was often unaware of support from strange places. The color of people is not in my observational skills as related to behavior. I only observe performance. It was thanks to Ray pointing it out to me that, that contrary to my previous statement, I noticed how a black council member who happened to be a Republican was the only person in the City Council to speak on behalf of the mostly Hispanic rehab crew. Consequently, I noticed over time how black Republicans politically are fairer than just about anybody. Contrarily, black Democrats will badmouth black Republicans WITH IMPUNITY, but the reverse does not happen. I had seldom noticed that before, but now I was noting it more carefully.

To avoid inconsistencies, present among well-meaning people, myself included, to avoid delusion of power, like in gender gaps, I had appointed Ellen and not me as the Director and set equal pay for all the TBA staff.

However, in this world, the worst culprit of delusion is the racial pimp or the poverty pimp who is as insidious as prostitution pimps. These are people who make money from the misfortune of their own race. Men and women who show up on TV, at every tragedy, and deceptively claim to represent the victims while raking in loads of money or votes and enriching themselves with extortion of the gullible. You’ll know them for they will accuse me and others of racism and worse. As I say these words, I am conscious of an old saying which states that when you point a finger at someone, the other three of your fingers are pointing back at you. One of my rules is to clean my own house first, and to avoid falling into the trap of assuming power, is why I appointed Ellen as Director and set the salary of the staff at the same pay. Equality. Follow the money. I was determined never to use the power others had given me for my own personal benefit. Sharing power is crucial in many obscure ways. In time, the construction rehab crews I hired would make higher salaries than my own, and theirs would continue to increase at different rates based on merit and performance. Here is equity, not equality. To get to that point, running out of money again, I needed to get a job once more.