Ethicalego Speaks

The Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama dispute about racial issues follows the normal American trend to distort discussions about race. Those distortions result in a flood of inconsequential written and oral exchanges about most racial incidents.

In his Fathers Day speech, presidential candidate Barack Obama lambasted African-American fathers for abandoning their parental duties. In addition, he indicted failures in African-American culture for this and other problems in the African-American community. Civil rights advocate Jesse Jackson was indignant about the tone of Obama's comments charging that he talked down to black people in his speech.

Obama provides no factual support for his claim that characteristics in African-American culture are responsible for African-American males abandoning their parental duties and for causing other problems in the African-American community. Lacking this factual support, his conclusions are worthless.

Exactly what does Obama claim and what does he provide for evidence? He claims or implies there are African-Americans with an African-American culture that affects their values and conduct. The support for his claim that there is an African-American culture is his claim there are African-Americans. His proof there are African-Americans is his claim there is an African-American culture. In other words, he uses his claim to prove that his conclusion about the claim is true. This is circular reasoning.

I could as easily claim that the United States has more fathers who abandon their parental duties than China does, because space aliens abduct and return American males for periods, but not Chinese males. The evidence that this is true is that there are space aliens who abduct American males.

Prudent people should reject my unsupported claim that space alien abductions are the cause for American fatherless children. Instead, they should look at the fact that those males in a free, industrialized society like the United States abandon parental responsibilities at higher rates than males in a controlled society like China do and accept this as the better reason for the condition.

Likewise, prudent people should reject the unsupported claim that the characteristics of a separate African-American culture causes family, social and economic problems black-labeled Americans face in society. Instead, they should conclude the plentiful record of continuous social inequality that people with a certain skin color endure in American society is the more likely cause for those conditions.

How and when did African-American culture evolve if it exists and what are its fundamental characteristics? Society needs to answer those questions to conclude if racism or traits of racial cultures cause the unequal economic status and lost opportunity some Americans suffer because of their skin color. Finding this answer is as important for society as it is for individuals labeled minorities.

For eighteen years, writers warned about expanding predatory lending practices for home mortgages that targeted black-labeled and Latino homebuyers. However, the public and government officials showed little interests in the problem. They had less interest after defenders of the practice suggested that it was not racism, but African-American and Latino irresponsible spending habits that created the need for those higher rates and fees.

The collapsing housing market around 2007 forced government officials to look for a cause and to look again at those predatory lending practices. They found more of them and that they had expanded to include more people from all of America’s racial and ethnic categories. Obviously, problem minority spending habits were not the reason for predatory lending policies. Probably, government officials could have prevented or lessened the conditions that led to the housing market collapse and banking crisis if they protected all Americans economic interests equally during the 1990s.

This painful episode shows how people in a free society open the way for harm to them when they refuse to protect all peoples’ right to fair treatment. I expect Americans learned this lesson from their painful financial losses except those continuing Obama remarks about African-American cultural irresponsibility and McCain’s concurring silence show otherwise.

Contact Syndicated columnist Kenneth Brooks P.O. B 882, Vallejo, CA 94590, opinion@ethicalego.com