Racism: There's nothing humorous about it.

By Joseph Walther

Unless you’ve been in a coma for the past 3-years or so, you’ve been hearing a lot about illegal immigration and the need to strengthen our border security. Even the most liberal-minded person in the country has to agree that this has become a serious national security issue.

However, like most other political discussions over the past fifteen years, this one has descended into the depths of the usual “righty/lefty” personal pissing contest, where the goal seems to be a competition to see which side can demean the other in the most effectively vile way.

Someone made the claim to me that it had become impossible to mention race in a discussion of the illegal immigration problem without the “far left” labeling it racist. Well, it could be racist, but maybe not. The point is that race need not be mentioned at all.

Regardless, though, given the diminished level of civil discourse in this country over the past twenty years, the mass media will emphasize the negatives of the matter by putting the worst possible spin on them.

Whenever race, alone, is the impetus for criticism, it IS racist. Relative to the immigration thing, the topic seems replete with racial innuendo. And, the stuff flies off the shelf from both sides of the political aisle.

The legal fact of the matter is that when people enter this country and reside without the proper authority, they are ILLEGALS. There are millions of them in the United States. They come from virtually every continent on the globe and consist of many different races and creeds.

I follow the illegal immigration reports on a daily basis. It is virtually impossible to find the topic discussed, outside of the most professional circles, without resorting to racial inferences, 99% of the time to Mexicans.

If you want to discuss illegal immigration, do it without making race the prime impetus. If a person wants to state that the bulk of the illegal immigrants along the California/Texas/Arizona border are Mexicans, it's not a racist statement, as long as the facts back it up.

However, blaming the "Mexicans," or any other specific race for that matter, for all of this country's illegal immigration woes IS as racist as the Ku Klux Klan blaming the blacks for every evil this country faces.

I am for stricter immigration laws. I make the point without bringing race into the discussion. Inadequate immigration laws have diminished the level of national security for all of us. I don't care where the illegals originate. It’s imperative that we, ALL of us, force our central government to secure our borders more thoroughly than in the past.

We permit the argument to descend into the pit of racism the second that we let inferences—often subtle—that it’s “race” causing the problems. It’s not. It’s the fact that we have failed to secure our borders…ALL of them. Neither race nor country of origin matter.

I’m on record as claiming that 75% of racism in this country is subtle and not intentional. All of my life, I’ve heard people preface a statement with, “I’m not a racist, but…,”then proceed to make a racist statement.

I’m 65-years-old, and I’ve heard this around 1,300 times during my adult life. The fact remains, though, that hatred based solely on race is racism, whether it comes from the Ku Klux Klan or the NAACP. Nor does it matter whether you intended it to be racist or not.

Crime statistics is another fertile breeding ground for racist conclusions. Illegal immigrants now seem to take a lion’s share of the blame in recent years. It used to be the blacks, though.

I’ve taught courses in Inferential Statistics. Black/white crime statistics have always been a prime way for me to get the point across.

For instances, in a given area, where blacks outnumber whites, it makes sense that the crime statistics will hold true along racial lines. More blacks will commit crimes and go to jail than whites. Saying so is NOT racist. It’s a simple statement of objective fact.

On the other hand, inferring that blacks are committing crime because they are black, IS racist.

If a region's population were 75% black and 25% white, I'd expect the crime statistics to break down along the same lines. More blacks committing crimes than whites, not because they are black, but because the blacks outnumber the whites 3 to 1.

For the same reason, I'd also expect to see more blacks apprehended and sent to jail than whites. But, given righteous arrests, if 90% of the apprehended blacks are convicted and go to jail, but only 10% of the apprehended whites suffer the same fate, it would seem to me that there is more at play here than legal guilt.

Overt racism in this country is a problem, but we can deal with it openly because reasonable people can see it for what it is. Conversely, subtle racism is a major problem, precisely because many of its practitioners don’t understand it as racism.

I always try to balance my articles with seriousness and humor. When it comes to subtle racism, though, there’s nothing humorous about it. I’ll be back next week.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.