America's Racial Problems Will End when Black Americans Start Idolizing Walter E. Williams instead of LeBron James

Role models matter.

I saw this quote recently and thought it was an excellent extension of my post about the incidents in Ohio. Walter E. Williams is one of those Black Americans who should be idolized by the African-American community, instead of basketball players and rappers.

Sadly, he didn't live in a $37 million mansion with a collection of supercars, like nitwit LeBron does, so he has a somewhat lesser popular appeal.

Social problems of any community start at home, in families. Income status is not a major obstacle because everybody started poor once. As long as the work ethic is there anybody can improve their living standards. Strong familial relations are likely one of the main reasons for great leaps made by Asians of various origins all over the world. There are Chinatowns in many Western cities and they're not known to be ghetto no-go zones. When Koreans famously used guns in LA in 1992 it was to defend their stores from being looted - not to do the looting. Asians made it even to Eastern Europe, with tens of thousands of Vietnamese settling in Poland, starting up their small businesses, climbing the social ladder successfully (I had a Vietnamese friend in high school whose work ethic was better than any of the rest of us).

It's easy to blame everybody else for your perils - you don't have to do anything to claim victimhood. Taking responsibility for your own life is something entirely different. Social problems in the USA will not go away if billions of dollars are transferred in some "reparations" for historical oppression. Nor will they disappear if you choose to discriminate others to elevate the poor. Affirmative action hurts everyone and only worsens the fractures.

Equality of outcomes is an idiotic communist trope. Equality of opportunities is an unattainable, Utopian idea because every person is different by design. The only equality that exists is equality of responsibilities - which is the source of personal agency required for people to lift themselves up.

And this is what seems to be lacking in certain communities. People need to be taught it's their responsibility to improve their own lives, that it's perfectly possible to do it, that it starts with taking care of your children's bedtime and homework - and that these ideas are not some supremacist oppression.

Unless that changes, nothing else will.