Absurd Texts of American History (V, a): Paul Harvey

The next few posts in the Absurd Texts series come from the book You Said It, Paul Harvey. Complied by Mrs. Paul Harvey. It has no publication date but I think it is about 1974 or so. The first post comes from "If Every Black Turned White Tonight"

If Every Black Turned White Tonight

"If every black turned white tonight, tomorrow morning we would find most of our problems unresolved.

Statistically, we would have less crime--but we would still have too much. The percentage of whites committing crimes is about five times greater than the white population increase.

We would still have unemployment in the midst of plentiful jobs, because 40% of the unemployed are white.

We would still have mothers bearing illegitimate children to make themselves eligible for increasing welfare handouts.

We would still have unwon wars overseas and resultant domestic restiveness.

Many Americans have been allowing themselves to adopt the ancient scapegoat concept, imagining that we can absolve ourselves of our own sins by blaming everything on the blacks. We can't.

Indeed, the black-white relationship in the United States, in perspective, amounts to a very commendable amalgamation.

Historically, many of the world's diverse cultures have not been able to pull so close together in 2,000 years as our black-white cultures have in 200 years.

Britain, for all her centuries of involvement with African and Asiatics, is less close to them than we Americans are to one another.

That we have domestic black-white strife involving factions of our black-white populations should not be nearly so surprising as the larger fact that we have come so far so fast in providing equality of opportunity and mutual social acceptance.

I do not intend to try to defend the so-called black "militants."

It is too obvious that many of them have a chip on their shoulders, resenting their own blackness--and that they use blackness as a catalyst for mobilizing resentment, restiveness and rebellion.

They are as wrong to blame all their troubles on their color as we are to blame all our troubles on them.

That's why I say every black could turn white tonight and tomorrow morning we would still have legions of lazy Americans demanding more for working less.

We would still have large segments of our college and university populations going to "pot."

We would still have young Americans burning our flag because they resent the maladministration of some of our foreign affairs and foolishly blame our ism.

We would still have rebellious youths growing long hair and wearing dirty clothes in rebellion against a generation of parents who drink and say "don't" and smoke and say "don't" and who denounce misusing sex while they do.

If every black should turn white tonight, we'd still have too many hungry and unenlightened Mexicans, Indians, and shantytown whites.

We'd still have public nudity, lurid movies and putrid magazines feeding carnal appetites of corruptible Caucasians.

So most of what ails us is not so simply dismissed as a matter of black and white.

If every black turned white tonight, tomorrow morning we would still have most of our problems...

And so would they!"

Good Day!