White in Philadelphia
ROBERT HUBER writes in Philadelphia Magazine on “Being White in Philly,” a majority nonwhite city. Huber describes — blandly and without indignation — the squalor and fear that are common in many parts of the city due to black crime and negligence. He says whites deliberately adopt a sunny attitude. They live in denial, never stating the obvious and removing what is disturbing from their thoughts. Huber deserves credit for admitting that many things are left unsaid, but he then predictably concludes that the real problem is that whites and blacks don’t try hard enough to connect. If only whites could manage to engage blacks in “dialogue,” everything would be better.
That’s all liberals have to offer on the subject of race: endless “dialogue,” a merry-go-round of talk that leads to nothing more than dizzying, incapacitating white guilt and confusion. It inevitably leads to one conclusion: whites are to blame in some form or another for black dysfunction. Dialogue is an exercise in escapism.
Huber’s lengthy piece includes an interview with “Jen,” a white woman from Fairmount who criticizes her white neighbors for refusing to send their children to an elementary school that is 74 percent black. In the comments section following the article, we find the honesty that Huber never approaches himself. A reader writes that “white peoples brains would blow up” if anyone spoke the truth about the “overt disdain” many blacks possess toward whites. He writes: (more…)
