Obama's Anger

Ed Kaitz writes at The American Thinker about the recent speech given by Barack Obama concerning the now infamous remarks of preacher Jeremiah Wright. Kaitz tells the story of how he met a black psychologist on a commercial flight some years ago and the conversation that they had and how that conversation helps us to understand the cancerous effects of the preachers of race hate like Rev. Wright and how that message keeps black people locked in a cycle of failure of their own making.

In the story Kaitz tells us about immigrants from Vietnam who came to America with little money, no knowledge of English and few connections, but within a generation had managed to achieve the American dream by dominating the fishing industry in and around New Orleans. This is the same New Orleans of course in which many black natives sat and waited for someone else to save them as Katrina bore down on them. The difference between the attitude of the Vietnamese immigrants and that of the native blacks living there, and elsewhere around the country is attitude. And it makes all the difference.

Back in the late 1980s I was on a plane flying out of New Orleans and sitting next to me was a rather interesting and, according to Barack Obama, unusual black man. Friendly, gregarious, and wise beyond his years, we immediately hit it off. I had been working on Vietnamese commercial fishing boats for a few years based in southern Louisiana. The boats were owned by the recent wave of Vietnamese refugees who flooded into the familiar tropical environment after the war. Floating in calm seas out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, I would hear tearful songs and tales from ex-paratroopers about losing brothers, sisters, parents, children, lovers, and beautiful Vietnam itself to the communists.

In Bayou country I lived on boats and in doublewide trailers, and like the rest of the Vietnamese refugees, I shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of rice. When they arrived in Louisiana the refugees had no money (the money that they had was used to bribe their way out of Vietnam and into refugee camps in Thailand), few friends, and a mostly unfriendly and suspicious local population.

They did however have strong families, a strong work ethic, and the "Audacity of Hope." Within a generation, with little or no knowledge of English, the Vietnamese had achieved dominance in the fishing industry there and their children were already achieving the top SAT scores in the state.

While I had been fishing my new black friend had been working as a prison psychologist in Missouri, and he was pursuing a higher degree in psychology. He was interested in my story, and after about an hour getting to know each other I asked him point blank why these Vietnamese refugees, with no money, friends, or knowledge of the language could be, within a generation, so successful. I also asked him why it was so difficult to convince young black men to abandon the streets and take advantage of the same kinds of opportunities that the Vietnamese had recently embraced.

His answer, only a few words, not only floored me but became sort of a razor that has allowed me ever since to slice through all of the rhetoric regarding race relations that Democrats shovel our way during election season:

"We're owed and they aren't."

In short, he concluded, "they're hungry and we think we're owed. It's crushing us, and as long as we think we're owed we're going nowhere."

This idea of permanent victimhood and the ideology of entitlement has destroyed the black community in this country for the last several generations. And the current popularity of Barack Obama among blacks is not a good sign for the future. For if blacks in America are responding to his message of class envy and the entitlement mentality, then the failure of much of the black population in this country will continue into the foreseeable future. In this country there are opportunities everywhere you look if you have eyes to see. And the experience of Vietnamese immigrant proves that they exist for those who are hungry enough to take advantage of them. But if you are wearing the blinders of racial hate and envy you will be unable to see them and unlikely to pull yourself up to the next level of achievement.