Who was it who said, “if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall”?
Ronald Reagan?
Newt Gingrich?
Charles Murray?
Not even close.
It was Frederick Douglass!
This was part of a speech in which Douglass also said: “Everybody has asked the question...
‘What shall we do with the Negro?’
I have had but one answer from the beginning.
Do nothing with us!
Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.
Do nothing with us!”
Frederick Douglass had achieved a deeper understanding in the 19th century than any of the black
“leaders” of today.
Those whites who feel a need to do something with blacks and for blacks have been some
of the most dangerous “friends” of blacks.
Academia is the home of many such “friends,” which is why there are not only double standards
of admissions to colleges but also in some places double standards in grading.
The late David Riesman called it “affirmative grading.”
A professor at one of California’s state universities where black students are allowed
to graduate on the basis of easier standards put it bluntly: “We are just lying to these
black students when we give them degrees.”
That lie is particularly deadly when the degree is a medical degree, authorizing someone to
treat sick people or perform surgery on children.
For years, Dr. Patrick Chavis was held up as a shining example of the success of affirmative
action, for he was admitted to medical school as a result of minority preferences and went
back to the black community to practice medicine.
In fact, he was publicly praised by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights—just two weeks
before his license was suspended, after his patients died under conditions that brought
the matter to the attention of the Medical Board of California.
An administrative law judge referred to Chavis’ “inability to perform some of the most basic
duties required of a physician.”
A year later, after a fuller investigation, his license was revoked.
Those who had for years been using Chavis as a shining example of the success of affirmative
action suddenly changed tactics and claimed that an isolated example of failure proved
nothing.
Sadly, Chavis was not an isolated example.
When a professor at the Harvard Medical School declared publicly, back in the 1970s, that
black students were being allowed to graduate from that institution without meeting the
same standards as others, he was denounced as a “racist” for saying that it was cruel
to “allow trusting patients to pay for our irresponsibility”—trusting black patients,
in many cases.
Why do supposedly responsible people create such dangerous double standards?
Some imagine that they are being friends to blacks by lowering the standards for them.
Some don’t think that blacks have what it takes to meet real standards, and that colleges
and universities will lose their “diversity”—and perhaps federal money with it—if they don’t
lower the standards, in order to get an acceptable racial body count.
My own experience as a teacher was that black students would meet higher standards if you
refused to lower the standards for them.
This was not the royal road to popularity, either with the students themselves or with
the “friends” of blacks on the faculty and in the administration.
But, when the dust finally settled, the students met the standards.
We have gotten so used to abysmal performances from black students, beginning in failing
ghetto schools, that it is hard for some to believe that black students once did a lot
better than they do today, at least in places and times with good schools.
As far back as the First World War, black soldiers from New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois,
and Ohio scored higher on mental tests than white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky,
and Mississippi.
During the 1940s, black students in Harlem schools had test scores very similar to those
of white working-class students on the lower east side of New York.
Sometimes the Harlem scores were a little higher or a little lower, but they were never
miles behind, the way they are today in many ghetto schools.
If blacks could do better back when their opportunities were worse, why can’t today’s
ghetto students do better?