Y-OW-O-O-L!
Dear White Americans concerned about being replaced by Blacks:
I address you as a fellow American, as a self-appointed Black American representative.
It seems many of you are concerned about being “replaced.” Meaning overtaken, sup-planted… As corporate chiefs and managers, professionals, persons seen repairing roadways?
I guess persons privileged, accustomed to… “I’m Number One” status, I guess.
By actions of a crowd claiming to represent you on January 6, 2021, and actions taken by persons claiming to represent you respecting restricting voting rights, it doesn’t seem you’re concerned about being replaced as stewards (persons concerned with preserving) of American democratic ideals like one person, one vote. ??
Y-OW-O-O-L!
Whatever. No matter. I’m here to say you’ve nothing to fear from the Black American segment of the population respecting being replaced. No worries!
As for Browns—Hispanics, and including East Indian and Pakistani immigrants—or “model minority” Asians, I’ll let them speak for themselves.
I have a strong feeling (very strong feeling!) that if Blacks are absented from your calcu-lation, your fever will greatly subside. Which would go a long way toward healing the nation.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
I’m 74. I’ve been observing the Black-White American scene since it was the Ne-gro/Colored-White American scene. I’ve lived in Tallahassee, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Connecticut, Brooklyn, and a Pittsburgh suburb. I traveled to 25 American cities on business for over 30 years. I KNOW AMERICA! And I know Black folk.
And, of course, I know YOU. We Black folk wouldn’t have survived this long without carefully studying and making allowance for you. (Yes. And your privilege.)
Please allow me to educate you.
First things first. Same as most Americans, I bet you watch a lot of TV. The ones among you really concerned about Blacks maybe more than most. Twas a time when the only Blacks you saw on TV were Amos ‘n Andy and Step-in-fetch-it. Remember them, you older folk?
You laughed. No threat there.
But now. OMG! Blacks everywhere on television! Can’t believe it myself. Constant commercials with Black folk. Happy, smiling, prosperous Black folk driving shiny new cars, enjoying backyard barbecues with smiling White neighbors, hanging with White friends in hip urban watering holes.
Even—shudder!—interracial couples. I suspect that bugs you. Probably bugs some Blacks. There are even White grandparents with mixed-race grandchildren.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
Watching today’s TV, I can understand your angst. But YO! (Black term. You probably know it. Means attention! Listen up!)
IT’S ALL HOLLYWOOD MAKE BELIEVE! Liberal Hollywood’s vision of ideal America. If you’re suspicious of Hollywood, you’re correct! They do have a kumbaya agenda.
But on Planet Real America… It ain’t close to happening. NOT REAL!
Well, okay. Let’s acknowledge what IS real respecting challenge to White supremacy, even replacement. Football and basketball. Blacks are only 13 or 14 percent of the population. But, yo. We indeed kick White butt where football and basketball are concerned.
Again, however, blame television for 24/7 throwing it in your face. College or pros, mostly Blacks are hooping it up, with, here, there, a foreign White player showing that Whites aren’t completely irrelevant. And the (Black) pros are making unseemly amounts of money, because TV networks pay unseemly amounts of money to televise games.
Technology has grotesquely skewed the math respecting earning. If it makes you feel any better, I, too, find the money paid to pro athletes (and entertainers) shocking and unseemly. Also crazy and unseemly is what so-called “influencers” make. And don’t begin to think about (White and Asian, not Black) tech moguls.
Damn right! Makes those who actually work for a living look and feel like chumps.
But owners of teams and networks are White. Pretty much ALL of them (you)! Behind the scenes infrastructure (workers) making the entire enterprise go—mostly White.
And you still have baseball, hockey, golf, skiing, snowboarding. The Williams sisters are mostly out of tennis.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
What else?
Ah! Entertainment. Again, TV. Every awards show except country music has Blacks dancing, cavorting. And some truly unsavory Black performers are given center stage. I’m talkin’ pants-down-the-ass, venom-spewing rap “artists,” who we hard-working, middle-class-
type Black American adults abhor as much as you do. I loathe rappers and the thug-gangsta culture they (and their corporate sponsors) promote.
But in the larger scheme of Sea-to-Shining-Sea, Everyday America, what you see on TV is an unrealistic microcosm writ large. (That means something tiny and unreal made to look BIG and real.)
Y-OW-O-O-L!
Here’s why Black America is no threat to replace your grip on control of America—i.e., grip of Whites in general, including the few like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk (immigrant btw), Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, etc., who own more and more of America.
And I’ll point to what I think is really threatening older, less-educated American White males. A source of unease I suspect is being overlooked.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
Why Black Americans are no threat
Over 40 percent of the 13-14 percent of Americans who are Black—15 million or more Americans—are a persistent, mostly urban underclass struggling just to get by day by day. If they pose a threat to you, it’s only in a one-on-one encounter, when you may have to deal with some of their justifiable anger at Whitey and life in general.
Yes. Your racist practices—enslaving us for over 200 years, lynching and Jim Crow (Google it!), last-hired-first-fired (if hired at all), government and private Redlining that has kept us out of your neighborhoods and made it hard for us to own homes and build equity, discrimina-tory bank lending, urban neglect, and more (much more!) did the job in creating a seeming intractable Black underclass. Those millions aren’t about to replace you.
And, to be fair, I’ll note that we middle-class Blacks are not without blame. We were quick to leave our less fortunate brethren behind in the 1960’s and 70’s when equal housing laws and integration made flight out of urban ghettoes possible, depriving them of useful role models.
That leaves Blacks like myself and my rather large family, all college-educated, home-owning, hardworking, and generally quiet, trying hard, same as many of you, to hang on to our small, hard-won piece of the American Dream. Are we a threat to replace or supplant you?
I wish we were, even a little bit. But we’re not.
First, we’re only 25 million or so. Less than 10 percent of America’s population of some 330 million. And our birth rate is lower than the national average of 1.7 births per household. I’ve known a lot of Black professionals in my generation. Most of them had only one child.
We’re not even replacing ourselves.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
Second. FACT! Black household wealth is a tenth of White household wealth. Which in-cudes the 40 percent who have zilch. But even subtracting that group, think we’re gaining on you in any meaningful way?
Y-OW-O-O-L!
The Wall Street Journal (August 10, 2021) reported that the median net worth for Black households with college graduates in their 30’s—half above, half below— “has plummeted to $8,200, down from about an inflation-adjusted $50,400 three decades ago.” While during that same time the net worth of equivalent White households “grew 17 percent to $138,000.” Key factors being high levels of student debt and lagging income growth.
Trust me. The Black middle and upper-middle classes have had to scratch, labor, keep heads down, always be mindful of not falling afoul of YOU! We’re trying hard to keep what we have. To maintain a semblance of what you take for granted. Never mind replacing you.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
What/who is being overlooked. The true source of unease?
Here I speak to White males. Especially you shaking-in-your-boots-we-gotta-make-America-great-again fellas. (Okay. You Trumpers.) Who are more the problem when it comes to feverish angst about being replaced, worrying about what America is coming to.
And here I know part of the problem is lack of education. (C’mon. Admit it.) Lack of ed-ucation leads to greater confusion and distress respecting such unsettling factors as globalism, outsourcing of jobs, etc.
But I think the greater problem is unwillingness to acknowledge what’s in front of your face. Namely, seismic change in the women around you—spouses, sisters, sister-in-laws, mothers, the daughter you’re proud of. (A fine athlete who’ll win a college scholarship?)
Y-OW-O-O-L!
Dudes! If MAGA means going back to so-called idyllic post-war 50’s, you aren’t going to find any of these women there! Repeat. THOSE DAYS ARE GONE!
Y-OW-O-O-L!
And it’s not because Blacks and Browns got civil and voting rights and have advanced some.
It’s because women, White women in particular, have been the biggest beneficiaries of liberation. They’re Katie-bar-the-door-bit-in-the-teeth-out-of-the-gate-and-running!
If your wife doesn’t work, she probably did. She knows she can. She might again.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
After, thanks to Title IX, your daughter gets that college scholarship for whatever sport you’ve been logging countless hours and stretching your budget to help her get good at, she’s going to marry a college boy (eventually), and she’s for sure thinking “career.”
Women are sixty percent of college students, over half of law students. And most are White. If CEO suites and board rooms are no longer all-White-male, chances are that’s more because White women are occupying slots than Blacks.
Y-OW-O-O-L!
So CHILL, White guys! Take a deep breath! TURN THE TEMPERATURE DOWN!
Leastwise where we Blacks and your concerns about us replacing you are concerned.
If aggrieved, go into the next room and have a chat with one of those gung-ho females.
Sincerely.
Yowling Wolf