Clarence Page is finally making some sense. He comments on liberal Harvard types whining about black immigrants outperforming black Americans. This column, I can deal with.
You probably read about this a few weeks ago in the New York Times (registration req.). Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and others are facing the unintended consequences of their precious skin color preferences. It seems that immigrant blacks outnumber American blacks at Harvard. Gates wants to know why and plans to “study” this phenomenon. What is the secret of black immigrant achievement? Rocket scientists, get ready!
“We need to learn what the immigrants’ kids have so we can bottle it and sell it, because many members of the African-American community, particularly among the chronically poor, have lost that sense of purpose and values which produced our generation,” Gates said.
Why he needs a study for this, I don’t know. Isn’t it common sense? Doesn’t it go without saying? Isn’t the question rhetorical? Clarence Page writes:
I was not surprised by those findings. Like many other African-Americans, I have been noticing for years how the children of black immigrant families tend to be much better represented among high school honor-roll achievers than their native-American black counterparts are….
A bigger question to me is this: Why are black students whose families have been in America for generations being left behind by newcomers, including black newcomers from other countries?
Gates plans to organize a study group around that question. I can offer the group one easy possibility, no charge: Immigrant kids work harder.
They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder – and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism: Where others might see a dead-end job, immigrants of all colors see an entry-level opportunity.
There you have it. Plain, old-fashioned optimism and hard work from freedom-loving people. Maybe such information coming from someone other than a conservative (like me) will have a positive impact on liberals who just can’t make up their minds which dogma they want to use to justify race discrimination: an elusive, amorphous definition of “diversity” or the making-up-for-past-injustices scheme.
If they wanted skin color diversity at Harvard, they got skin color diversity at Harvard. As for “past injustices”, I’d like to hear from black, middle class American-born-and-bred college-bound 18 year-olds who’ve suffered from the effects of slavery or Jim Crow. Please, feel free to comment on this blog.
Clarence Page had better watch his step or he’s going to earn a reputation as……………..a conservative! Eat your heart out, Bill Cosby.
