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One of the issues brought up by Mr. D'Souza is the existence of a large civil rights establishment. He notes that:

1. This group depends upon the continuance of racism to justify its existence.
2. Members of this group generally derive most or all of their income from writing about or talking about the subject.
3. The group, as a whole, has a vested interest in enlarging government involvement in curing the ills of racism, past and present.

Yes, D'Souza does pay his conservative lip service to reducing the role and size of government involvement in the problem, but really offers no alternative approach that would actually reduce it, other than a suggestion (correct, in my opinion) that the black community itself must solve these problems. This observation seems to me self evident. People will stop fearing young black males when young black males, on average, become more law abiding. This change can be accomplished only by that community which calls itself black, as a whole. Individuals within that community are either law abiding (which means they suffer unjustly from the image) or not (in which case the shoe fits and discrimination of them is "rational"). Life is simply not fair nor will it ever be. Individuals must take what he/she gets. Only groups, on average, can change perceptions.

He also suggests that safety-net efforts on the part of the government should concentrate on actual circumstances, rather than color. Once again, he is correct, but does not explain how reclassifying blackness as a cultural trait will keep these programs from becoming yet another paternalistic handout scheme to keep the natives from becoming restless.

Still, D'Souza has touched upon the way for attaining the REAL end of racism, as least as far as the government is concerned. Having erased racial segregationist notions from the law books, let's remove all the other references to race as well. Any geneticist will tell you that, genetically, race is a nonsense term. There is absolutely no way, from DNA evidence alone, to establish the so-called race of a person. All human genes occur in all "races." Racial identifications are always made by examining physical traits, like skin pigmentation, kink of hair, etc. That is, if you look black, you are black.

There is precious little scientific evidence to establish reliable racial categories. So, why bother? What earthly good has come, throughout the ages, from placing people in these little boxes? Not only have liberal paternalistic schemes using racial categorization failed, but all others as well, including D'Souza's newly hatched "let's just say they're lacking civilizational skills" (leaving it up to the observer to decide who "they" are)

I say that a good case can be made that the government, if it really wants to do some good, should stay as far as possible out of racial games. The use of the word "race" should be eliminated in government documents and government officials should refrain from mentioning the subject at all. Surely, since the children in our schools are neither slaves nor slavemasters, they needn't be burdened with either pity or guilt regarding their ancestors who were. You want to end racism, then simply end it. This is not only a good prescription for the government, but for you and me as well. My personal prescription for dealing with other people is to talk about their race only when forced to. I talk about it in general only to urge the abolition of the term...which I hereby have just done! Talk to you later...

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