Is Politically Correct Actually Racist? (statistics, racism, school, compared)

[bulmabriefs144]

I'm not sure if I can cite actual statistics, but I can tell what I know from experience.

So when I was in my teens, we had a youth group mission trip with our church, some big liberal church who had most of the funding money, and an intercity (predominantly black) church that seemed an afterthought to fill a quota. We were to learn that this youth group was originally called Gateway, however during our last leg of the trip, at a Hard Rock Cafe we found the menu had originally us this. Our current name was the Rainbow Youth Mission. In other words, the liberals were patting themselves on the back for being "inclusive". Truth be told, we wouldn't have invited them along. But not because of racism. Because we honestly didn't have the money to pay our own way, much less theirs. So we had to go along with what this bigger church wanted. However, I will never forget the look on these kids faces when they found out the truth. This was not the look of someone " included" these were people singled out and made into a statistic.

Was I happy the intercity group came? Sure, I liked the kids. They called me T-Dog cuz my name at the time was Thomas. But I could have done without our benefactors. Anyway, I was a kid so I didn't really understand this whole thing, but we were going to South Africa, where there was an apartheid. We visited Johannesburg, Krueger National Park, Praetoria, and Cape Town.

Most of our time was in Johannesburg, which was a slums. We lived in like dorms or something and visited the area. Some of the people at some point lived with families. At Krueger, we lived in sorta mini-resorts with water and sorta modern bathrooms setup to look like old huts. We also went on safari getting to see wild animals from the safety of a jeep. Praetoria we stayed only for one day, meeting regional tribes and eating ethnic food (it was tourism). Finally, Cape Town was a big city experience. We climbed a mountain called Table Mountain, visited the beach, and helped out at a soup kitchen. I think at either Johannesburg or Cape Town, we also built sheds for a school and painted the building (probably the first, since we were there longer). I had a fun time, liked hanging out with the kids and it was mostly okay. My dad remembers it differently though.

We kinda acted like dumb American tourists. We at one point were choosing a restaurant and we passed five local restaurants to eat at some chicken place. To say nothing of our housing usually being luxury compared with the locals. At one point in Johannesburg, some kids looked hungry and my dad and a few other people wanted to share their sandwiches, but the daughter of the head of the liberal church wouldn't and tried to prevent my dad because that would "demean" those kids. Ummmm, so basically you are afraid of sharing your food, and rationalize your White Guilt. But later, when it is South Africa's dime and someone else's food, you have no problem handling a soup kitchen. Hmmmm... We also went to some diamond mine and got jewelry and such. I later found out about conflict gems, so I'm less than thrilled about this one. Finally, at Cape Town the above mentioned Hard Rock Cafe. In all of these, we had two girls "I'm not racist (because my dad's a liberal)" who insisted in acting like the type of tourists that didn't really get how to live with the locals. That thought the state should take care of them. That wanted to act like they weren't also part of the problem rather than do something to help.

So nearly 15 years later, we see this Black Lives Matter thing. So one of our churches that was more liberal (I go to two, depending on whether I'm up in time) decided to reach out to one of these churches. I went to one of the services. It was alright. But I'm not sure talk of white privilege really helps anything besides dealing with White Guilt. It keeps blacks feeling like victims. It is still blacks who are disproportionately on welfare, collecting food stamps, etc. Women's studies and black studies doesn't really give anyone a job, except in liberal politics. But they are great for filling people's heads with this stuff. It's great to to give handouts on taxpayer money but what about offering blacks training and sustainable jobs (sandwich vs soup kitchen analogy above) in the private sector? Surely this would stop them from being dependent. But that's not actually what you want, is it?

Or as one of the members of other churches pointed out "patting themselves on the back for being the first to invent interracial church discussions". I looked around at my other church I go to. This black couple has been coming to our church for years. Nobody talks to them differently. In a liberal church? They'd be there to meet a quota.