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The rules do not apply to us. Those who tell us to follow the rules are slave drivers. Telling us to follow rules that everyone else follows is racist oppression. We are owed. All of those other people who aren’t exactly like us, including Jews, including Asians, including whites who immigrated to this country long after the end of slavery, including Africans who immigrated to this country long after the end of slavery, as well as American-born blacks who have done well, all of them, they all, owe us. None of them know what suffering is. If they don’t pay us, and they never pay us enough, we can take anything we want from them. We are justified. We would be suckers, fools, naive, not to take anything we can get away with taking. Pimps, looters, shoplifters, drug dealers and anyone running a scam is clever and resourceful. The ambition to achieve in mainstream society is betrayal. The American Dream is a scam for suckers. Our rite of passage is a young man’s first epic defiance of mainstream society. Anything nice that is left alone without a guardian is asking to be stolen or destroyed. Nice is phony, hypocritical, weak. People who like nice are “acting white.” Our lives are not nice so anything nice affronts us, challenges us. We must destroy it so that, in its destroyed state, it justifies our wallow in misery. We must “keep it real.” Keeping it real means keeping it cynical, sneering, base.
No, none of my black neighbors in Paterson has stated these premises to me. Why, then, do I think that some of them think this way? Because of behavior I’ve observed, including the destruction of the Little Library in Costello Memorial Park. That destruction is but one example of a wider, decades-long pattern. It indicates why the leftist solution of pumping more taxpayer dollars into black underclass urban areas solves nothing.
Plenty of black people have, unsolicited, condemned these attitudes to me. Black neighbors in this building reject these premises. Their children are well-groomed, well-behaved, and attend school, work, and church regularly. I’ve been around long enough to witness generations achieve academic and professional goals, take on responsible jobs, and purchase property in better neighborhoods.
And, of course, not just black people act on similar unstated premises. There is a good deal of some Polish people’s attitudes in the above list. I’ve seen older Polish people so wounded by invasions and occupations, wars and failed Utopian schemes, that they can’t allow anything to be nice. They pick unnecessary fights, they make enemies, and, yes, they break laws.
I sometimes act in accord with the above flawed premises. To overcome the psychological legacy of my own trauma as well as the ancestral trauma that I’ve inherited, I intervene in my thought processes. Christianity and Twelve Step provide tools for replacing “Stinking Thinking.” Here are a few examples of “Stinking Thinking”:
Blaming others rather than focusing on what you can control.
Resenting other people rather than learning to forgive.
Viewing the world in black and white rather than living with shades of gray.
To defeat “Stinking Thinking,” Twelve Steppers make “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Then we make “a list of all persons we had harmed” and become “willing to make amends to them all.” This is very like a Catholic “examination of conscience” that one performs daily. Placing the focus on personal responsibility and improving one’s own behavior remakes the person.
Conditions for the black underclass will improve in cities like Paterson when leaders stop projecting blame outward, while simultaneously waiting in vain for salvation to arrive from the outside. Conditions will improve when self-examination and self-correction are championed by political, cultural, and religious leaders. Black conservatives like Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, Jason Riley, Jason D. Hill, and Larry Elder have walked this path and they’ve outlined it in their publications. They deserve greater support from parents, teachers, preachers, funders, and politicians.
Barack Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright has been called a “prophet” in the same mold as Isaiah and Jeremiah. He is not. In the Old Testament, the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah fearlessly told audiences what they were doing wrong. Prophets spelled out the inevitable punishments from God for bad behavior. Jeremiah warned ancient Jews to quit sinning. Otherwise, “the carcasses of this people will become food for the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. I will bring an end to the sounds of joy and gladness and to the voices of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, for the land will become desolate.”
Can you imagine a Jeremiah Wright, an Al Sharpton, a Raphael Warnock, prophesying thus to black congregations? Of course not. Preachers like Wright tell congregations not how they can improve their lives by changing their thinking and their behavior. No, their congregations are all innocent victims of “God damn America” as Wright put it in an infamous sermon. No growth can come from a culture that preaches demonization of the other while exculpating the hearer from personal responsibility for personal failings.
Clinging to extinct circumstances distorts behavior in the here and now. Over thirty years ago, I visited Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I had just returned from studying in Poland. I was homesick for Polishness and I’d heard that Greenpoint has a large Polish population. A Polish-style grocery store, right there in the five boroughs of New York City, offered familiar beets, mushrooms, and crackly-crusted loaves of the very best rye bread you have ever tasted. There was also a long line. I had just left communist-era Poland where people had to line up for food, and here Poles were queuing in America, the land of abundance, where people don’t have to face long lines for much of anything except the post office and the DMV. An elderly babcia approached the counter. “Prosze pana, czy jest chleb?” “Please, sir. Is there bread?”
I wanted to spin her around and shout, “Grandmother! You are in America! There is bread! There’s even butter!”
That babcia was so locked into her worldview that she couldn’t process the concrete reality around her, and adapt her behavior to changed circumstances. I saw that same paralysis in some black students. Their worldview, and thus their behavior, were a holdover from the days of slavery and Jim Crow. It was more comfortable to them to cling to outmoded premises than to recognize that they were no longer in Egypt; they had reached the Promised Land.
“Listen,” I would say to them. “You are living in a charmed time. There are institutions begging for qualified black candidates for internships, scholarships and desirable jobs. All you have to do is groom yourself. Arrive on time. Read the assigned work. Study before a test. Grab this brass ring that life is thrusting at you!”
Reflective of national trends, those who did respond positively to life’s invitation were more likely to be female. At school and at work, black women are doing better than black men. My black female students appeared much more comfortable accepting guidance from me, a white woman. Black males were more likely to resist a white, female teacher telling them what to do. They were stuck in unstated premises about what is means to be a black man, and to them, to be a black man meant to arrive late, in sagging pants, and high on drugs, to perform no work, and to disrespect the white woman who dared to tell them what to do. These behaviors were “keeping it real.” In contrast, recent black male immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean were operating on the American Dream template. They looked great, they worked hard, and they were a joy to teach. They received A grades. American-born black males disdained the recent immigrants for “acting white.”
Paterson is surrounded by cleaner, safer towns. I cross on foot, almost daily, from one town border to another. Suddenly there are no car stereos blasting noise every bit as loud as a stadium loudspeaker. There’s little garbage in the streets. Drivers can leave their car window open on a hot day, do some shopping, return, and the spare change in the console has not disappeared, and the car’s paint has not been keyed. People say “excuse me,” rather than “Ima kill you.” Homeowners make an effort to beautify their property.
Woodland Park is one of these bordering towns. Woodland Park used to be West Paterson. In 2008, residents voted to change the town’s name. Insulted Patersonians joked that they should change the name of their city to “East Woodland Park.”
“Racism!” our friends on the Left insist. Balderdash. In many of Paterson’s surrounding, superior border communities, the folks contributing to a better quality of life are black. Stephanie, a colleague, gushed to me a few years ago. Stephanie and her family had finally socked away enough cash to move out of Paterson into Prospect Park, a bordering town. “I’m so glad to get out of Paterson,” Stephanie said. “To get away from the garbage in the streets and the crime. I used to hate watching people hurt nature and hurt animals,” she said, plaintively. Stephanie is black, as are her spouse and her children.
There’s a humble home I pass in my daily walks; it is close to the border between Paterson and Woodland Park. Saint Valentine’s day ignites red twinkly lights and a big heart in the window. Green lights twinkle and leprechauns cavort for Saint Patrick’s Day. Memorial Day is red, white, and blue. For Christmas and Easter they go all out. The house is tiny. The homeowners appear to be Peruvian or some other Hispanic immigrant group that displays significant Native American ancestry. Their family is intact, their street is clean, and they celebrate America’s holidays with evident gratitude and gusto. They aren’t richer or whiter than the average Patersonian. They just have a different attitude.
There are folks with that different attitude within Paterson itself. The other day I was on Liberty Street, which runs between Kennedy High School and Hinchliffe Stadium. Kennedy High School has been ranked 406th out of 415 public schools in NJ. When I pass Kennedy, I can’t help but think of Hector Robles, a 42-year-old man who was beaten to death in 2001 by a “whole crowd” of black high school students. It was June and students were celebrating summer recess by beating any Hispanic they could find. Robles was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and of the wrong ethnicity. In testimony, one student said, “One person would hit him, and the others would stomp him and go through his pockets.” Afterward, Robles’ teen killers went swimming and shopping. Only one of the sixteen assailants had a jury trial. John Williams was represented by Michael F. Kelly, a white defense attorney who lived in distant, wooded West Milford, where residents worry more about bears than crime. Williams was acquitted of murder, though it was Williams who began the attacks, announcing that he wanted to beat up “Spanish” people. After the acquittal, Williams’ grandmother hugged Kelly.
Every time I walk past Kennedy High School I think of Hector Robles, a name you are not to say, a name you are not to remember, a life that apparently didn’t much matter.
The other end of Liberty Street evokes Paterson’s pride. Hinchliffe Stadium is one of the few remaining stadia that used to host Negro League baseball games. Larry Doby broke the American League color barrier in 1947, eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson began to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Doby attended high school in Paterson. When his high school football team was invited to play in Florida, the hosts said that Doby, the only black player, could not participate. The team refused, out of solidarity with Doby. Doby played both football and baseball in Hinchliffe Stadium.
Kennedy high school was at my back and Hinchliffe stadium was in front of me as I walked down Liberty Street the other day. I saw something so astounding I couldn’t figure out what to make of it. A tiny woman in a faded sari was squatting on the sidewalk. She looked like women I used to see in Nepal, but those women, in that squatting posture, were winnowing rice or tending a fire. This woman was clearly one of many recent immigrants from Bangladesh who now live near Kennedy High School. But why was she squatting on the sidewalk?
As I got closer, I could see that this tiny squatting woman was using a hand spade to remove the weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalk in front of her apartment. She proudly displayed to me the bucket beside her. It was filled with the weeds she had previously removed.
“Wow! Hard work! Well done!” I said in English. I’m sure she didn’t understand my words, but she smiled broadly.
She lives in a tough neighborhood of a dangerous city. But her sidewalk, in sha’Allah, will be orderly. Her focus on getting a job done, her insistence on improving her tiny corner of the world, her refusal to let surrounding degeneracy and decay diminish her, are exemplary.
Paramus, a world-famous shopping mecca, is just seven miles from Paterson. Consumers spend six billion dollars annually in Paramus, more than in any other zip code in the US. Attracting shoppers to Paterson would benefit Paterson. In fact Paterson itself used to be a shopping mecca. See here, here, and here. There could be jobs and tax revenue; employees and shoppers could gain experience of the wider world. To that end, taxpayer money goes to Paterson’s status as an Urban Enterprise Zone. “The Urban Enterprise Zone is a state-designated program created to alleviate unemployment and to enhance the economic climate in distressed cities throughout the State of New Jersey. The City of Paterson is one of New Jersey’s original Urban Enterprise Zones.” Businesses “charge reduced sales tax.”
Even more taxpayer money goes to a greater police presence. This greater presence, Paterson politicians assure us, is needed not because of anything any Patersonian has ever done. No, no. The problem is white people outside of Paterson. They have a negative attitude. “Over 400 businesses in the City of Paterson have expressed concerns over the negative connotations that the City of Paterson has and believes [sic] that with the larger presence of the police patrol throughout the UEZ corridors, it will promote a much safer environment for businesses and shoppers alike.” One must notice this difference. It is entirely acceptable, required, even, to smear everyone who doesn’t live in Paterson as a racist. It is never acceptable to mention that Patersonians commit many more violent crimes per capita than the residents of surrounding towns. And that that crime rate is the reason, even with the reduced sales tax, no outsider who can avoid it comes to shop in Paterson.
Say you decide that you, brave, Woke, righteous you, are going to overcome “Racism!” and spend the day shopping in Paterson. So you drive to Paterson. This is where you first encounter the first unstated premise, above. “The rules do not apply to us.” Drivers run red lights, idle at green lights, speed, make U-turns, drive the wrong way, and stop in the middle of the street to consult their phones, sneeringly dismissing anyone beeping behind them. Pedestrians dart into traffic. At one crosswalk I use regularly, I am perhaps the only pedestrian who has ever used it. I have watched parents with children in tow a mere twenty feet from the zebra-striped crosswalk, a crosswalk that is accompanied by a blinking stop sign, and parents choose to walk out randomly into heavy traffic with their toddler holding their hand and learning young, “The rules do not apply to us.”
“Well,” our Leftist friends would say, “It’s a more relaxed culture. Not so anal retentive as white people can be. Looser! More creative! Like jazz! Who am I judge?”
Okay, leftist friend, but when is the last time you shopped in Paterson? Never. Because you went once and you saw how people drive, and a pedestrian darted in front of your car, and you instantaneously imagined a very dark scenario. You, a white person alone behind the wheel, struck a black pedestrian, in an all-black neighborhood. And you said, “I’m never driving down here again.” Rules, even what appear to be minor rules, make civil society possible. You don’t have to be mugged in Paterson or shot in Paterson to be afraid of Paterson. You just have to drive here once and almost strike a pedestrian who is breaking a little rule, by jaywalking, to eliminate ever coming here again. So much for the taxpayer dollars pushed into making Paterson an Urban Enterprise Zone.
“Black pedestrians are twice as likely to be struck and killed while walking than white pedestrians.” But, of course, if police stop black people for jaywalking, that is because Amerikkka is RACIST! So say numerous news sources.
Researchers have discovered that Japanese people are much less likely to jaywalk than French people. It is permissible for researchers to study this question, and to publish their results. It’s not okay for me to mention that I have repeatedly seen black Paterson parents drag young children into oncoming traffic though a cross walk that is just feet away. You can’t solve problems you are demonized for naming.
Stephanie rejoiced that she could move to Prospect Park. She confessed that she was tired of watching people in Paterson hurt nature and animals. She referred specifically to residents dumping their garbage on the ground, and also in the Passaic River. “That hurts the ducks and the fish!” As with the jaywalking example, the garbage issue is not about lack of facilities. There are garbage cans. People ignore them.
Stephanie said that people hurt the trees. They do. As a daily walker, I have seen the city plant trees and flowers, no doubt with taxpayer money from other municipalities that have healthy tax bases. I have then watched Patersonians vandalize trees. Pull branches off trees. Carve up the bark. Chop down freshly-planted lindens, trees that are fragrant in summer, to make it easier to park. Place cigarettes and emptied cans in flower beds. Trample flower beds. Trees and flowers are something nice. Nice things are an affront. We gotta “keep it real.”
Everyone in Paterson? No. A minority of residents, as the rest of us look on, our hearts breaking, as Stephanie’s did. But enough people that any Leftist who says, “The problem is lack of funds; let’s give them taxpayer money” is deluded. Paterson needs your money much less than Paterson needs a different set of unstated premises. You can ship all the flowers to Paterson that you want. It’s just a matter of time till they are trampled. Not by most of us; most of us are poor and we are here because we can’t afford to move. But poverty has not poisoned us; we, the poor, mostly detour around flowers, rather than trample them. We, though poor, get it that the rules apply to us. Some of us don’t get that, and when you demonize the police, neuter the judicial system, and drill into schoolchildren’s heads that they are oppressed victims and as oppressed victims they owe the world nothing, including decent behavior, that rather than owing anyone anything they are owed, they are owed, they are owed, you, my big-hearted leftist friends, guarantee that poor folks like me live among trampled flowers.
“The rules don’t apply to us … we can take anything we want from them. We are justified. We would be suckers, fools, naive, not to take anything we can get away with taking. Anything nice that is left alone without a guardian is asking to be stolen or destroyed.” Adherence to these unstated premises doesn’t just damage others. It damages the self. Back in the twentieth century, I was working on a campus when computers were taking over. In those days not many people were computer literate and those who were were a superior caste. Calvin was one of those nerds. He was just a kid but we all deferred to him. He owned the campus. Everyone loved him; everyone needed him. Calvin was discovered stealing. I was told he went to prison. He had a brilliant career ahead of him. Whatever short-term benefit he gained from stealing was of negligible value compared to the good will, respect, and future earnings he sabotaged. Given the opprobrium for “acting white,” I have to wonder if Calvin didn’t steal, not for attempted financial gain, but to redeem his own status. Calvin had the kind of mind that was comfortable with computers when most people regarded computers as impenetrably complex. Maybe stealing was his way of proving to his community that he wasn’t “acting white.” That he was “keeping it real.”
Andre Sayegh promotes his mayoralty by reminding voters of how many outside taxpayer dollars he has siphoned in to underwrite Paterson’s hemorrhaging needs. All that money has not made Paterson’s streets cleaner or safer or its nights quieter. Money won’t solve those problems; changes in unstated premises would.
Imagine if the young black men driving the cars blasting out obscene rap lyrics at three a.m. were taught to think about the working people, the mothers, fathers, and children, whose sleep they steal. Imagine if those young black men were taught to think of themselves, not as helpless victims who have been cheated by some outside force, but as members of a society where they owe others their decency and self-control. Imagine if young black men were informed, “Every time you act like a jerk, observers conclude negative things about you, about your family, about other innocent people who just happen to share your skin color, and about your ancestors. When you act like a jerk, you make the world a worse place for other black people.” Imagine, further, if they were told, “What, you’re a victim? Everyone on this planet is a victim. No one’s life is perfect. Get the therapy you need. At a certain point we all have to shuck off the victim role and start looking at how we are using the power we have to make the world a better or a worse place.” Imagine if those young black men were told, “You have a priceless gift. You have youth. You have a male’s strength and focus. Every day get down on you knees and thank God for these gifts and then go out into the world you will be leaving soon enough and use your powers to make the world a better place.” I used to say these things to students. Superiors condemned me as a reactionary.
None of these interventions will take place any time soon. Democrats go on pretending that what Paterson really needs is to siphon tax dollars from communities where people are mature enough to put their own pain aside, and where they do feel that they owe something to someone other than themselves, and where able-bodied people do work and pay taxes.
Mayor Sayegh trumpeted his efforts to renovate Lou Costello Memorial Park. Costello, of Abbot and Costello fame, was born in Paterson. Sayegh’s administration erected a playground. Old-timers rolled their eyes. How long before “Anything nice that is left alone without a guardian is asking to be stolen or destroyed” was applied?
One of the additions to the park was a “Little Free Library.” A Little Free Library is a wooden box, held about five feet or so above the ground by a wooden post. Its glass door keeps the donated books inside clean and dry. The Little Free Library motto is “take a book; leave a book.” The project’s website says, “Our mission is to be a catalyst for building community, inspiring readers, and expanding book access … We believe all people are empowered when the opportunity to discover a personally relevant book to read is not limited by time, space, or privilege.” This high-minded prose is rather silly. Free libraries exist across the US. Paterson’s Danforth Library is on the National Register of Historic Places. The neoclassical building dates from 1905. Its interior walls are lined with gorgeous original oil paintings. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated thirty-five computers in 2022. The last time I braved the hookers, pickpockets, and drunken men on the sidewalks surrounding the library, I sat next to a black guy who was using his computer to shop for a gun. I tried to talk him out of it, unsuccessfully.
I no longer use the Paterson library, though it is very close to me. I walk two and a half miles to the Woodland Park library, where I confront no hookers, pickpockets, or drunken men before entering. In addition to the main building, there is also a Little Free Library located just behind it. I’ve been taking free books out of the Little Free Library in Woodland Park for years.
When, as part of Mayor Sayegh’s renovation, a Little Free Library appeared in Costello Memorial Park in Paterson, I just waited. The first vandalism occurred almost immediately. Someone began to remove books from the Little Free Library, tear them to pieces, and leave the pages of the books all over the park and the adjacent street. After that, of course, someone smashed the glass in the door. Any books left in the Little Free Library were exposed to rain. Then someone pulled the entire remaining door off of its hinges. Then someone dumped a pile of books, floppy discs, videos, and other paraphernalia on the ground under the Little Free Library. Then someone ripped everything to shreds. Again, pages from books and glass and wood scattered on the ground, and piled up in the corner of the brand, spanking new playground of which Mayor Sayegh was so proud.
The minority of blacks who adopt the unstated premises that demand destruction are encouraged by rich, white leftists. Joy Behar is co-host of television’s The View. She’s an 80-year-old Italian American multimillionaire and TV star. She recently lectured Senator Tim Scott, a black man who believes in hard work, service, and getting ahead in life. She mocked his belief in “pulling yourself by your bootstraps.” Behar says that black people can’t get ahead because of “systemic racism.” “He doesn’t get it,” Behar said.
Such attitudes are not limited to obnoxious TV stars. Amiri Baraka wrote, “A woman asked me in all earnestness, couldn’t any whites help? I said, you can help by dying. You are a cancer. You can help the world’s people with your death.” And, “The black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has … most whites … know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped.” Baraka also recommended, in obscene language, that blacks commit genocide against Jews. Whites elevated Baraka to New Jersey’s poet laureate. The Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rockefeller Foundation and others honored him.
What is the legacy of men like Amiri Baraka who touted a hyper-violent, hyper-sexual, racist, grievance-mongering, self-pitying, genocidal, anti-social role model for black men? What is the legacy of rich, white leftists who advanced this image, and who belittled successful, law-abiding black men like Tim Scott as “Uncle Tom“? That legacy includes Donqua Thomas, a Paterson man who, in 2020, shot to death Remy Lee, eight months pregnant, carrying Thomas’ baby. That legacy includes Jhymiere Moore, who, when he was just a teenager, shot to death 12-year-old Genesis Rincon and 15-year-old Ragee Clark, 15, on Paterson’s streets. That legacy includes John Williams, who lead a mob in beating and stomping Hector Robles to death for no reason other than his ethnicity.
In mid-June, 2023, a grotesque video circulates on the web of two black men, in broad daylight, fighting to the death in a Manhattan street, as traffic and pedestrians pass them. The video ends with the dead man’s blood staining the street. That is the legacy of the unstated premises advanced by rich white leftists and hyper violent poseurs like Amiri Baraka. Stinking thinking doesn’t just destroy Little Libraries. It destroys human lives. And all the money in the world won’t fix it.
Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
“And all the money in the world won’t fix it.”
Thank God we’re not all Mother Teresas. Maybe there’s hope for you yet Professor Goska.
If Jesus Christ himself were to redistribute all the money in the world so that every person on earth had the same amount, in about five years 90% of the same poor people would be poor again, 90% of the same middle class people would be middle class again, and 90% of the same rich people would be rich again.
Just take a look at the lottery jackpot winners. A fool and his money will soon part ways. Money is not a dead, stagnant, thing. It’s a living thing and if you don’t know how to keep it alive, it dies. You can’t just transplant it from one person to another and expect the same results.
The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them and if you have to help a poor man don’t give him a fish, teach him how to fish.
“I am for doing good to the poor, but…I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. I observed…that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“F**k man! I’m tired of this sh*t! You know what the worst thing about niggas? Niggas love to NOT know. Nothing make a nigga happier than not knowin the answer to your question.
Just ask a nigga a question. Any nigga! “Hey, nigga, what’s the capitol of Zaire?” “I don’t know that sh*t! Keepin’ it real!” Niggas love to keep it real… Real dumb! Niggas hate knowledge. Sh*t. Niggas break into your house; you want to save your money? Put it in your books. ‘Cause niggas don’t read. Just put the money in the books. Sh*t, books are like Kryptonite to a nigga. “Here’s a book!” “AAHHH! NO! NOT A BOOK! NO! NOOOO!” – Chris Rock, “Black People versus Niggas”
“Chris Rock – Black People VS. Niggaz (Bring the Pain 1996)”
Yet another thoughtful and insightful piece. Thank you, Danusha!
Great essay..
It used to be common to have a policeman walking a beat and interjecting himself into issues. Even trash in front of your house would prompt a knock on the door.
Some part of this conversation is about the clash of the individual and a lack of responsibility (acknowledgement) to the community. That used to get pushback. Now it’s normalized. Celebrated..
Paterson will be dystopic until it decides it shouldn’t be. I told then, people will come and some will be able to go onto better things..But thanks for doing the important work of reporting from the front lines.
Another reminder of the Heraclitus saying,” A man’s character is his fate”.
Dear Dr. Goska: Why do you walk two and a half miles, when you’re not well? Are there no buses?
Walking in the fresh air is probably more effective than any medication. Sadly too few people walk anywhere.
Some Blacks, unfortunately, stereotype themsrlves in order to shirk responsibility. A bank clerk tells them they have an overdraft or an overdue mortgage payment and they start to play plantation houseboy. They want the bank teller to play ole massa and assume their responsibilities for them. There are women who do the same thing. They play dumb broad
The story of the little library is so sad. I am a child of the 1950s post-war baby boom, and was a beneficiary of the free public library system in the UK. We used to go every Saturday to take our books out. It was a privilege we were able to take for granted. And one that has been taken from the children of Paterson,
This can only increase the divisions, and the violence, in our Society. So is that the intention? It is hard not to assume so.
As to libraries…the demographics of the Detroit suburb where I mostly grew up changed markedly and the school district (not the one where I was educated; in the Detroit suburbs district lines don’t always follow municipal borders) is not almost entirely black.
I hung out a lot in the library in my younger days and I’d be embarrassed to tell you how much of my allowance went to pay library fines.. I was there a few months ago and chatted with the librarian.
The library is across the street from the high school and I happened to be there a few months ago. The library is closed from three to four p.m. although people who are already in are not asked to leave.
The librarian, who as it happens is black, told me that when they reopened after the shutdown the reason given was social distancing and such but the underlying reason was to keep the high school kids out. School ended at 3:10 p.m. so if they refused entry until four p.m. the students would have dispersed.
This wasn’t just a matter of some kids getting a bit rowdy while doing their homework, it was serious misbehavior and noise and despite a security person the librarian told me that often enough they had to call the police, who were just next door.
When the school had a substantial Jewish population it was an academic star. The average SAT score today is 806, which is not much higher than you’d probably get for filling in answers at random.
The tragic thing is that this isn’t necessary. Dr. Goska has pointed out the attitudes that produce this situation and it’s not “systemic racism.”
the bottom line is that black culture is championing nihilism and they will take themselves out with their violence, they attack themselves, they have no other enemy than their own
What a devastating essay on what it means to live as a perpetual victim .I would suggest that the author take a look at the thriving Orthodox Jewish community in nearby Passaic which is filled with families who obey the law and who have been the victims of the oldest social disease on this planet
‘As sparks fly upward, man is born to trouble.’ Stop worrying about the sins of the Philistines, and finally Paul wrote ‘Renew your mind in Christ.’
As grotesque, repugnant, deplorable, destructive, and dangerous as the black underclass is they are not as grotesque, repugnant, deplorable, destructive, and dangerous as the American ruling class of degenerates we call the Swamp — the Biden family, the Obama family, the Clinton family, the McConnell family, the Romney family, the Bush family, the Cheney family, etc.
In some ways one can understand the nihilism of the black underclass but what excuse does our ruling class have for their destruction of the greatest country in the history of mankind other than sheer and pure hatred of the good for being the good? These evil rulers are the Neros and Caligulas of our time. And it is they and their destructive welfare state policies that fund the black underclass and keep it going.
“The advocates of collectivism are motivated not by a desire for men’s happiness, but by hatred for man . . . hatred of the good for being the good; . . . the focus of that hatred, the target of its passionate fury, is the man of ability….
They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.” – Ayn Rand
Just for those that accuse Rand of snobbery or classism, by “the man of ability” Rand means any man on any level of achievement. She means the proud, self-confident, independent and self-supporting man, whether the hot dog vendor on the corner or Thomas Edison.
She is basically describing envy which one of the Ten Commandments warns against.
However, the logical conclusion of many is each according to his needs Marxism.
Wether looked at through Rand’s eyes or religious faith if man is envious, and it’s in us all, then Marx provides a simple solution. Unless you believe in the Ten Commandments.
“If I were to speak your kind of language, I would say that man’s only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a “moral commandment” is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not the forced; the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational, and reason accepts no commandments.” – John Galt, “Atlas Shrugged
Marxism is not logical, it is mysticism pretending to be logical science. Marxism is religion pretending to be rational and logical philosophy. Any concept or idea whose base or premise does not begin with the facts of reality and proceeds with all the further facts of reality in a non-contradictory hierarchy cannot be called logical. The whole point of logic is to identify reality in a non-contradictory process. Non-contradiction is the essence of the method of logic.
“Any theory that propounds an opposition between the logical and the empirical, represents a failure to grasp the nature of logic and its role in human cognition. Man’s knowledge is not acquired by logic apart from experience or by experience apart from logic, but by the application of logic to experience. All truths are the product of a logical identification of the facts of experience….
No concept man forms is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.” – Ayn Rand
I agree that Marxism like environmentalism is a new religion but it stems from man’s logic and reason, that is a fact and it would appear to be because of envy.
What, therefore, is wrong with advice from the bible to counter that argument?
To Joe Biden, please read my comment and the Rand quote about what the nature and purpose of reason and logic are — carefully and slowly.
Reason is the means and logic is the method by which man discovers reality.
REALITY is the final arbiter, the final “authority”, of what is true or false and right or wrong. If a concept, idea, or theory has a contradiction in it, it becomes invalid, irrational, BECAUSE it then no longer is consonant with REALITY.
The Bible, like some other ancient religious books, including the Koran, does have some very valuable moral points BUT those valuable moral points are contained within a VAST ocean of detrimental, dangerous, disastrous, malevolent, and contradictory irrationality.
For example, thou shalt honor your mother and father, what if your mother and father are commanding you to steal your neighbor’s car? The fifth COMMANDMENT is a COMMAND not a moral principle to think about contextually and apply contextually. It’s a COMMAND from your God, which means you must OBEY it regardless of your own thinking, choice, or the context of your situation. But then if you OBEY the fifth commandment you will be DISOBEYING the eighth commandment, thou shalt not steal. Which supernatural command from a supernatural God existing in an alleged other reality which is not this reality, do you OBEY?
Prof. Goska writes sympathetically about the woman in the faded sari who strives, in her shabby neighborhood, to keep her sidewalk free of weeds. But if this woman is indeed, as Prof. Goska assumes, a recently arrived Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh, then it is highly probable that this woman believes in the supremacy of Islam and Shari’a, regarding our Constitution as illegitimate because it is “man-made” and not derived from the precepts of Allah. If so, it’s almost certain that she also wishes for the Islamization of America as much as a sidewalk free of weeds. The Muslim attacks of 9-11 have taught us nothing.
I understand your point of view and in emotional moments where I’m not thinking calmly, clearly, and objectively I can and have lumped all Muslims in the same Jihadist, hate America, hate the West category. I do feel apprehension when I see a Muslima and her owner-husband in full Muslim garb with the Muslima walking six feet behind her owner and when I find them in the local park blocking the walkway when they all get in prone position to pray to their imaginary friend in the sky.
And yet in fact, when I think calmly and clearly, I must acknowledge that one of my dearest co-workers was a Muslima. She was born in Guyana, then her family lived in Brazil, then Jamaica, then they eventually moved to the USA. She was kind, loyal, conscientious, trustworthy, she never talked religion except once mentioning that she and her mom had gone to see the Mel Gibson movie “The Passion of the Christ” and she was married to a Rastafarian, go figure.
Dua Lipa, Bibi Rexha, and Dr. Oz, say they are Muslims but they probably don’t know what they’re talking about in terms of the nuts-and-bolts orthodoxy of Islam, as always with Socialism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the devil is in the details.
Mysticism sounds wonderful until you examine the details and their complete implications AND take them completely SERIOUSLY.
THX, you seem to be accusing me of not thinking clearly. On the contrary, my comment, and the conclusions I draw, are based entirely on the precepts of Islam and what can be extrapolated from these precepts to predict the attitudes and actions of those who profess to be Muslims. I realize, of course, that there are peaceful Muslims who are either ignorant of or indifferent to Islamic precepts (such as the obligation to wage unending warfare to expand Islam’s domain), but there is no way to reliably winnow out those Muslims who are True Believers, and hence immediately dangerous, from others who are less so. It must be underscored, above all else, that no major religion besides Islam has as its fundamental doctrine a clear mandate for warfare, including offensive warfare, against all non-Muslims. This is a major problem for all of us. Nearly all Muslim-dominated countries have made life extremely difficult for the unfortunate Christians, Hindus, Jews, Yazidis Jains, or Buddhists who are trapped within the borders of Pakistan, Sudan, and Egypt, to name just a few. Bangladesh is no exception; remnant populations of Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians are continually subject to persecution. Demonization of non-Muslims is normative there. If the weed-pulling woman in the faded sari is of Bangladeshi origin, it is highly probable that she has imbibed the hatred of infidels prevailing there, although she would, of course, be unlikely to express or act on this publicly here in America, as she is no longer in a Muslim-dominated country. There have been, as you must know, a great many articles posted here at Front Page written by Joe Kaufman documenting the ugly goings-on at South Florida mosques. Such goings-on are not restricted to South Florida; we see the same from mosques and Islamic organizations across this country and indeed throughout the world. It is entirely rational to view all – yes all – Muslims with suspicion, and it would perfectly reasonable to view them all as personae non grata. Their religion renders them either an active, immediate threat to us, or a potential future threat if those who are presently passive or indifferent Muslims suddenly become charged with religious fervor.
The sari woman cleaning the sidewalk is a rare sight in almost all cities, in every muslim dominated area in the UK the degradation of the streets is immediately visible.
When I read this article I was expecting the sari woman to be begging on the street, because that’s what a lot of muslim men force their women to do here.
the “Muslims” were the scapegoat, make no mistake it was the CIA. the woman cleaning out the weeds is not the enemy, you fool.
A cri de coeur well worth reading and sharing!
Paterson is the subject and title of one of the few great American epic poems. If William Carlos Williams could see it now … Damn. Just damn.
The author probably knows that Elmwood Park used to be named East Paterson and changed it’s name in the 70s when that bout of urban decay hit the country. If not, it is worth knowing.
Dear Professor Goska, on the subject of “Stinking Thinking”. On thoughts, emotions, and feelings, on their nature and their effect on us.
A book which has helped me a great deal in understanding this subject is “Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment” by Robert Wright.
It’s a truly fascinating book about the benefits of Mindfulness Meditation and how the practice of Mindfulness Meditation can help us overcome addictions and harmful, emotional, habits. I don’t agree with everything in the book but it has helped me a great deal with understanding how many of our thoughts and feelings “think themselves”. How they pop into our awareness unbidden by our conscious self and we purchase and attach ourselves to those thoughts and feelings as if we had actually been the conscious creator of those thoughts and feelings. When in fact, if we take a moment, breathe in and out, and become truly mindful, truly aware, we realize that those thoughts and feelings came unbidden from our subconscious. And then we can be free to un-attach ourselves from those thoughts and feelings and not get carried away by them as if we were one and the same with those thoughts and feelings. I highly recommend this very fascinating book. I keep going back to it and re-reading parts of it quite often.
“Robert Wright, “Why Buddhism Is True”
Very perceptive, Professor. I pray that one day your insights and wisdom will comprise the zeitgeist. Thank you.