Amercian Skinheads

Last night I watched a program on American Skinheads. I think it was on A&E HD or something. They actually had two programs on back to back but I could pretty much only stomach one of them. These guys (it's basically all guys) are fucking scary. Not so much because of the violence they often embrace. Their numbers are still pretty small despite the success of the internet for recruiting.

The reason these guys are scary is because they are often so incredibly ignorant. Let me qualify that a bit. I am not at all referring to a lack of book smarts. In fact, one of the leaders of the one group talked openly about how the younger members are encouraged to go to college, be successful, and obtain wealth or positions of influence so that they can further the white agenda. Many of these people are intelligent, articulate, and charismatic. That's what makes their pocket of ignorance about race all the more frightening.

Let's be honest about America in 2007. Are their some potential advantages to being a woman or a minority in the workplace today? Sure. I see it at my own workplace where minority candidates are actively recruited. Our firm tracks the retention of female employees and tries to develop methods of accommodating their needs, such as flexible works schedules. All things being equal, a black, Asian, or Hispanic candidate would probably have a slight leg up over their white counterparts.

That being said, would I want to trade places with a woman or a black man in this country? No way. While my firm tries to recruit more minorties, the executive ranks are still, like most American companies, lilly-white and male. We've got about 15 current candidates for President and we have one woman and one black man. And the black man is an "acceptable" light-skinned, well spoken black man. Yes, their are Oprah Winfreys and Puffy Combs and other blacks who are wealthy and powerful but the majority of wealth is still firmly in the grip of old white men.

When I watched the program last night, one older skinhead correctly made the point that our nation has gone from manufacturing to a service economy and that these service jobs simply don't pay decent wages. A fair enough and important point. However, he then illogically jumped to a point about how blacks get more jobs than whites and this is where things go awry. Does anyone really think that blacks have an easy time getting a job at McDonald's than whites? Or at Olive Garden? Please. The loss of good paying manufacturing jobs has hurt everyone in this country. It cuts across race and has hurt people largely on the basis of education. Those who have had the ability and support to pursue higher education have generally done so and have thus been a bit more insulated. But the loss of manufacturing jobs has truly hurt those who did not have the money, support, or academic skill to obtain a college education. In this way, the loss of these production jobs has probably hit black workers even harder than whites, given historically lower rates of college attendance and graduation among black citizens. These people depended upon these jobs to pull themselves into the middle-class and in today's world, the chances of doing that without advanced education are more slim.

I realize that the skinheads are a fringe group. They don't have the numbers to do much real damage, even with their increasing alliances with other groups like the KKK. The problem is that we have a lot of fringe groups in the world. While any one of them may not be that significant, together they are causing a lot of problems. This only seems to be getting worse. The more people feel that their way of life and their beliefs are being attacked, the more they seem to entrench themselves in the defense of those beliefs. Instead of lamenting the loss of manufacturing jobs and blaming blacks, the skinheads need to realize that those jobs are just gone and that people today simply need other skills. It doesn't matter if for 100 years all the males in your family worked in the steel mills or building cars. Those days are over. It's not the fault of blacks, or women, or the Japanese. It simply is the steady development of the human species on this planet. You can spend time bemoaning change, and thus stagnate, or you can accept it, adapt, and be successful. Life has always been scary. That's why people invented gods. But continuing to encourage devision and hatred doesn't make it less so.