Race atones for this sin and for all sins. It answers all objections, it fills in the giant gaps in their knowledge and competence. It is a disguise that they once put on, but can no longer take off. It has become their reason for being. It is the one subject that is so simple and elemental that they can thoroughly control it. Poverty is complicated. So are jobs and wars. Race however is simple. There are bad people and there are good people. The oppressed and the oppressors. And that paradigm, that one talking point that they store up and unleash at every occasion is the sum total of their contribution to every debate under the sun.
Their race card is as big as America now. It is America. There is no longer an America for them, just a collection of race cards that they shuffle and deal and shuffle again, playing solitaire with themselves until the economy goes down. In their America it is always 1963 in Birmingham. It will always be Birmingham, 1963, even for those who have never been to Birmingham and who did not even exist on this planet in 1963.
Birmingham, 1963, is a myth to them. A story that they want to be part of. It is their version of the Warrior’s Tale. The one that isn’t true, but that inspires the younger members of the tribe to be like the mythical warrior. It is the story that they tell us incessantly because they don’t really know who they are or we are anymore. All they know is that the story makes them better than us. They don’t know where they are going or where they have been, only that they are marching forward to some bright future. And that the very act of marching forward means that they are progressive and makes them into the children of the future.
And the economy? Who cares about that.