RIGHT OF CENTER: A LOOK AT STEREOTYPES AND RACISM

On Monday, hundreds of thousands of black men are expected to converge on Washington, D.C. Described as a call for black men to come together to lift themselves from the inner-city spiral of crime, drugs and unemployment, the Million Man March aims to "show the world" that the majority of black men stay in school, work hard and care for their families, according the march organizer, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

I'm no fan of Farrakhan. The man's a racist and an anti-Semite, and I don't endorse his march. But the idea of fostering personal responsibility as the key to black achievement is a good one.

Unfortunately, it's now almost impossible to discuss race civilly. Anything that threatens the status quo is met with howls of protest and cries of racism by those whom Professor Walter Williams refers to as "poverty pimps" -- the professional race baiters whose power grows in proportion to the number of people who remain enslaved by welfare's grinding poverty and monotony. It doesn't help that the Clinton administration shares their biases.

Many black men complain that regardless of how hard they work or how much they succeed, they feel feared and mistrusted. The statistics are appalling. Census Bureau figures show that black men are eight times more likely to be murdered than white men.

Other statistics show that thousands more black men are serving time behind bars than are studying in college. About one-third of black men in their 20s either are in jail or prison or on parole or probation, according to The Sentencing Project, a not-for-profit group that advocates alternative sentences.

It is no wonder many black men regard the system as unfair. But is the solution to their problem more of the same welfare policies and affirmative action programs that we've tried, with miserable results, for the past three decades? Our president apparently thinks so.

His chief of staff, Leon Panetta, this week said that the "best reflection of what we want to do in terms of bringing the races together" is to balance the budget without steep reductions in social programs.

In other words, we must keep our heads firmly in the sand and expand programs that don't work. We're supposed to imagine that a diminishing group of beleaguered taxpayers bankrolling a growing group of entitled victims will lead to racial harmony, not division.

In my own experience, I've seen that blacks often do have to work harder and keep their noses cleaner to achieve anything like the American Dream. Individual prejudice and, more commonly, stereotypes continue to hinder black men.

Those who beat down the barriers succeed and are held by me -- and, I believe, most white Americans -- in higher esteem than successful whites.

But it would be dishonest to say stereotypes vanish when blacks succeed. I can respect and honor a black man I know, yet I will avoid like the plague a crime-infested section of a city where strangers of his same race congregate. In the same way black men can befriend individual whites while distrusting the system.

Both attitudes stem less from racism than from nagging stereotypes. The thing about stereotypes, though, is that they are based on a degree of truth. Most white men really can't jump.

To shun a black man I don't know in a rough neighborhood arises from stereotypes and a motivation for self-preservation. But for white Americans to shun their black co-workers or neighbors simply because of the color of their skin is a different and, I believe, rarer thing.

That doesn't mean stereotyping individuals on the basis of generalized, group behavior is good. But such biases are much easier to overcome than real racism. They are alleviated only as individuals act in their places of work, their neighborhoods and their community, never through government mandates.

Force a good man to fork over his cash for failed programs that attempt to redress past grievances and you feed his stereotypes. Do it long enough and he becomes embittered. Do the same thing to a vulgar man and you allow him to cloak himself in the warm, fuzzy robe of victimhood.

No march will cure the inner-city pathologies that disproportionately affect black men. More than anything, what's needed is a spiritual renewal that mends broken families and restores the home as the guarantor of a healthy society.

But the message of self-help and personal responsibility to counter cultural decay is a good one. It certainly holds more promise than preserving a corrupt and destructive status quo.

~Jay Eastlick is the news editor of the Southeast Missourian.