By MARGARET WENTE Saturday, November 9, 2002 – Page A19

The other day, I heard a passionate black woman recite a poem on the radio. It was called "Justice," and it was delivered in rap style. Part of it went, "When I'm home and I turn on the TV my mind is filled with the negativity, 'cause it's all about what the media portrays, they want people's minds to be enslaved. . . . It's hard for my mind to conceive what the media wants us to believe, that black is black and white is good."

The poet, Anne-Marie Woods, was invited to perform her piece on CBC Radio's Metro Morning, which has been giving heavy coverage to two explosive race stories in Toronto. One is The Toronto Star's report on racial profiling by Toronto's police force, the other the mounting toll of black-on-black gun carnage in the city.

Andy Barrie, the host of Metro Morning, has been inviting black guests on his show in an effort to explore both stories. But it's been heavy going. The only story his guests want to discuss is racial profiling. When Mr. Barrie raises the crime issue (which is disproportionately Jamaican-flavoured), he gets shut out. "We should resist attempts to split our community," said one guest when Mr. Barrie delicately tried to ask the Jamaican question. Another said, "You are what society sees you as."

Forty years ago, the message from black leaders was exactly the opposite. They insisted that you are not what society sees you as. They insisted that you are more than the colour of your skin. In those days, a favourite picket sign read simply: I am a man.

Today, the rhetoric of black aspiration is nearly extinct. In its place is the rhetoric of group victimhood and grievance, which insists that every black person is oppressed, every white person is an unconscious racist and every institution is discriminatory. If Martin Luther King were alive today, he would no longer be preaching "I have a dream." He'd be preaching "I have a grievance."

Shelby Steele calls this the greatest miscalculation in black North American history. Mr. Steele, a black thinker of great force, argues his case in a brilliant essay in the current issue of Harper's Magazine. It's called The Age of White Guilt, and I recommend it to anyone dismayed by the impasse over race relations or discouraged by the sterility of the debate. It explains how the persistent claims of black groups to victimhood have turned into a terrible trap.

Mr. Steele says the civil rights revolution marked the end of the era of white racism and the beginning of the era of white guilt. White guilt nurtures the narrative of racism and oppression. It rewards the protest identity, which finds empowerment through victimhood, and perpetuates the myth that blacks are too weak to overcome their oppression. It reinforces the belief that the problems of black communities originate with white society, and can't be tackled from within. Saddest of all, the narrative of group oppression tells minority kids they are defined by their colour. It denies them the chance to find their individuality.

The heavier the investment in victimhood, the harder it is to give it up. This explains why the rhetoric of black leaders remains extreme even as the world gets fairer. If people admitted things were improving, they'd lose their leverage.

In Toronto, race relations with the police have improved markedly over the past couple of decades. Some black leaders will say this in private but not in public. Meantime, violent black-on-black crime has got much worse.

My own sense is that racial profiling by the police is real but largely unintentional. While steps should be taken to minimize it, it is far from the worst problem for black groups in the city. The worst problems are the school dropout rate, the high percentage of kids who grow up without fathers, and the terrible influence of Jamaican-flavoured gang, gun and drug culture. Another problem is peer pressure directed against boys who might be tempted to "act white," by studying hard or aspiring to get ahead in the white world.

The death toll of young men in their prime has now become so great that some black leaders have begun to speak quietly of the need to look within. One Toronto activist, Dudley Laws, has put together a list of more than 100 black people killed by other black people in the Toronto area between 1996 and 2001. Many of these crimes are hard to solve because, even though there may be dozens of witnesses, police can't persuade them to come forward. Fear of gang reprisals is one reason. But surely another reason is that Mr. Laws has spent years telling the black community to fear and hate the police.

It may be awhile before the rhetoric of oppression changes much. As Mr. Steele notes, many of the most accomplished people from the black community have built their careers on it. Oppression has been their ticket to success.

"Today, the protest identity is a career advantage for an entire generation of black intellectuals, particularly academics who have been virtually forced to position themselves in the path of their university's obsession with 'diversity,' " he writes.

Examples are everywhere. I recently read a new book called Discourses of Domination,written by two prominent black Canadian scholars, Frances Henry and Carol Tator. It says the white-run media are guilty of systemic racism, just as the rap poet on the radio said. The fact that real racism has all but disappeared is not an obstacle for them. Instead, they have identified a version that is all but impossible to detect, unless you are an expert in critical discourse analysis.

"The ways in which society gives voice to racism are often subtle and even invisible to mainstream society," they argue. The Globe comes in for heavy fire, and I (among many others) am cited for my defence of Avery Haines, a broadcast journalist who was fired after making a mildly incorrect joke about minorities when she didn't know the mike was on. The widespread media support for Ms. Haines, the authors argue, proves their case.

"All they want to do is stereotype," the rap poet recited on the radio. She was, of course, referring to white people, including the white people at the CBC who hired her as a resident artist. But as Mr. Steele points out, the real racial stereotyping these days goes the other way around. We are white, therefore we are racist.

And until that stops, it will be very difficult for helpful

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2002