THE END OF SYSTEMIC RACISM AT LAST

The Left is angry, and understandably so. Systemic racism has been a crucial part of their political DNA since, well, forever. The Democrat Party was the the bulwark for slavery against the abolitionist Republican Party and then the party of the KKK. The Leftists leaders quietly changed their brand of systemic racism and the branding of their party to make them more palatable to a post-Jim Crow electorate when they saw an opportunity to secure votes. Now the current Supreme Court decision on affirmative action threatens their carefully crafted narrative, and they won’t go down easily.

It’s apparent with any sober analysis that affirmative action is evil, and at odds with the tenets of our core beliefs as a nation as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and instantiated in the Constitution. Out past is littered with the evils of ignoring these beliefs, requiring Amendments that should never have had to be added. The 1960s was heralded as the “civil rights era,” and it is understandable how the move to jump-start racial equality through preferential treatment of black Americans was lauded. It was deemed that the egregious disparities generated by Jim Crow policies coupled with the still widespread personal bigotry (especially but not solely in the deep South) required extraordinary means to right the scales. I won’t speculate on the relative percentages of those who supported this “reverse” racism out of altruism versus those that simply saw it as a marketing ploy for votes and power, but I will remind the reader that the president who introduced the Great Society, LBJ, was well-documented as to his racist beliefs. So the policies were implemented with no end-point stipulated, a targeted welfare state that unfortunately favored fatherless families and government dependency. Out of this grew a lucrative race-grievance industry dependent on the perception of perpetual, systemic racism. As long as white guilt could be stoked by a vision of unchanged, unadulterated systemic racism, ingrained in our very DNA, those on the gravy train would flourish. It led to the rise of race-baiting superstars such as the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to name but two of the grifters dubbed “civil rights leaders” who could pardon “offenders” with the appropriate public apologies (and payments to the appropriate organizations). In later years it has evolved into the formation of a vast, well-funded network of DEI policies and departments, infiltrating every aspect of the socioeconomic ether. Books and lectures have made $ millions for those practitioners at the top of the food chain. The problem is, as evidence of systemic racism became more and more scarce, virtually disappearing at the time of the election of our first black (actually mixed race but phenotypically black) president, acts of personal racism had to be generated to support the narrative, such as the Jussie Smollett disaster and the noose in Nascar racer Bubba Wallace’s garage ploy. Despite these subterfuges, the socio-legal evidence for the persistence of systemic racism was wearing too thin. Still, the Leftist Racial-grievance industry knew they they could count on the power and revulsion tied to the word “racist” when cultivated in the fertile loam of while guilt, and spinning any white-on-black incident resulting in the demise of the latter as defacto evidence of systemic racism regardless of the facts (as illustrated by the Michael Brown “hands-up-don’t-shoot” fable in Ferguson, MO, and the George Floyd incident, to name only 2 of the more famous). Critical Race Theory was dusted off, repackaged and distributed everywhere, including to our schools, and with it the concept (debunked, but don’t go there) of the 1619 Project, a country founded not on principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but on slavery. Racial division (including, astonishingly, new segregation and separate black graduation ceremonies) was kept alive by preaching the existence of two classes of people: oppressors and victims. And, it was warned, the sooner that the “white-privileged” masses accepted this reality, the sooner they could join the ranks of the morally righteous “anti-racist.” The “proof” of the “systemic racism” and their righteousness was always and only the statistical disparities in socioeconomic outcomes between racial groups, regardless of cause. Their efforts have been spectacularly effective—racial tensions, with Obama’s early help, have progressively heightened since the early 2000s. The great irony in all of this is that as systemic racism in the legal system and in the minds of the vast majority of citizens had virtually vanished, it was being kept on life support by the very people who most loudly decried it—via the ongoing policy of affirmative action.

I stated above, and it bears repeating, that affirmative action is evil, and this is evident with even a rudimentary, honest analysis. It’s also unconstitutional and, therefore, illegal, and it’s astonishing how long a societal malaise born of historic guilt has allowed it to flourish. To forcibly correct past evils based on skin color in modern society requires specifically targeting some races for preferential treatment over others. In the case just decided by the Supreme Court against affirmative action in the admissions policies of Harvard University and U of North Carolina that particularly disadvantaged the Asian community, there was a resounding majority declaration that admissions decisions based on the hue of someone’s skin flies in the face of the 14^th Amendment. But the issue extends further: By lowering academic standards and test score thresholds for admission based on skin color, one must engage in the execrable practice of bigotry of low expectations. The fallout from this is higher dropout rates by those students that the proponents of affirmative action are purporting to help, students who may have flourished in a more appropriate, meritocratic environment. And those that were qualified by their achievements may be forever tainted by the inevitable and unfair perception by many that they got there simply due to racial quotas. This policy is a clear indication that you cannot fight racism with racism. Our parents taught us “two wrongs don’t make a right.” It seems that we’re forever relearning this basic rule. The Supreme Court got it right. And shame on the two Leftist dissenting justices, Maria Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown, with the latter proferring a particularly vacuous and egregious argument.

It was high time the that the Court decided to abolish the last bastion of systemic racism. Expect the Left, though, to not go quietly into this good night.

Addendum: It is now customary to routinely capitalize racial descriptions of skin color (i.e., “Black,” “White”). I refuse to accede to this new convention as it reinforces the Leftist narrative of the importance of skin color over other personal attributes, including character.

SOCIETY’S DE(I)ATH WISH

The acronym DEI (I prefer DIE as it more accurately characterizes what it’s doing to our society) ostensibly stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, but this pervasive and pernicious program is more aptly defined as Division, Entitlement, and Inequality.

The diversity it extols applies to skin color and sexual preference, not ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints. Under this rubric, Critical Race Theory has sprouted like weeds throughout the garden of color blindness that MLK had hoped and prayed for, and accounts for the astonishing lack of competence in even the upper echelons of power.. Children and adults alike are being assaulted by anti-white racism, words to the effect that minorities are kept down by white people who are inherently oppressors and repositories of “white privilege” (ironically, this has an element of truth, as the policies supported by the advocates of DEI indeed foster failure for their targeted groups, but more on that below). This toxic, immoral rhetoric has rekindled racial division that was at its nadir at the time President Obama took office. Polling data bear out the fact that blacks increasingly ascribe their failures to “get ahead” to systemic racism rather than personal agency. DEI has also more starkly divided the nation politically.

This brings us to Entitlement. In a misguided attempt to try to right historical malfeasance via a “two wrongs make a right” approach, as whiteness is demonized, blackness is extolled and given preferential treatment. Affirmative action, which may have arguably served as a useful band-aid in the waning Jim Crow years, has become a millstone around society’s neck, branding every successful black individual with the perception of lower achievement because of the reduced standards accepted for others of the same group, shamefully defined by the superficial characteristic of skin color. In a mind-boggling display of mental contortion, this bigotry of low expectations is regarded as “just,” not as the racism that it is. While one might think that rewarding reduced merit would not be a prescription for success, this destructive entitlement was yet deemed insufficient. These same supporters of affirmative action want to lower the bar with more intense virtue-signaling though reparations. In other words, paying people who have not personally suffered the pain of slavery or Jim Crow by those who never engaged in these abhorrent practices. To make the case for such an immoral policy, they double down on the “white privilege” oppressor-oppressed theme.

And finally, Inequality. To rationalize treating a minority preferentially, it’s not enough to demonize the other race. One must hold equity above equality. Disparate outcomes, a feature of existence, must be viewed as not only unacceptable, but attributable in its entirety to “systemic racism.” This allows the powers-that-be to exclude individual agency and personal accountability. Such a tack dangerously prevents policy-makers from understanding all of the variables contributing to the inequity du jour and precludes legislating in an effective manner, usually exacerbating rather than solving or ameliorating the problem. But perhaps that’s the point—a feature rather than a bug. Convincing the voter that something or someone other than than those in power is responsible for the problem and/or the failure to find a solution provides the necessary distraction to grow government and its associated welfare state even more in size and scope. The cover of widespread individual dependency enables them to double down on ineffectual or deleterious policies in a vicious circle, using equity as a club to perpetuate in the people an ever-growing comfort with, and expectation of, government entitlements. Larger government leads to more power for the elites. It also generates a multi-billion dollar swindle with DEI departments in educational institutions at all levels and through the government and corporate world, so there’s no small incentive for the DEI activists to preserve the scam. By perpetually “solving” (or more accurately, “stoking”) problems of their own making and promoting “equity by fiat” (i.e., at gunpoint), government drives the downward spiral of society we’re now seeing. But that’s inevitable when you elevate equity above equality.

In short, DEI is systemic immorality gussied up and sold as virtue—bottled extract of “lipstick on a pig”— hawked by traveling salesmen we’ve elected to positions of power. How sick will we have to get before we tar and feather them and run them out of town?

Postscript: Some of you astute readers may have noted that I excluded capitalization of the words “black” and “white” as it pertains to people, which has recently become the norm. This is intentional. I refuse to legitimize the notion of importance ascribed to skin color that undergirds the racist ideology of the Left.