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.

TOO FEW ADULTS IN THE ROOM

Imagine sending your child to a daycare center where there are fifty unruly kids with one caregiver. A formula for catastrophe, right? That may be a rough analogy for the state of our beleaguered nation.

You only have to go back 2 generations to see an America populated by a majority of people with far different values and expectations. Sure, those coming here, then as now, were seeking a better life. But central to that life were the country’s values. Those that were already here believed in them. Those that came entered legally, stirred by the promise of individual liberty in their material and spiritual lives. All had an understanding that individual responsibility was inextricably entwined with the gift of citizenship. People came despite the undeniable stain of unrealized promises, manifested as a persistent inequality of race, sex, and ethnicity. They came because they saw that regardless, the opportunity to overcome social ills and succeed was better here than from where they’d fled. They were not slaves like the forced African immigrants before them, but some, as indentured servants, were little more, and people of different ethnicities, Chinese, Irish, and Italian, among others, faced unfair discrimination. Still, they persevered with their dreams and built lives for themselves and assimilated, and defined an American nation under the credo E pluribus unum. Despite a standard of living much lower than today, many viewed the more limited government assistance available as a sign of failure; family, the church, and community were the main sources of support. Families tended to be larger, more connected, at least geographically, and necessarily so. For there was no giant government safety net to catch them. Hard work was lauded, and expected. The crises, when they occurred, came earlier and more frequently due to the absence of advanced technology and the more primitive state of medicine. But the combination of freedom and capitalism, governed more by the marketplace and less by regulations, attracted the best minds and innovators from throughout the world, and led to the most prosperous, and eventually the most egalitarian, place the world had ever seen. Given the flawed nature of human beings as demonstrated by not just American, but world history, the existence of slavery and Jim Crow is perhaps less astonishing than the dramatic progress achieved in equality and justice for all over the past few decades, belatedly fulfilling promises made in the original founding documents. Those that trumpet individual displays of ethnic and racial prejudice as proof of a failed system as a whole not only ignore this progress, but lack supporting evidence, always citing unequal outcomes; and the election of a black president and the over-the-top backlash against even the perception of racist behavior is more than ample evidence of this fallacy.

Therefore, it is ironic that after getting so close to pairing unprecedented economic success and social equality, the values that sustain this have eroded faster than a calving glacier. It is not uncommon to see young and old alike bemoaning the state of our nation, and their own lots, as if their vision reflects reality. They stubbornly ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of people a year ate attempting to come to this land they so decry as irredeemably oppressive. To achieve this legerdemain, they have to reconstruct the past as the present, and look to the wealthy as an evil end-product that must be punished (always to their benefit). They look away from the unprecedented level of improvement in living standard even at the lowest economic strata and focus only on the widening disparity between the top and bottom. They myopically ignore the benefit of their relative affluence compared with most of the world beyond our shores (which, incidentally, thanks to capitalism has also improved). So many Americans are not only willing to suck from the teat of an outrageously metastasizing, intrusive nanny government, but from fellow citizens—and feel entitled to it, to boot. The change in attitude has been so insidious that they don’t see it, or choose not to. As the end result of failed policies manifests before their eyes, they’re told everything is going swimmingly, and are rewarded for believing with handouts, some redistributed, most manufactured out of thin air and green ink. Here in California, a corrupt governor facing a threat of recall, is disbursing debt-impregnated dollars to 70% of state residents. It would not shock me if people take the bribe and submit.

There remains a large but dwindling contingent that clings not just to their guns and bibles, but to the values that founded the country and made it great; if recent elections are any indicator, they may now be in the minority. And current immigration policies (or lack thereof) encouraging illegal entry without assimilation in concert with decades of Anti-American, white guilt-catalyzed indoctrination in the schools are likely to diminish this voice even more. The so-called leaders now at the helm, will pursue, like unprincipled children, the simplest road to continued power, regardless of the ultimate consequences. The adults in the room seem to be too few and too weak to stop them.

Maybe it’s time to just take my warm milk and go to bed. I hear it’s free.