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.

HOW TO TELL IF YOU’RE RACIST

I’ve just finished Shelby Steele’s White Guilt, a brilliant dissertation by a black scholar who lived through the era of Jim Crow. While it was written 15 years ago during the George W. Bush administration and Steele’s parting comments show he didn’t predict the subsequent dramatic failure of the conservative “correction” of the era’s progressive influence, his analysis is more germane today than ever (watch the first 3 minutes of this, if you have any doubts). His wisdom lent him the ability to analyze the motivations behind and effects of the policies enacted to deal with the evils of racism. And I’ve gotten a clearer understanding of how to define your own personal racism.

You’re racist if:

• You believe someone is inferior by dint of skin color
• You socially exclude someone by dint of skin color
• You mandate greater qualifications to hire someone by dint of skin color
• You fire or reduce someone’s compensation for work done or services rendered by dint of skin color
• You believe someone is superior by dint of skin color
• You include someone by dint of skin color
• You mandate lower qualifications to hire someone by dint of skin color
• You hire or increase someone’s compensation for work done or services rendered by dint of skin color

In light of the above, it’s clear why the current definition of personal racism crafted by the Left into the newly pervasive dogma of “anti-racism” will harm people of color and whites alike. It also provides a clue as to why the war on poverty has failed despite the infusion of more than $23 trillion over decades, by exaggerating and focusing on, to the exclusion of all other variables, an illusion of systemic racism from a dead past in the interest of power and financial gain. No one denies the past and no one denies the persistence of individual racism. But honest people don’t denigrate the validity of the values the country was founded or the truth of how far we’ve come since the 1960s. As Mr. Steele eloquently lays out, not only is the current Leftist dogma morally objectionable, it is reprehensible. By harnessing white guilt, corrupt and deluded whites are extorted and bestowed the false gift of “moral authority,” enabling them to implement ultimately racist policies that only harm the communities they profess to help. We should all see through this, no matter how many race-baiting Al Sharptons, Jessie Jacksons, Joe Bidens, or the dozens of big name politicos scream “racist!”.

My “moral authority” will never come from holding people down with the boot of low expectations on their necks. Take that, Joe.

THE LEFT—A REAL-LIFE SUPERVILLAIN

I spoke last time of the astonishing rapidity with which the Left realized its final ascent to power. In fact, this accomplishment was slow, deliberate, and ingenious. The Left is, in effect, the Lex Luther of politics.

Since the early days of mainstream progressivism of Woodrow Wilson in the US, the Left has recognized the importance of culture being upstream of politics, and has focused its attention accordingly. It inserted its doctrines, slowly and methodically, as in the parable of catching wild pigs by laying bait and putting up one fence at at time. It functioned at all levels of education, from top to bottom. It perverted the old values through films, books, and social media, recently gaining a stranglehold on mass communication. With the tool of white guilt, it paralyzed the immune system of the host, weakening it beyond recognition, and is now poised to make a final, venomous strike. Ideas that a scant 20 years ago were regarded as outlandish have now moved into the mainstream. They craftily leveraged the dissonance between the country’s founding values and its past reality to achieve unimagined success.

As I approach my eight decade, I look back on a society that paradoxically has become progressively more impolite and materialistic while simultaneously more socially responsible. Specifically, the real systemic misogyny and racism of the past began to finally be addressed in the 1960s with the civil rights movement, and by the time of the election of our first black president were virtually nonexistent. True, on the both fronts differences in outcomes remained, but sober analysis shows that a systemic, legally underpinned system of discrimination in modern America is hard to prove. Often, the people proclaiming victimhood are not only the most privileged in the country, but the world. Residual socioeconomic disparities along the lines of race and gender were actually receding and were reignited by the ideology of victimhood, which divided and harmed the most vulnerable by lowering expectations in the name of “fairness.” The Left saw this narrative, in concert with the powerful undercurrent of white guilt, as an opportunity. Division is always the means for implementing fundamental change. It worked in Venezuela as it’s worked throughout modern history, and it’s working here.

The present, predictable border crisis is neither accidental nor born of incompetence. Since Leftist policies inevitably lead to less freedom and more poverty for the masses (again, see Venezuela), the remaining contingent of liberals that have not fully succumbed to the ideology pose a threat to Leftist power. It’s possible that the fallout from implementing these flawed policies could result in a shift in power in the federal legislature in 2 years, and even in the White House in 4—so the timeline to secure power is short. In preparation, in addition to the massive influx of young, ideologically converted and uninformed voters being injected into the electorate, a massive infusion of illegal immigrants who can be counted to vote Democrat in return for government largess (already being dispensed), will assure unbroken, Leftist-controlled Democrat ascendency for generations to come. This will effectively and possibly irrevocably change the complexion of the country. The willingness to pack the Supreme Court, consider making Washington, DC a state, and abandon the filibuster, are consistent with their concept of a “living” Constitution, and highlight the direction a future US will take.

The transformation has been brilliant, the product of evil genius. Assuming there is still time, it will take a political Superman to counter it. This means leaders ready and willing to fight and a people not afraid to speak out. Or is the kryptonite of the word “racist” too powerful?