Current liberal orthodoxy holds that a person is defined, more than anything else, by his or her skin color. People are mostly members of groups, not individuals; in fact, individualism is explicitly frowned upon. Members of the same racial group are pretty much all alike, and can be generalized about freely.
Those views used to be the very definition of racism. In my opinion, they still are. Hans Bader expands on this proposition at Liberty Unyielding: “‘Anti-racism’ is racism in disguise.” I would quibble only to the extent that I don’t think there is much of a disguise.
America’s colleges, media, and cultural institutions are being swept by the ideology of “anti-racism.” It openly advocates racial discrimination against white people, and promotes bigoted, lower expectations for black people.
“Rationality” and “hard work” are vestiges of racism, declared the “anti-racism” web site of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. It claimed that virtues like “hard work,” “self-reliance,” being “polite,” and being on time are all a product of the “white dominant culture.” So, too, are normal grammar, the scientific method, and its emphasis on “objective, rational linear thinking,” according to a chart the Smithsonian posted.
So black people are dumb, lazy and irrational. Strom Thurmond couldn’t have said it better! Only, to be fair, I don’t think Strom ever said anything as racist as this.
Being an “anti-racist” means advocating discrimination to transform society. The bible of “anti-racism” is “How to Be an Antiracist,” by Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi. The “key concept” from How to Be an Antiracist is that to remedy the underrepresentation of minority groups, you need to engage in discrimination in the opposite direction — i.e., discriminate against whites. …
Dr. Kendi’s views are celebrated by the Washington Post and the New York Times. The Times touts Kendi’s axiom that “When I see racial disparities, I see racism.”
The idea that all “disparities” are caused by racism is ridiculous. Asians earn considerably more, on the average, than whites. Is that the result of race discrimination against whites? Jews, on the average, earn far more than gentiles. Do we need start discriminating against Jews? Again?
Actually, whites fare rather poorly compared with many other groups:
Asians make more money than whites, on average. And while blacks make less money than whites, on average, immigrants from African countries like Nigeria actually make more money than whites do.
Ghanian-Americans earn more money, on average, than whites as well. The most recent Census Bureau data, recently posted by Steve, show that whites rank 17th in median household income. Indian-Americans on the average earn nearly twice as much as whites. Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Iranian descent, along with Nigerians, Ghanians and others, earn more than whites. White Americans are the worst white supremacists in world history.
Hans has much more at the link, all worth your attention. The bottom line, in my view, is that today’s liberalism is profoundly racist. It assumes that blacks are inherently unable to compete on a level playing field, and therefore the level playing field–meritocracy–must be done away with. This is contrary to every American precept of equal opportunity, and it is also utterly false as an empirical matter. In my lifetime, at least, we have not seen an overtly racist movement that can begin to rival contemporary liberalism.
UPDATE: Bill Otis adds another good reason why liberals are racists:
The main evidence liberals are anti-black racists is that they relentlessly push for policing and sentencing policies that will get blacks killed in wildly disproportionate numbers. We had soft policing and de-emphasis on incarceration in the Sixties, Seventies, and most of the Eighties, when the murder rate skyrocketed. Slightly over half of murder victims are black. When we changed our ways starting with Reagan/Bush, and over the last 30 years or so, the murder rate got cut in half. Tens of thousands of black (and other) lives were saved because of this. If we go back to the “failed policies of the past,” as Reagan would say, we’ll get the failed (and lethal) results of the past. Indeed, we’re doing that right now in these “progressive” cities like Portland, Seattle, NYC, and your own Minneapolis. The number of black bodies filling up the morgues is way beyond what it was at this time last year.
Do liberals care? Let me ask that another way: Will they even talk about it?
When for years you support a policy that disproportionately gets blacks killed, knowing to a certainty that that’s what’s going to happen, I don’t know how that can be anything other than anti-black racism. Indeed, I doubt the Klan came anywhere close to killing as many blacks as liberal criminal justice policies do.
The liberal mantra is: a tiny percentage of black lives matter, those that are politically useful. Otherwise? Forget about it.
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