My friend, Dennis Prager, likes to say everything the Left touches they destroy. Whether that is true or not, when they grasp onto perfectly good words, they destroy them. For example, they destroyed the name Liberal so much that it was abandoned by them and leaving the remaining Liberals in a lurch as to defining themselves. The term has been reclaimed by Conservatives who assert they are classic Liberals. The Left then started calling themselves Progressives destroying that word. The only thing progressive about them is that they want to progressively restrict your rights and progressively take more of your money for their favored causes. Now they have destroyed the meaning of racist.
It certainly seemed we had spent about sixty years or so doing everything we could to not only eradicate racially biased policies from our governments, but to normalize the attitudes of individuals from different races toward each other. It certainly seemed like we did a wonderful job of socializing this akin to how we made it socially unacceptable to smoke cigarettes. We had treated anti-Black attitudes analogous to making people with racial bias feel like smokers standing in an alley to feed their habit. That does not mean we cured everyone of racial animus, but we have moved the ball not only down the field, but we were pretty much at the three-yard line ready to score.
Except for the fact the Democrats found the only way they could win elections is to try and convince the public that Republicans only cared about White men. It is their position, if you are Black, Hispanic, Gay, Female or Asian and vote Republican, you not only are wrongheaded, but you are a traitor to your group.
Two presidential candidates have joined the chorus to further the false racism charges. Senator Harris attacked Vice-President Biden. She charged a man of being a racist who has spent over 50 years helping to normalize race relations for not fully backing a policy (school busing) that was supported by 4% of Whites and 9% of Blacks. He is a target because he is a White man.
Then there is Senator Booker who said, “It’s not enough to say you’re not racist, you need to attack racism.” This is a Black man who is the child of two IBM executives, grew up in an affluent community, graduated with two degrees from Stanford University, was a Rhodes scholar attending Oxford University, became Mayor of Newark and then a U.S. Senator. He should be holding himself out as a prime example of how we have advanced in race relations instead he is setting new standards for people seeking to not be called a racist.
And now he set another new standard saying Trump is “worse than a racist.” He went on: “The reality is this is a guy who is worse than a racist. He is actually using racist tropes and racial language for political gain.” Senator, that standard defines about half of your party and most of the Mainstream Media and particularly you.
The race-baiters in chief? Unquestionably the Squad. Of course, they embraced the new terminology for a race. Like the way Leftists magically changed Global Warming to Climate Change, now they want us to embrace the terminology a person or persons of color. What exactly does that mean? We used to have Whites, Blacks, Asians and maybe someone who is Native American. There is scientific debate whether there are three to five races (two being minor populations). But if you want to wield a bludgeon against someone in order to call them racist, just make up your race as you go along.
People have referred to Jews as a race. Not true. It is a religion and embraces anyone from any “race” that follows the principles of the religion. People refer to Mexicans as if it were a race. It is a country. Mexico is made up of between 56% and 78% European (Caucasian) ancestry. To my recollection, every leader (president) in recent memory was White. Yet people are accused of racism against Mexicans.
The four women in the Squad refer to themselves as women of color. You just don’t get to call yourself that without being such. Obviously Pressley is Black and Omar coming from Somali is Black, but the other two? Ocasio-Cortez has two Puerto Ricans parents. It appears between 64% to 75.8% of Puerto Ricans are of European decent. Just having a surname that is Hispanic does not make you a minority. Congresswoman Tlaib is Palestinian by heritage and they are classified as Caucasians from all the analysis I could find. So, is she a minority or is it just she is of Palestinian heritage and wants to claim she is a minority? A Jew coming from the same area would not be classified as anything other than a White unless Ethiopian.
All these people are claiming some kind of racial minority status to insulate themselves from anyone who might want to criticize their ideas. If you critique what they say or do you are a racist. All of this has served to damage the word as a tool to define someone. Just like they throw around “white supremacist.” By randomly charging people with being a white supremacist, the few that act out in America become difficult to judge because no one can discern who is and who is not.
That is also why the Squad defamed Speaker Pelosi as a racist, devaluing any charge of racism they make. That is why Ocasio-Cortez’s now former chief of staff branded almost all the Democrat caucus as racists. Chakrabarti sent out a tweet comparing centrist Democrats to “new Southern Democrats” and stated “certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.”
Here are some pointers for all these people:
1. Read a book by Thomas Sowell. He has written more than thirty. He experienced actual racism. He will provide some enlightenment on the issue of race.
2. Read a book by Walter Williams. He too is an economist like Sowell and he has written 10 books. He also experienced real racism. He can share a lot of knowledge. As he recently wrote “Black Americans who are octogenarians, or nearly so, need to explain what true racism is, not to correct white liberals but to inform young black people.”
3. In your office, put on continuous loop the MLK I Have a Dream speech. Particularly the part where he says, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It seems you are ignorant of that because you don’t live by it. That phrase is what we believe. That is what we have lived the last 56 years since those words were spoken. That is our mantra, a color blind country.
The current situation is so galling for these reasons. While we are working toward this color-blind society, these people were plotting to cause this disruption for crass political purposes. For their own power which they yearn for so determinedly. It does not matter that people would suffer or the country would be disrupted. What matters is raw political power.
Ask a simple question: If you run the cities and school systems for more than half a century and they are floundering burdened with high murder rates and high illegal drug usage who are the real racists? Think about it Democrats.
Would it be a surprise if I am called a racist for writing this? No. That is what they do; call people names when they cannot make effective arguments. That will not deter me, and I am certain it will neither deter the people who read this column in our quest for a color-blind America.
We can achieve that goal because we are all racists now.