It is true…Black Lives Matter…
It is true…All Lives Matter…
It is true…Blue Lives Matter…
It is true… racism exists…
It is true…almost all police officers are good and honorable people trying to keep their communities safe…
It is true…almost all people are good, loving, honorable people who treat others with respect and dignity…
It is true…no one is helped when government and social institutions put their thumb on the scale of justice to harm or benefit anyone on the basis of their race…
What happened to George Floyd, no matter what his background, was wrong. The rioting and looting in response to the criminal behavior of the police officer in Minnesota that apparently killed Floyd, however, is criminal. I believe in protesting. March in the streets all you want, say whatever you want, but don’t vandalize, don’t loot, don’t threaten others with violence. That is criminal, and should be treated as such, without discrimination as to the content of the speech. On this question, I think all agree.
So, How did we get to this point? How does a discussion about race turn in which everyone is making true statements turn into a finger pointing exercise, with each side calling each other names? I think I know the answer.
It is the political response to the protests. The California Assembly today is considering ACA 5, an attempt to repeal Proposition 209. Proposition 209 eliminated race based preferences in California. ACA 5 is an attempt to reinstate those preferences. It is supported by a large number of Democrat politicians, in the tradition of the Democrat politicians of the past who have benefited from race based policies.
Now, it is true that elected Democrat politicians have a history of supporting racism, and race based government policies. Democrat politicians were the institutional racists of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Century. Democrat Party political leadership supported and rationalized slavery. When the United States elected Abraham Lincoln (a Republican), Democrat politicians, who controlled the Southern states attempted to leave the US, and fight a war to protect slavery. As soon as they were able after they lost the war, these same politicians, the politicians that caused the states to secede to protect slavery, instituted a system of race based protections, called Jim Crow laws, to legalize race based discrimination. In most of the South,the Klu Klux Klan took over the political machinery of the Democrat Party in the South, to ensure that those race based policies stayed in place. In 1964, when the civil rights laws were enacted at the federal level to destroy Jim Crow enshrined racial discrimination, a majority of the Democrat politicians in Congress voted against civil rights. The civil rights laws only passed because a majority of the Republicans, who had been fighting for equality of the races since the early 1920’s, voted for those bills. A 40 year fight to end race based discrimination came to an end in 1964 as the result of the efforts of a majority of the Republicans in Congress, and a few Democrats.
But, rather than end race based discrimination, Democrat politicians, who for years had politically profited from racial division, simply changed who was being discriminated against. These Democrat politicians called these new race based laws favoring discrimination by a new name, “affirmative action,” but make no mistake, they are race based discrimination, and they foster racial hatred and division. They once again institutionalized racism. Republicans once again began the fight against race based discrimination, and, for their continuing fight against racism, were themselves tagged racists. Proposition 209 ended this race based discrimination in California in 1996. Democrat politicians, who no longer had a platform to incite racial division, and who longed for a way to capitalize on race based divisions, could no longer use legalized discrimination as a sword to sway votes.
Until now. These Democrat race-baiters, who have longed benefited from racial division and discrimination, are attempting to capitalize on the George Floyd protests to reignite the flames of racial division that the pre-Prop 209 policies fanned each year. Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, up for a vote today, is the fan. It reinstates race based discrimination in California law. It is true to the long Democrat politician tradition of racism, it is 100% against the centuries long effort by good Americans to attempt to achieve a racially balanced country.
Racism exists. It is an evil that has long plagued our country, and, as a country, we have paid a steep price, in the lost lives and economic destruction caused by racism, in the Civil War and the battle for civil rights that followed in the next century. There was a level of parity that was achieved in 1996 in California. ACA 5 is a move backwards in history, and will reignite the race war in California. It is wrong, and no amount of justification by race-baiting politicians can change that. They want to benefit politically from the racial wars they started years ago. It was wrong then, it is wrong now. The bill should be rejected by all those who claim to believe in racial equality.