PrintFebruary 23, 2009
Real Racism
Anyone who has been awake for the last twenty-five years should know that the uniquely institutional American sin of racism has long been a thing of the past. From our new President's election, to the phenomenal success of Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods, to the domination of the entertainment and professional sports industry, the clear acceptance and, rather, love and appreciation of blacks by a vast majority of Americans is very evident to those who wish to see the obvious. An honest assessment of the last election must conclude that Obama got more votes because of the color of his skin than were cast against him for it.
Obama's victory was simply an unnecessary exclamation point on a certainty. The United States is, and has been for a long time, the most diverse and tolerant nation in history. Furthermore, anyone who has been involved in the private commercial workplace, or government, or academia knows that far from being the hate-filled, bigoted, exclusionary environments of legend, minorities are favored systematically and often by enforced quota mandates. A qualified minority applicant is not only desired and actively recruited, but also promoted and lauded. Everyone knows this.
In fact, the sin of hatred as understood by the term "racism" is no more prevalent today than any other symptom of the fall of man. To call our society "racist" is no different or more nonsensical than calling it "slothful", "greedy", "proud", or "covetous." Human beings are imperfect.
But of course the charges of "racism" and endless calls for "dialogue" about race are more about power grabs, money and intimidation than sin. The race industry thrives on empty rhetoric and phantom threats to maintain a position of legitimacy. And the intimidation works, like nothing that has gone before. The pejorative label "racist" is to be feared above all else. Thus universities and corporations feel compelled to fund and house diversity bureaucracies promulgating the absurdity of eliminating racism by attempting to magnify and infuse race as a factor in every human interaction.
Dr. King's dream of a colorblind society based on character content, while vaguely celebrated, would be, if achieved, the diversity industry's worst nightmare.
Real racism camouflages itself in the righteousness of modern liberalism. Clothing itself in virtuous reaction to ancient wrongs, the liberal mind scoffs at the reality evinced in Patrick Moynahan's famous warning of the "dumbing down of deviancy" or as more delicately put by Bush the Younger as the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Assessing objectively the pathologies of culture and destabilizing tendencies, attitudes, and behavior are off-limits. Serious inquiries must take pre-ordained paths or else. (Trivia question: Dr. James Watson - genius who discovered DNA? or idiotic quack?) One thing is clear. Only orthodoxy will be accepted in this realm.
Deplorably, the "real" racism of the racism industry trivializes the evil of actual racism, the ethnic hatred based on skin color, tribe, religion and culture that wreak havoc around the globe. (Especially on the continent of Africa, a fact virtually ignored by complacent self described African-Americans.) If the race-baiters noticed the horrific destruction of Zimbabwe done by Mugabe, turning the breadbasket of Africa into a desolate wasteland through anti-white policies, it somehow has not engendered the outrage that a city comptroller's use of the word "niggardly" to describe budget policies did on the insensitivity scale. Actual racism fosters poverty, injustice, and war. Fake racism makes headlines.
Power and money trump racism in America by a very, very long shot. The race industry fosters influence, jobs, contracts, and suasion. The type of people, nominal liberals, who get thrills from a black-skinned President, should recognize the assumptions they bring with their enthusiasm.
Real racism in America presupposes the inadequacy of dark-skinned Americans and the inherent ignominy of whites; it reveals itself in a self-satisfied nostalgia for redemptive struggle and refusal to accept present realities.
America is a nation that has proven itself to be beyond the pitfalls of endemic and debilitating so-called racism. A civil war and a civil rights movement were the necessary purgation and trials to bear in bringing us to our present condition. It is time to delight in the common good, recognize the efforts of our forbears, and start to judge individuals by the size of their hearts and the strength of their characters.
