The Politics of Racism

Has Democrat identity politics so saturated our culture that we must all think our race the primary determinant of who we are? It sure seems that way when listening to what passes for political discourse these days.

It’s been a long time — so long I cannot remember the last time it bothered me when someone called me a racist. It did sting the first few times and it put me on the defensive. I felt compelled to refute the charge, but I don’t anymore. The accusations are most often in anonymous comments on my web site, but also in signed letters to the editor in newspapers carrying my column.

When on my “Left & Right” TV show, one leftist opponent habitually calls Republican policies or individuals racist, I ask for specific evidence. His answers indicate he doesn’t know what racism actually is. Dictionary.com defines it as:

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.

Early charges of racism against me came after I wrote columns arguing against Affirmation Action policies enforced by the federal government. According to HG.org Legal Resources:

The purpose of affirmative action is to promote social equality through the preferential treatment of socioeconomically disadvantaged people.

My point was that in order to grant preferential treatment to historically disadvantaged groups like blacks and women in hiring, college admissions, and granting of government contracts, other groups like white men must necessarily be passed over. That, of course, requires bona fide racial and sexual discrimination.

There can be no argument that so-called “affirmation action” discriminates against white men. College admission policies discriminate against Asian men and women as well as whites as evidenced in recent lawsuits against Harvard University by Asian students who have been denied admission on the basis of race. Evidence indicates other Ivy League colleges do the same.

A 2015 LA Times article reported on a Princeton study using SAT scores to measure advantages and disadvantages of applicants according to their race. It was summed up by a college admission specialist named Ann Lee who said: 

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 [SAT] points. Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points. Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

It’s the ultimate irony that Asians and whites who argue against such racially discriminatory policies are the ones accused of racism. Who is making these racist accusations? New York Times columnist David Brooks last week claimed that for the past twenty years: “

…white educated Democrats have moved left is true, but it’s not the essential truth. The bigger truth is that this segment is now more likely to see politics through a racial lens. Racial equity has become the prism through which many in this group see a range of other issues.

While I find myself agreeing with Brooks less and less lately, I’m with him on much of what he says in this column. Charges of “racism” hurled against me for more than twenty-five years have nearly always come from educated white liberals. Though many are still impressed by them, I’ve learned that college degrees do not prove intelligence, and I believe educated liberals yell “racism” when they run out of logical arguments. Another driving force behind accusations of racism is “white guilt,” especially as described by Shelby Steele in his 2006 book by that name. Educated white liberals are terrified that anyone may think them racist, so they bend over backward to forestall any such possibility.

As Brooks put it last week: 

“…if you’re a rich white child of privilege you have to go to extraordinary lengths to prove you’re one of the good children of privilege and not one of the bad ones. In this take, white progressives don noble clothing to make themselves feel good…

Are educated white liberals signaling their virtue when calling the rest of us racist? It was less than three years ago that candidate Hillary Clinton labeled half of Trump supporters racist. Compared to today’s far-left Democrat candidates she was a moderate. It’s Tuesday as I write this and I expect charges of racism against the president and his supporters to dominate tonight’s Democrat debate in Detroit.

Our Supreme Court recently forbade the 2020 US Census to ask people if they’re citizens of the United States but has no problem with questions about race — for which there are over a dozen possible categories. If even the United States government is now officially more concerned about people’s race than their citizenship, what kind of country have we become?