If Everything Is Racist...

The never-ending racial reckoning tour is meant to distract from America's real problems, giving political power to those trying to purge ideological dissent

We know evil has permeated society not when it convinces us of its nonexistence, but when it convinces us to destroy each other in its defense. That is the core of today’s ‘racial reckoning.’ All of the wickedness of American society stems from this accusation and accepted revelation that America was founded on a moral irreverence from which there can be no salvation. White cultural oppression and systemic racism are the fruits of a poisoned idea. America has named its one and only evil and it is racism. It is a fatal disease from which no surgical removal is possible; the whole of the body must be burned if true cleansing can begin.

But if we place our fear, our division, our self-oppression and self-censorship at the altar of one cause, are we actually setting an honest course for solving complex problems plaguing a complex society? No. We are settling for a scourge that encompasses all ‘badness’, foolishly convinced that by solving that, we solve our original sin. But those who revived and popularized such a notion – borrowing from post-modern cultural relativity, Paul-Michel Foucault, and even the Orientalism of Edward Said – are more bent on legitimizing an adherence to the belief that an oppressive Western structural hierarchy is the only basis for inequality in all aspects of American society, than in having a good faith discourse needed to solve complicated problems.

Derek Chauvin was tried in the court of public opinion not as one man, but as a symbol of racist policing and inherent targeting of black American by cops and civil authority. It is the enforcement arm of a racist judicial system and racist school-to-prison pipeline. But such claims are pejoratives meant to target anyone who dares reject such inherent malevolence. People like Thomas Sowell, Heather Mac Donald, Jason Riley, and Rafael Mangual are dismissed by the left as racist apologists, or worse. Corporate media plays its part in magnifying rare racial incidents and using them to characterize the system as a whole. This study illustrates how much Americans (and a large proportion of liberals) overestimate the actual number of unarmed blacks killed by police in 2019. It reflects the dramatic increase in the number of times ‘racism’ and its variations appeared in national media since 2010.

It comes as no surprise that the stoking of racial animus has reached a boiling point. The media has been adding fuel to a growing fire for years. Just in the past year headlines and op-ed pages have highlighted the coming ‘reckoning’. “America’s Enduring Caste System: Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all. Our reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for centuries” was a detailed feature in The New York Times Magazine that explicitly compared the United States to Nazi Germany.

But this is a wrong, and deeply destructive comparison. The fascism of Nazi Germany cannot be rightly understood as compared with a benevolent, but flawed America. The parallels are feasible only when we look at the deliberate targeting of a group of people based on ethnicity, race, or religion and deem them the inherent evils in society – evil that must be eradicated at all cost. Doing so redirects hate and bigotry and shifts responsibility for social ills away from fundamental issues of human nature to intangible platitudes as it aggrandizes victimization.

In Stalin’s Russia, the Doctor’s Plot of 1953 was part of a larger attempt of the Soviet government to stoke an upwelling of anti-Semitism in the USSR. Prominent Jewish doctors were arrested and confessed involvement in a plot to assassinate Soviet officials. It was part of a larger scheme to launch a massive party purge. Months later, it was revealed the charges were false and the ‘confessions’ had been obtained by torture.

Not only is assigning evil to one group of people a way to legitimize hate and perpetuate a fear-riddled society, it prohibits any debate or exchange of ideas that don’t adhere to the official diktat. The problems of society are too deep for our ‘leaders’ to take on, so they accept a shallow explanation. Profound thought and debate exceeds their capacity, so they take on frivolous, one-dimensional caricatures and pretend they’re fighting a noble fight against the devil.

In France, the murder of Sarah Halimi in her apartment in 2017 and the justice that was never afforded her is the consequence of an illiberal approach to cultural ruin. Because of political correctness, cowardice, and censorship pertaining to a protected class, her murder was initially and (so far) irreversibly deemed one of a crime of cannabis-induce psychosis instead of anti-Semitism, as the unaltered evidence suggests. It is a story that deserves attention, and one related to what Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been discussing with the release of her new book, Prey. Questioning woke ideology or politically correct nonsense is conjoined with racism, and so must never be entertained. No debate, no ideas, no solutions.

What this all means for America extends far beyond scapegoating one group for all of society’s failings. It is more than a crutch for irresponsibility in communities. It is more than utilizing excuses for continuous cycles of poor education, poverty, and violent crime. It is much, much more than finding the bogeyman in everything from the January 6th Capitol riot to Dr. Seuss books. Racism is treated as an inherent and irredeemable attribute of a group of people based solely on where they fall on the political spectrum and the superficiality of the color of their parents. It is never treated as the product of environmental conditioning. It is the inescapable, inextricable character of a certain American: preferably white, but white adjacent will do. Amy Chua, the Tiger Mom born of Asian immigrants, has been accused of it. Her sin is in her nonpartisan defense of Brett Kavanaugh and being an unapologetic defender of free speech and due process. Bari Weiss and Glenn Greenwald, far from conservative darlings, were alienated from their peers and professions because they refused to adhere to the woke dogma. There are countless others – average Americans who have been conditioned to believe their racism is inbred and it will take a new, revolutionary anti-racism to shame their independent thoughts from their formerly free minds.

Liberals make the polarity easy: you pledge your faith, virtue, reputation, and soul to counteracting the root of all that is evil, or you are part of the plague, and must be eradicated. From this ‘justice’ movement comes an overwhelming feeling of chaos. It fosters resentment in those who are suddenly associated with being designated a racist. It inevitably leads to self-censorship. People resent the feeling they are prevented from speaking their mind and confirms that the radical chic elites are in actuality affording certain legitimacy to lawless behavior. One only has to look at the contrast of reactions to the riots in Minneapolis versus those on January 6th.

So what should we do with the message bought and paid for by the liberal elite who want the innocent to atone for every wicked transgression in America? Ibram X. Kendi has sold his solution to every follower of this soulless religion:  “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." The goal is no longer 'racial equality' or equal treatment under the law. It is, rather, the attainment of a state of the world in which all groups have equal outcomes—even if some are deliberately disadvantaged in the process. And we go forth like criminals, awaiting our judgment. Pride in America must be paid for in shame. Optimism for the future must be rejected for the hopelessness of irredeemable sin. Grace and forgiveness overcome by eternal damnation.

When every individual can be guilty of a collective sin, everyone has the potential to be purged. It will continue until the only remnants of a once enlightened society are smoldering embers under the jackboot of an autocratic bourgeoisie that traded equality of opportunity for the equity of hate.