Americans are now trained to see racism everywhere, even where it doesn't exist.
By • The Federalist
One high school in Oregon postponed a vote last week on whether to change its mascot from the Trojan to the Evergreens over concerns the imagery of lush timber was racist.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School, named after the prominent black activist and journalist who documented lynching in the post-Civil War era, was considering a mascot change to adopt a symbol more representative of its connection to the community. Board members complained, however, that evergreen trees would conjure up imagery invoking the brutal execution of African-Americans.
“I think everyone comes with blind spots and I think that might’ve been a really big blind spot,” said Director Michelle DePass at the school board meeting.
The episode is emblematic of how the country has come to see race, viewing minorities deemed oppressed by the woke left as fragile special-interest groups that Americans must hold a religious commitment to buttress in the moral righteousness of “antiracism.” Everywhere, Americans are explicitly reminded of the racial inequities among minority groups as evidence of their inherent racism and the nation’s irredeemably racist past — and present.
Starting at an early age, Americans are barraged with statistics and anecdotes, about everything from income to health status, that are always broken down by race to highlight disparities that victimize minorities and define their destiny as one determined by racist circumstance over personal responsibility. This ideology of abject victimhood taught in classrooms, newsrooms, and boardrooms after being bred for an entire generation on left-wing university campuses has now produced a nation dangerously constrained by a toxic obsession with race.
Under this doctrine, anything and everything must be vetted by 21st-century standards of cultural acceptance to root out the poisonous racism. This obsession, however, is the root of American demise. A nation primed to think only about race will only think about race.
Americans are now trained to see racism in everything, even where it doesn’t exist. Trees are racist. Hiking is racist. Your cereal box is racist. Your depictions of Santa Claus and Jesus are racist. Claiming otherwise to any of it is also racist.
Minorities are trained to see themselves as hopelessly oppressed and facing endless aggressions at every turn. Every slightest impolite infraction can earn the morally indignant condemnation as racist, wrecking the perpetrator as a villain responsible for deep personal trauma. The so-called trauma, however, is merely a preconception inculcated by years of woke indoctrination.
None of this is to say racism doesn’t exist. Americans can and should recognize there are racial tensions that need to be addressed. The radical obsession with defining every aspect of the modern culture through the exhaustive lens of “antiracism,” however, has only led tensions to new heights while deceiving millions of well-meaning Americans who are terrified of the racist label and roping them into the effort. And “antiracism,” weaponized by the political left to pursue political ends through intimidation of their opponents, has stifled debate, driven division, and merely created a different kind of racism.
The debate over voter ID requirements included in the recent Republican-passed Georgia voting bill provides a perfect illustration of today’s racism infecting woke corporatists and the Democratic Party, which claim — in the name of antiracism of course — that mandated identification requirements for ballot access are too difficult for minorities to comply with.
And then there’s affirmative action and the push for reparations, endorsed by the Democratic Party, which claims minorities aren’t capable of achieving of the American dream without white saviors and billions in special assistance.
Race relations under the mandated lens of antiracism aren’t getting any better. On that, nearly all Americans agree. According to Gallup, in 2008, the year Americans elected their first black president, 70 percent of white adults and 61 percent of black adults said race relations were either “very” or “somewhat good.” Only 46 percent of white adults and 36 percent of black adults said the same in 2020.
If last year’s radical acceleration of antiracism in the culture war has taught us nothing else, it’s that the colorblind approach was likely the right one. The opposite has shown to be an aggressive form of racism featuring the bigotry of low expectations cloaked in the moral righteousness of social justice.
by Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi 
In the aftermath of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases one element is the most perplexing. The President and his Attorney General are claiming, or insinuating that both victims were gentle and peaceful black persons, and the use of deadly force by the policemen in both cases was unjustified and essentially racially motivated. This judgment is blatantly counterfactual. More importantly, it is also destructively retrogressive. Just as the ideologically fueled racism of the twentieth century was ultimately defeated in Europe and beyond, the unsustainability of exploiting racial hatred in the United States for nefarious political objectives is losing its appeal for the vast majority of the people, both blacks and non-blacks, who share the American dream of universal liberty, internal and external peace, stability and prosperity for themselves and their families.
Honesty ensures clairvoyance. It is also always beneficial to be aware of the facts of a matter before decisions are made about what needs to be done to address effectively a given situation. Then again, if elected representatives and their handpicked ideological soulmates distort or pervert reality, they are betraying the fundamentals of their political legitimacy. Continue reading
by Rachel Lu
The sighs of relief from the left are almost audible. Racism lives! The hate is out there!
It would be unfitting to throw a party for the occasion of hateful comments from Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy, but some liberal journalists are probably tempted. “I’m trying to wring some grim humor out of the news, but I’m getting my racists all mixed up,” quipped Robin Abcarian of the Los Angeles Times. “Believe it or not,” wrote Mary Curtis in the Washington Post, “something good might arise from the racist swamp of recent news cycles.” It’s all right, Ms. Curtis. You may proceed with your heel clicks. We all know that multiple high-profile racists in a 2-week period make for high times for liberals.
Liberals need racist foes to vanquish. Most of the time they have to resort to finding them where they obviously aren’t there. Ross Douthat could print his mother’s best cookie recipes, and his New York Times readers would still lambast him as a bigot. (Perhaps we would learn that snickerdoodles are a well-known symbol of oppression in certain sub-cultures.) Paul Ryan can hardly order a sandwich without liberal pundits combing through in search of the racist “coding” that they know to be hidden within all Republican rhetoric. Continue reading
How is the public served by muzzling one of the most thoughtful, accomplished and respected political voices of her time just because she happens to be a Republican?
by Juan Williams
Have you heard the news?
Condoleezza Rice lacks “moral authority.” She fails to meet the standards of “exemplary citizenship” and she does not have what it takes to “inspire” graduating college seniors.
That crazy thinking comes from the New Brunswick Faculty Council of Rutgers University. They voted last week to ask university leadership to cancel Rice’s invitation to be this year’s Commencement Speaker and receive an honorary degree.
Yes, apparently the first African-American woman to serve as National Security Adviser and the nation’s Secretary of State doesn’t have what it takes to be honored by Rutgers. Continue reading
On WMAL’s “Mornings on the Mall” radio program (105.9 FM) in Washington, D.C., on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, George Mason University professor Walter E. Williams discussed civil rights and progress.
WALTER WILLIAMS: I think that something that’s not spoken of very much is that black Americans have made the greatest gains over some of the highest hurdles in the shortest span of time than any racial group in the history of this world. Why do I say this? Well, if you just add up the income that black Americans earn and thought of us as a separate nation, we would be the 16th or 17th richest nation on the face of this earth. There are a few black Americans who are among some of the world’s richest people. It was a black American in the form of Colin Powell who was the head of the world’s mightiest military. Some black Americans are the world’s most famous personalities. Now, in 1865, neither a slave nor a slave owner would have believed that such progress was possible in just a little bit over a century. And, as such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people and, just as importantly, it speaks to the greatness of a nation in which these kind of gains are possible.
Continue reading