By Mario Loyola
Thursday, November 11, 2021
What good American would disagree that “black lives
matter”? Who could be opposed to “diversity, equity, and inclusion”? Who
doesn’t believe in “social justice”?
These are powerful, generation-defining terms, and
millions of Americans put in them their hopes for a more perfect union. But
somewhere along the way, the terms were hijacked by a radical movement of
racist Marxists, who redefined those terms to mean all the things they believe
in, even as they redefined “white supremacy” and “racism” to mean all the
things they oppose.
It was a rhetorical trick worthy of con artists. But it
was only a matter of time before Americans of all races, creeds, and political
persuasions started to realize that they’d been conned.
That was the significance of last week’s elections in
Virginia, which sent shock waves across the country. In a solidly Democratic
state that Joe Biden carried by more than ten points just a year ago,
Republicans swept the statewide ballots. Suburban parents finally got fed up
with the heavy-handed progressive policies inflicted on their children over the
past year.
Establishment Democrats stared at each other nervously
and realized that the left wing of the party was ruining their electoral
prospects. But the left wing went on the offensive, accusing Republicans of
“weaponizing” critical race theory and complaining that schools are just
teaching the “true history of racism in America” and “addressing inequality and
social justice.” The multimillionaire sports journalist Jemele Hill accounted
for Virginia’s election of a black and a Hispanic candidate to two of the three
statewide offices on the ballot with her usual incisiveness: “This country just
loves white supremacy.”
Despite the denials we now hear in Democratic state media
such as CNN and the New York Times, public elementary schools
across the country have indeed been actively indoctrinating children to see the
society — and themselves — through the prism of race. As Christopher Rufo and
others have reported, schoolchildren have been asked to rank themselves
according to their “power and privilege” and separate themselves into
oppressors and oppressed according to racial caste. In Buffalo, an
“equity-based instructional strategy” has led to lesson plans that teach that “all
white people play a part in systemic racism.” These are just two examples.
Progressives deny that critical race theory is being taught in school
districts, but examples of this virulent new racism being taught under cover of
“diversity, equity, and inclusion” are too many to count.
Everyday Americans are starting to realize that behind
the banner of “equity,” the radicals are advancing a racist version of Marxism,
one that seeks to replace America’s competitive melting pot with a caste
system. The first step is to indoctrinate white schoolchildren to think of
themselves as members of a permanently penitential caste.
Nor does the indoctrination stop at teaching kids to
think in racist terms, for the racism is just a veil for the latest iteration
of Marxist socialism. Ibram X. Kendi, the chief theorist and popularizer of the
movement, has said so explicitly:
Obviously, the idea that whites are an inherently guilty
race in an inherently racist country that must adopt race-based socialism to
atone for its past sins is not just “teaching the history of racism.” It is
Marxist indoctrination, meant to pave the way for a pervasive system of wealth
redistribution — and the arbitrary totalitarian power that such a system
requires.
As is always the case with totalitarian movements, this
one entails the enforcement of ideological purity and the persecution of
dissent, and Americans are now seeing that, too. People are being persecuted at
elite universities and news organizations for merely questioning any aspect of the race-Marxist
orthodoxy.
The gigantic obstacle standing in the way of this twisted
and dystopian vision of “equity” is none other than the principle of
“equality.” Enshrined in the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution, the
principle of equality before the law requires that the same laws be applied to
everyone in the same way.
Never yet fully fulfilled, equality is nonetheless the
principle that countless generations of Americans aspired to and fought for as
they sought to create “a more perfect Union.” Along with the colorblind
meritocracy for which it stands, it is the principle that has made America a
beacon to the nations of the world.
Equality before the law is all too often the very thing
the new race-Marxists mean when they talk about “white supremacy” and “racism.”
Consider how vehemently they dismiss the ideal of “colorblindness.” That indeed
is the main point of Kendi’s milestone work, How to Be an Antiracist:
“One either allows racial inequalities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts
racial inequities, as an antiracist.” Therefore, if you are merely “not racist”
you are in fact “racist.”
In order to be “antiracist,” you must fight to reverse
“racial inequities” through racial “equity.” And what does that require? It
requires recognizing the inherent racism of whiteness. It requires recognizing
that you can’t be “racist” against white people, given their oppressive history
and current power. It requires treating people differently according to their
race. In short, this new ideology of antiracism requires you to be racist.
Our greatest protection from this assault on our values,
way of life, and aspirations for a better world is the Constitution and its
principle of equality. Lots of people are now complaining about the
race-Marxist agenda, but that agenda is getting implemented every day, across
the country, in ways large and small, as the radicals patiently chip away at
the Equal Protection Clause.
Among the few organizations actually fighting back at the
point of attack is the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which
recently launched its Equality under the Law Project to defend victims of
woke discrimination. Under president Rick Esenberg, WILL has scored one victory
after another in courts across the country. But for every such victory, dozens
of violations of the Equal Protection Clause go unchallenged, virtually every
one a victory for race-Marxism.
Campaigning for Democrats in Virginia, President Obama
recently weighed in to denounce “phony culture wars.” Amazingly enough, he was
not referring to the phony culture war over “white supremacy” in a country
where nobody knows any actual white supremacists, and Democrats have to invent them just to keep the phony culture war over
white supremacy going.
Instead, Obama was referring to parents’ fears that —
after a year of unnecessary school closures and other devastating pandemic
measures — their children are now being indoctrinated in a new anti-American
hybrid of racism and socialism.
As public schools get progressively infected with
race-Marxist indoctrination, more parents will be exploring alternatives.
Increasingly, those parents will be from middle- and lower-income families who
have neither the means nor the inclination to pay private-school tuition on top
of the taxes they are already paying to support nearby public schools. Those
parents should not be shut out of the school choices available to rich people
simply because of their means. It’s not right. School-choice reforms are long
overdue and may now be politically feasible in many areas where they weren’t
just a year ago.
The race-Marxist agenda is destined to fail, because it
hurts everyone — its supposed beneficiaries most of all. For all the airtime
and ink spent on our “national reckoning on race,” the movement has produced
little tangible improvement for people of color. The reason should be obvious:
The discussion has focused on “white supremacy” and “systemic racism”
everywhere they aren’t.
Indeed, while the “race-Marxists” are explicitly racist,
it is a deeply incoherent racism that can’t even keep the meaning of “white”
and “black” straight. They label as “white nationalist” or “white supremacist”
anybody who is conservative or even middle-of-the-road, regardless of their
actual race. Ask Condoleezza Rice. And on the other side, the BLM and CRT
agenda has a lot in common with the antisocial attitudes of far-left, affluent
urban whites. But ask actual black people whether they have any interest in defunding
the police, and you will find that few of them do.
The race-Marxists simply don’t represent the black and
brown voices they claim to represent — not their voices, and certainly not
their interests.
There is systemic racism in America, but it has little to
do with police procedures or practice. What drives disproportionate encounters
with police is the same as what drives urban blight, low educational attainment,
and low labor-force participation. It is the systemic racism of social-welfare
and minimum-wage laws that have grossly disparate impacts on social mobility
for blacks and Hispanics. Programs designed to shield them from the ravages of
a competitive economy in fact do little more than exclude them from its
benefits, trapping them in cycles of dependency on ruling elites.
With the best of intentions, Democrats have managed to
resurrect a version of the Three-Fifths Clause, increasing their voting power
in proportion to the number of blacks who depend on them, a consistent feature
of Democratic politics going from the present day back through segregation,
Reconstruction, and slavery, to the founding of the Republic.
A reckoning with the systemic racism of progressive policies won’t happen in this generation, obviously. But it really feels as if America turned some kind of corner last week, when the parents of Virginia schoolchildren rose up as if to ask the race-Marxists, “Have you left no sense of decency?”
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