Historians have time lined the Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968. That may seem arbitrary given the continuous calls for racial equality from many groups, politicians and activists to the present day. The era of the 50’s and 60’s, provides a perspective of the many conflicting elements within it. You Have Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Louis Farrakhan and many others, each with their own message regarding the state of racism in America. In this era of BLM and other ideologies of social justice, it gets confusing as to what if any progress has been made since then regarding what racism is.
Recently I listened to an April 2018 rerun of a debate on MSNBC between Toure Neblett and Kmele Foster about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during an NFL game to protest the oppression of blacks in the criminal justice system. What was telling in this debate was the way Toure treated Kmele, who obviously was not really all that focused on the NFL as much as the issue of criminal justice and racism. Kmele was advocating rising above the black versus white narrative to focus more on the essence of the issue. Toure was emoting politically, and in effect, racially. If you have a moment, see the YouTube clip.
Kmele was providing statistics to show that the issue is with the criminal justice system itself and that the abuses were just as, and in some cases, even more so effecting white people. These statistics are not new but readily available by the FBI that accumulates and publishes criminal data from all over the US. Toure would have no part of that, facts were irrelevant in his view and Kmele was guilty of perpetrating a statistical hoax ignoring the oppression of blacks by the system.
In the more recent news the US has finally condemned the Chinese genocide against the Uighurs of Western China. The dominant ethnic group in China is the Han; the Uighurs is a minority that is ethnically, culturally and religiously distinct from the Han. There within the most populous country in the world we have radical and institutional racism, proof that this horrible condition that has plagued humanity since primitive times is still with us.
In Africa, the tribal warfare in so many countries has resulted in repeated genocides reminding us that racism is not limited to color, but can occur within races based on the most ridiculous trivia differentiating the antagonists. In Europe the racism against Jews has been a dominant societal problem for millennia, culminating in the Holocaust, yet both the perpetrators and the victims were Caucasian.
The point is that racism has no color, neither for the perpetrator or the victim; it is a sickness born of the most crudely primitive form of collectivism that race is a fundamental determinant to distinguish one another as inferior or superior. It is therefore racist to ascribe racism as an inherent trait of anyone race, if not self-defeating to assume that only one race can be a victim of racism.
The moment race becomes a determinant in the judgement about another person, or group of people, you have racism; it simply is not more complicated than that. The problem arises when that simple understanding is lost, especially with all the nonsense perpetrated about how anyone is inherently guilty of racism simply by being born in any particular racial category; this is similar to the lowest and most immoral idea of a form of original sin, but without any means of redemption.
It took one of the bloodiest civil wars of mankind to end slavery in America, and a long tortured history of repressed liberty for African Americans and other minorities to win their civil rights that we are all entitled to. So to now have a cultural divide where those achievements are ignored, forgotten or marginalized is a regression, a sign that the essential issue of equality before the law is being replaced by inequality by the law. Currently this idea is more covert under the guise of the current virtue signaling called social justice. Back in the days of the Civil Rights Movement it was much more overt with the likes of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, fundamentally motivated by an anti-white theology. The best summation of what social justice is was given by Hayek when he said “The idea of social justice is that the state should treat different people unequally in order to make them equal.”
Diametrically the opposite of such racism was Martin Luther King Jr., rightfully considered the greatest of the civil rights leaders. His message was not about racism but the opposite, one of true equality under the law, benevolence to all people, against violence and coercion, but also one of courage and love. This message was so beautifully expressed in his most famous speech from the 1963 March on Washington when he said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
So I thought about all this recently while I was waiting on line for two hours on a cold night outside a church on Long Island waiting for our first COVID19 vaccine shot; I had plenty of time to think about a lot of things that night, but what got me thinking about all this was the application for the shot we had to fill out on a website earlier that day when we heard that our age group now qualified for the vaccine and that unexpectedly some pop-up sites were commissioned. When I saw the application I was stunned to see there where so many questions of racial profiling, but thankfully there was an option to not answer such questions. We completed the form and submitted it, hoping that our refusal to answer the racial profiling would not work against us. Anxiously my wife called numerous times to check on status and just in time we were told to get to the church right away as we got one of the last few appointments available.
Later on as we drove home, I said to my wife that while I had heard some news about a few politicians talking to the idea of prioritizing vaccine availability racially, I had not given it much thought. I truly believed that our governments would never condone such a vile policy, one so inimical to the concept of equality, but apparently that was foolish of me. A few days later the news reported that Governor Cuomo had directed that the next vaccine shipments be doled out to churches whose congregational leaders would determine who gets them.
So what happened to the CDC prioritization protocols for first attending to medical staff, first responders, and the aged, especially those in nursing homes, and those with underlying medical conditions? These seemed like sensible guidelines giving what was known about this virus being particularly lethal for the aged and sick, and having those that attended to them immunized first. After all, haven’t we all heard that we need to rely on science and common sense and practice hygienically proven deterrents against spreading the disease? We also heard repeated ad infinitum and maybe ad museum that “We are all in this together!” Well depressingly, maybe not quite all of us after all.
More and more this idea of prioritizing vaccine availability racially is gaining traction. Today the news tells about discussions in the new administrations considering such policies. I thought we were in for an era of ending divisiveness and working on unity, so how then does such an idea even get air time? I also read an article today about the State of Oregon convening a special committee to come up with proposals for implementing such a policy.
Even more yet as Congress debates about funds for helping small businesses recover post pandemic are likely to be tied up with legal problems arising from proposed language to prioritize such funds racially; apparently there is this little nagging problem with that called the Constitution which presents, hopefully, big legal hurdles for such ideas.
It is hardly sufficient to provide the ever present virtue signaling called social justice as a reason for such racism. We recently celebrated a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., and on that day my six year old granddaughter came to me to tell me all about his famous speech and proudly recited the quote noted above perfectly. I wonder what lessons schools will be teaching about equality as she gets older. I hope she never forgets that quote.
We just recently had the inauguration of a new president, one who has promised that the divisiveness and polarization of the past will not be the way of the future with his administration. We are not getting off to a very good start. He has declared that his choices for cabinet and other top posts are being made on the basis on the candidate’s race, sex or other metrics that signal inclusiveness. I have not heard that merit is one of the metrics considered; perhaps I missed that.
Libera Voce 