What is Racism?
The recent Democratic presidential primary debate in New Hampshire offered another glimpse into the core strategy of the Democratic party – increase the percentages of nonwhite voters by any means necessary, and convince all of them that Republicans are racists.
Every candidate was on board with the message. As Bernie Sanders thundered when it was his turn, “We have a racist society from top to bottom.” Elizabeth Warren sounded almost sinister when she called for “race-conscious laws in education, in employment, in entrepreneurship.” Billionaire Tom Steyer called for “reparations.”
Elsewhere in America, candidate and billionaire Michael Bloomberg has apologized for his previous honesty about crime in New York City. All of these candidates agree: whites are racists, whites must be penitent, whites must make amends. They all have a plan.
Rather than highlight further examples of Democrats trying to outdo each other in trashing Americans as inveterate racists, much less exposing their hypocrisy, why not step back and examine the entire concept of racism. What is it? When is it truly deplorable, and when is it just a rhetorical bludgeon to attract naïve voters?
The reason racism is such a preoccupation for Democrats is so much because it still exists, but because by claiming it is a pervasive threat, they can manipulate voters. The following are common types of racism according to Democrats. Given the creativity of the racial justice warriors, this list is undoubtedly incomplete.
Unconscious Racism: Any negative behavior that is marketed as “unconscious” has to be put into perspective. These actions are either (1) totally innocent remarks and conduct that normal people would brush off without a second thought, (2) gaffes that socially awkward people make out of complete innocence, or (3) remarks and attitudes that are considered rude anyway, don’t require a label, and earn corrective social sanctions without requiring the intervention of intellectual experts and interventionist legislators. Does “unconscious racism” exist? Yes. But is the reality of unconscious racism, along with “microaggressions” (which are “microscopic,” hence, micro-aggression) worth diverting hundreds of millions of dollars to expand departments of “equity, diversity and inclusion” in America’s colleges and universities – and, increasingly, corporate America? No. And it is not racist to say so.
Institutional Racism: There is no debate that institutional racism against blacks and other minorities used to exist in America. But this racism is part of history, not the present. In all its forms, from the “peculiar institution” of slavery, to Jim Crow laws, to redlining, it has been wiped out. The truly institutionalized racism that remains in America is not directed against nonwhites, but against whites. Nowadays, in every American institution from corporations to colleges and universities to government contracting, whites – white men in particular – are the last to be hired, promoted, granted admission, or awarded a contract. In a well-regulated intersectional frenzy, any search for personnel invariably and relentlessly seeks out “people of color,” then women, and last of all, able-bodied, “cis/hetero” white males. Volumes could be written on this travesty (and have), whereby one form of institutional racism has been replaced by another. The idea that institutional racism in America today discriminates against nonwhites is laughable. Calling for this new form of institutional racism which is anti-white (and at times anti-Asian) to be abolished, is not racist.
Racial Profiling: This is a canard disguised as a cause distilled into talking points. The number of police encounters with nonwhites vs whites has to be matched with the number of crimes committed by nonwhites versus whites. And the data is unequivocal. The biggest victims when police are deterred from enforcing the law in nonwhite communities are the law-abiding citizens of those communities. It is true that racist incidents still occur in America between police and nonwhite citizens, sometimes with tragic, fatal results. But there are more than 1 million sworn police officers in America. There are probably over 1 billion police interactions with citizens every year in America. When you have a billion apples in a barrel, a few are going to be rotten. But pointing to a handful of horrific incidents of police racism, many of them based on dubious evidence, is not proof of officially sanctioned police racism. It is not racist to demand law enforcement do their job, “profiling” and all.
Disparate Outcomes/Wealth Inequality: This entire category of “racism” depends on studies, often biased and poorly sourced, that measure various achievements by groups and claim that the achievement gaps are the result of racism. This is a huge leap of logic. Why is it that supposedly white racism has held back black achievement, but has not held back Asian achievement? Why is it that some blacks, notably African immigrants, in some cases outperform whites economically in America? The dirty secret that is getting harder and harder for Democrats to conceal is that it is their own bigotry, in the form of low expectations, welfare, corrupt and mismanaged cities, lax law enforcement, and union-controlled public schools, that has done far more than the legacy of slavery and alleged white racism to deny opportunities to nonwhite communities. Encouraging nonwhites in America to step up, work hard and compete is a sign of respect, not racism.
Environmental Racism: This is one of the more insidious forms of alleged racism because it somehow equates the statistical proximity of America’s polluting infrastructure (what remains of it) to nonwhite neighborhoods as proof of racism. Insidious, because it’s one of the ways Democrats are trying to connect two distinct issues – environmentalism and race. That allows them to amplify both causes, which are already both oversold. We must save the planet, not only because the oceans are rising, but because saving the planet will ameliorate racism. But it’s based on a lie. The real reason for the statistical correlation between nonwhite communities and polluting infrastructure should be obvious. When you destroy the earnings potential of nonwhite communities through the politics of dependency, then they can only afford to purchase or rent inexpensive housing. And those less expensive homes are going to be the ones that happen to be close to polluting infrastructure because there’s less demand for homes near polluting infrastructure.
That’s just basic economics. It has nothing to do with racism.
Racist Voter Suppression: In one of their most brazen inversions of logic, Democrats are selling the idea that if you put in place safeguards to prevent voter fraud, you are conspiring to defraud voters. This is pure chicanery.
While issuing disclaimers every step of the way, Democrats are doing everything in their power to make it easier to commit mass voter fraud, from their flawed voting apps in Iowa to implementation of “motor voter” laws, mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, automatic registration at age 18, lowering the voting age to 16, and even making it a crime for registered voters not to vote.
Remember John Podesta, late on election night back in 2016, speaking in code to his operatives in the back rooms of precinct houses in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia? “They’re still counting votes, and every vote should count. Several states are too close to call.” The system wasn’t quite rigged enough back then. But they’re working overtime to fix that. And they have the nerve to claim that requiring a valid form of identification to vote is “racist.” It’s not.
Democrats are the Party Guilty of Racial Abuse
There can be endless debate over whether any of these forms of white racism still exist, and if so, still exist in sufficient measure to require even more laws, regulations, or even reparations. But citing examples of racism, and arguing over how prevalent they are, doesn’t get to the heart of the accusation. “America is a racist society from top to bottom.” These examples allege the how, but what is the why? What is the essence of racism?
To answer, it is first necessary to assert that racism, despite the wails of the Democrats, is not something that is exclusively practiced by whites against nonwhites. Plenty of nonwhite individuals harbor racist attitudes towards whites.
Nor do whites even have to be part of the racist equation. There are ample cases of racially motivated Hispanic antipathy toward blacks, and vise versa. The essence of racism is when anyone, no matter what their ethnicity, harbors automatic negative, prejudicial attitudes towards individuals of a different ethnicity.
This sort of racism barely exists in America today. It would be someone who believes that interracial marriage should be illegal, or who believes that the best person for a job should not be hired if they’re of a certain race. Apart from anti-white racism, which has taken over America’s institutions, that sort of racism is long gone. But there are other forms of racial abuses that are alive and well in America, growing all the time.
This racial abuse isn’t practiced by white Republicans, but by Democrats, backed by corporate socialists and globalist oligarchs. These special interests have to resort to race baiting demagoguery – as exemplified by today’s Democratic presidential primary candidates – because they cannot rely on facts and logic to justify what has become an intolerable political agenda. Their case is cynical but effective – America equals white equals racist. America is racist, therefore America must be “fundamentally transformed.”
The true agenda? Turn national citizens into global commodities.
This racial abuse practiced by Democrats, broadly defined, is the act of destroying an intact nation – borders, language, culture – in order to enhance the power, profit, and privilege of a small elite.
The strategy the Democrats are using to accomplish this, as already noted, is to increase the percentages of nonwhite voters by any means necessary, and convince all of them that Republicans hate them. The American patriots who resist the attempts by Democrats (and useless, phony opposition Republicans like Mitt Romney) to destroy their nation are not racists, they’re the ones insisting the nation be protected from those cynically working to divide and conquer us. And there are plenty of nonwhites among them.
As for America’s nonwhites who Democrats claim to protect, it is towards them that Democrats practice the most unforgivable racial abuse of all. It is obscene racial abuse for Democrats to nurture a victim mentality in the hearts of nonwhite voters, and shower them with preferences and entitlements and giveaways that take away their incentive to achieve. It is patronizing in a manner reminiscent of slavery, and perhaps actually worse, to destroy families with welfare, to destroy work ethics with impossible socialist fantasies, to destroy character with a narrative of bitterness and oppression.
Democratic momentum in America today is fueled by a marriage of convenience between diehard socialists and Communists and corporate globalists. Both of these groups are smart enough to know that their marriage of convenience is headed for an inevitable and very bloody divorce, but they hope that before that happens their alliance will be strong enough to erase America’s core traditions and historical pride. Both view the millions of people who still love American culture as obstacles to their taking complete control of the electorate, and hence the political destiny of the nation.
Before that happens, how many white Democrats may finally decide they’ve had enough of taking part in this abuse? How many nonwhite voters will realize that identity politics is a dead end putting them to work against their own interests? How many will realize the obvious connection between the redistributionist agenda of identity politics and straight-up communism? How many will realize that for nearly a half-century, Democrats have used accusations of “racism” as a way to silence dissent?
Racism has little to do anymore with actual white racism against nonwhites. Of course, a small amount of it still exists in America, as it exists wherever humans encounter others who they consider different from themselves.
But the far more significant racial abuse that threatens to destroy America transcends mere ethnicity, by weaponizing it to attack our way of life, our faith, our culture and traditions, our institutions, everything that has made us a great people and everything we cherish.
An edited version of this article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.
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Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and other media outlets.
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