“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”
Actual, true racism is discrimination or prejudice based on outward perceived or real ethnic or racial attributes. It is nothing more.
Discrimination and prejudice based on outward perceived or real ethnic or racial attributes has occurred and does occur in America, as it has in every culture and in every age throughout history.
Every human being is susceptible to ethnocentrism and racism. Having “power,” however, is not a prerequisite to be a racist. Racism can be found in every tribe, tongue, and nation.
When the word “racism” is used to mean anything other than discrimination or prejudice, it should be condemned as a false use of the word. When virtually everything is racist, nothing is racist.
The wickedness of actual, true racism must be unwaveringly opposed and eliminated. But since the terms “antiracism” or“antiracist” are loaded with Marxist ideology and Critical Race Theory, these terms must be disputed and not accepted as legitimate descriptors.
Judging people based on perceived ethnic or racial attributes is exactly what antiracists do by claiming a whole race of people (whites) are oppressors and another whole race of people (usually blacks, but also “people of color”) are oppressed.
Antiracists assert that individuals in each respective racial group are collectively beholden to and responsible for the entirety of their own racial group’s choices and actions—no matter how long ago they made these choices and actions.
It is ignorant and actually racist to claim to hate racism while simultaneously blaming an entire racial group for collective sins.
“Whiteness” is used by antiracists to lump diverse and complex subcultures or ethnicities, based on the color of skin, into one unified, privileged group.
Antiracists use hyperbolic terms like “white supremacy” to castigate and demoralize an entire racial or ethnic group, accusing them of collective guilt.
Antiracists presuppose the guilt of a whole race of people and the innocence of a whole other group of people—all based on immutable, external characteristics.
Antiracism extols discrimination: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” – Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist, pg. 19.
Terms like “systemic,” “structural,” and “institutional” racism are loaded with assumptions that have to be explained with evidence before one can have meaningful dialogue. If antiracists give no evidence and only make loaded assertions, they must be called out and critiqued for their biased presuppositions and false use of language.
Antiracists define systemic, structural, or institutional racism by asserting that disparate racial outcomes are the result of the hegemonic power of whites.
Antiracists posit that if all racial outcomes are not equal, racism is to blame. Therefore, Antiracism is a belief that racism is to blame for all unequal outcomes and that the highest aim in life is to expose, disrupt, and dismantle everything and everyone that creates these unequal outcomes.
Free and open inquiry may reveal, in total or in part, that the answer to some disparate outcomes is a racist policy. However, racism is not the answer to all differences in outcomes, nor should it be posited as the default answer in the absence of contrary evidence.
Racial inequalities can be found and measured anywhere that data is disaggregated. Honest and objective research must be undertaken to determine what causal factors, or possibly even racist policies, are creating or sustaining racial inequalities. However, assumptions and assertions without facts are opinions only. Forcing opinions without accepting counter-claims is authoritarianism.
Declaring that all racial inequalities are caused by racist policies is fantastical and absurd. Suggesting that there is a mono-causal reason for something so complex as disparate outcomes in home ownership or graduation rates is pseudo-intellectual and patently biased.
Assigning racism or racist policies as the sole cause of disparities and preventing all the evidence from being considered to further the mono-causal narrative is lying and outright manipulation. Labeling those who disagree with antiracism as racist is itself bigoted, ad hominem, and a tool of manipulation. All evidence must be considered, all causes must be explored, and all potential solutions must be investigated.
Some, perhaps most, racial disparities can be mitigated through an honest analysis of all factors and causes. Examining all factors leads to a proper diagnosis and thus a correct treatment. By contrast, racial disparities cannot be properly mitigated by assigning all causes to racism.
There is not a “white supremacy” or white hegemonic culture, and thus all whites do not participate in an oppressor culture, just as blacks aren’t relegated to an oppressed status. Believing that all people think the same whose outward appearance is roughly the same skin tone is in fact racist and a form of racial collectivism.
Antiracists do not only assert that racism is the cause of all disparate outcomes; they never allow debate, let alone dialogue, that addresses other causal factors. If an outcome is different among racial groups, whether home ownership rates or graduation rates, antiracists claim it is racism—and then they disallow any further discussion by claiming “whiteness” silences oppressed voices.
Antiracism, as defined and described by Ibram X. Kendi and others, should be resisted because it is a morally bankrupt idea built upon Critical Race Theory.
Critical Race Theory is hostile to free inquiry and doesn’t allow critique. Rather, it asserts a Marxist ideology that pits races against each other: whites are complicit in a comprehensive, universal, systemic racism and blacks belong to an oppressed class.
The ideology which undergirds antiracism is Critical Race Theory, which is fundamentally neo-Marxist in that it bifurcates society into white oppressors and the black oppressed. It seeks to destroy societal unity and the American culture of opportunity and meritocracy. Every person, regardless of race or ethnicity, can create their own success—not so, according to the antiracists.
Any phrase, concept, or term that has Critical Race Theory as its intellectual scaffolding is defunct and morally bankrupt.
Image: Viviana Rishe, Public Domain
Aren’t you the guy who quit because you didn’t want to get vaccinated? 😂
Anonymous, your (rhetorical) question is ad hominem, as well as calumny: Ray Sanchez never quit. He was not terminated. He continues in his position as Academic Success Center Coordinator at Madera Community College in central CA, as noted in his bio at the end of the article. I work with him at MCC.
You may contact Mr. Sanchez at [email protected], as indicated above. You might want to apologize to him both here, publically, and (non-anonymously) by a personal email.
No bad will toward you here, Anonymous; just a collegial correction.
Take Care.
It’s amazing to me how consistently the anti-woke crowd (which I mostly agree with) argue the following:
1. Marxism divides society into oppressor and oppressed
2. Critical Theory divides society into oppressor and oppressed
3. Therefore, Critical Theory is a type of Marxism
You can’t substitute the white majority for the capitalist minority, and the black minority for the proletarian majority, and be a Marxist.
Check out the World Socialist Website on the 1619 Project.
>>Antiracists use hyperbolic terms like “white supremacy” to castigate
What I don’t understand is, why do these people assume whites are supreme? I never made that assumption.
““We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”
John Adams put something similar into the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 and the next year slaves started suing for their freedom on the grounds that “…all men are born free and equal…” — with slavery being banned in 1783 as a violation of the basic rights enumerated in the Massachusetts Constitution.
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled, in part, that “these sentiments [that are favorable to the natural rights of mankind] led the framers of our constitution of government – by which the people of this commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves to each other – to declare – that all men are born free and equal; and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws as well as his life and property. In short, without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is in my judgment as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence. The court are therefore fully of the opinion that perpetual servitude can no longer be tolerated in our government, and that liberty can only be forfeited by some criminal conduct or relinquished by personal consent or contract.”
More detail on this can be found at: https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery#-the-mum-bett-case-
A lot of this tends to be forgotten because of Roger Taney’s rather asinine Dred Scott decision, but slavery, the epitome of racism, was first eliminated on the basis that “all men are born free and equal.”
Thank you for speaking out against CRT. We need to reclaim our colleges from this gross distortion.