America Has Got to Get Out of the Weeds on Race

The Left’s obsession with pitting Americans against each other based on their race is deeply unhealthy.

If we went back to the fifties, there wouldn't be a lot of confusion about who was racist and who wasn't. The white people who hated black Americans would tell you that black Americans were inferior. They were comfortable dropping the N-word. They didn't want to drink out of the same water fountains because they thought black Americans were dirty. They didn't want to share lunch space counters or schools with them. They were willing to ride the same buses, but they wanted black Americans sitting at the back because they believed that, as superior white people, they deserved the better seats upfront. Granted, there were an awful lot of white Americans who didn't act that way or see the world that way, but there were enough that did to shape how the world worked.

Picking out racists from that era wasn’t very hard.

Today, we’ve gotten to the point where white people who have black friends, have black Americans they admire, have black Americans they’d vote for, that believe in a colorblind world, and that honestly, genuinely don’t believe they’re bigoted, are being called “racists” incessantly. In fact, unless you want to be a mindless drone who vacantly agrees with and nods along with every single thing that black liberals say, you can’t avoid being labeled racist – and even those people are going to be treated as bigots now and again.

There are reasons for this, none of which necessarily have much of anything to do with real racism.

For example, there are majority-black cities and counties that have been run by Democrats for decades where people are poor, schools are bad, and crime is scary. So, how do those Democrats convince black Americans not to vote for Republicans who would almost certainly do a much better job of governing? Simple. They claim that Republicans are racist. This allows them to disqualify the competition. “We may be terrible, but you can’t vote for those guys! They hate you!” It’s also a good way to drum up black turnout. “You’ve got to turn out and vote for us because those people want to get you! They want to put you back in chains!” This is a transparently dishonest tactic and increasing numbers of black Americans seem to be slowly, but surely seeing through it, but overall, it’s still effective enough to be the backbone of the Democratic pitch to black Americans.

In addition, there are a lot of people of every race, ethnicity, nationality, and gender who simply cannot take responsibility for their own failures. They’ll tell you they’re not having a bad life because they quit high school at 15, have a rap sheet, can’t hold a job, and have no skills… they’re having a bad life because of an “ism.” If those racists weren’t holding them back, they’d be doing great! Racism is a great excuse for these people and if they weren’t black, they’d just be using some other “ism” as an excuse for their failures.

Those are bad enough, but what has really damaged race relations in America over the last decade are the people obsessed with race for no other reason than they believe that picking at that particular scab will help get them clout. Their goal isn’t to make life better for anyone or change anything, it’s to exacerbate tensions and make people hate each other so they can benefit from portraying themselves as heroes who are standing up against injustice. People like this have always been around, but the social media era has greatly increased their influence.

People like Malcolm X, MLK, and Rosa Parks were acting on behalf of black Americans, but ultimately, what they did was held up as a mirror to society and challenged the country to come together, live up to its highest ideals, and make this a better place for all Americans. There are no modern civil rights leaders in America that you can say that about. Someone like Colin Kaepernick isn’t trying to bring anyone together or make America a better place, he just wants to get more attention, money, and clout for Colin Kaepernick. You could say the same thing about pretty much EVERYONE in the Civil Rights Movement on the Left. It was once something vitally important and now it’s just another hustle. It’s, “how can we get more people to hate each other today and build a career off of it?” It’s all, “Here’s why you need to hate those guys, and oh, by the way, if you do hate those guys, make sure to follow me on Twitter, buy my jersey, and watch my Netflix special!”

You can tell that just from the “solutions” that are offered up. As much as anything, they’re about setting people at each other’s throats, not changing anything. Taking down statues of the Founding Fathers, getting angry when people say, “all lives matter,” demanding that we openly discriminate against white Americans and teach white children that they’re evil because of the color of their skin, are all about ratcheting up tension and hatred, not changing anything for the better.

Everyone on the Left wants to pretend like they’re another MLK or Rosa Parks, but the real civil rights leaders in America already did all the heavy lifting. There are no more dragons to slay, so they have to be invented. They have to pretend people who support Trump are wannabe slave owners, that the Republicans want to go back to the Democrats’ Jim Crow laws, and that the police, who try not to get shot by criminals, are just as bad as Bull Connor.

Portraying America that way is extremely harmful. People DIE because of it. They died in the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020. There are undoubtedly young black Americans who are dead now because they bought into the false idea that the police want to kill them, so they acted like dangerous lunatics when the cops pulled them over and it cost them their lives. How many black Americans have given up on being successful because they’ve been falsely told that the deck is stacked against them in America? How many white racists have been CREATED by the never-ending stream of hatred that’s fired at them day in and day out by the Left solely because of their race? The Left’s obsession with pitting Americans against each other based on their race is deeply unhealthy for the country. Of course, they know that, but they’re simply too sociopathic to care.

Granted, the reality is that there have always been and will always be people who hate other people for superficial reasons or just because they’re different. If this country still exists 100 years from now, you can be certain there will people that hate blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Christians, women, men, and on and on and on because that’s what people are like and have always been like. The question then will be the same question we’ve always had, which is how do we keep those tensions from boiling over while creating a situation that allows people who don’t like each other to get along in the same society?

The first step towards that is obviously not deliberately inciting hatred against other people based on their race. The Left’s insistence on doing that is dangerous for the country because if you spend enough time trying to convince any group of people to hate each other, there is always the possibility that it might work. Beyond that, if there are issues that need to be addressed to level the playing field in America, then they need to be brought up and there needs to be a real effort to get a buy-in from people across the ideological spectrum. America didn’t change in the sixties because MLK browbeat white Americans into doing what he wanted, they changed because he convinced Americans that they weren’t fully living up to their ideals. It’s possible that could still happen today on things like bodycams for cops and maybe even prison reform. On the other hand, things like defunding the police and teaching Caucasian children that they’re born racist in schools, aren’t going to ultimately succeed because even white liberals won’t be able to stomach it long-term. You can ask people to sacrifice a lot to be good members of the “tribe,” but I suspect that even liberals will blanch at potentially sacrificing their lives and children to the cause. Ultimately, we need to move away from this whole grotesque obsession with racism for the good of our society. To do that, we need to get out of the weeds. It’s time for the Left to stop encouraging race-based hatred and start seeing if there are places they can see eye-to-eye with their neighbors.

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