For years now race, gender, ethnicity, and victimhood have been front and center for the progressive. Racism, homophobia, and marginalization of ethnic minorities have been so integral to the oppressive, discriminatory, racist, and privileged white majority, progressives say, that unless they are marginalized, the nation can never progress to a utopia of inclusivity, justice, and equality.
These issues are so virulent, poisonous, and destructive to the dream of an ideal, better world, progressives claim, that all political, social, and economic initiatives must be focused on them. They form the lens through which society must be viewed. The lens when properly focused leaves all other issues on the periphery. Once America has become a tolerant, inclusive, respectful society, its military interventionism will end, its capitalist rape of the poor will be consigned to the dust bin of Jim Crow and the Robber Barons.
So correcting the presumed ills of racism, homophobia, and minority prejudice will not only rid the country of an endemic social plague, but will be the instrument for universal reform. Hatred of black and gay people is just a symptom of systemic intolerance. America has always been a conservative, Wild West, untamed, individualistic place whose citizens look out only for themselves. A black face or drag queen are just the simplest, most obvious, and easiest targets for this innate hatred.
Of course this is nonsense, a distortion of history, and insertion of a narrow, discredited political philosophy into the national discourse. Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and segregation are indeed historically questionable events; and racial integration was never fully realized in 1865 but only 1965 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Even then, residual racism persisted in both the North and the South. Slavery is indeed a central feature of American society; and all Americans suffer its legacy. Yet racism is not the be all and end all of American life.
In the nearly sixty years since the Civil Rights Act, bleak, crime-ridden inner city ghettos still remain; the social indicators of these neighborhoods are far below those of whites and Asians. Emergence into the mainstream has been held back by persistent social dysfunction and the patronizing, debilitating efforts of progressives to ‘do good’, to do right by those who have suffered decades of racial discrimination.
Billions have been poured into inner cities while nothing has been asked in return. Those who have suffered the indignity of slavery are blameless and should not offer anything in return for white reparations.
In the meantime, America has seen black people rise to the highest levels of political power – Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, and many others. These black Americans have rejected the culture of the street and of entitlement, and have endorsed mainstream values of discipline, work, responsibility, and respect.
They have, like millions of Americans before them, embraced the culture of opportunity, not victimhood. Voters see this, and can only look as the dysfunction of the inner city as no longer their responsibility. For these Americans the harping, dunning, drumbeat of racism and Critical Race Theory is irrelevant to reality.
Only when the residents of the inner city take upon themselves the responsibility of personal and social development, and reject notions of entitlement or reparation will they earn the nation’s respect. Obama gave lie to systemic racism. It simply does not exist.
Racism does not exist, but it is used as a catch-all criticism of all conservatives. Anyone with temerity to suggest that America is not a systemically racist country is roundly dismissed as a social ignoramus. Any suggestion that the endemic, murderous waves of crime in black neighborhoods is anything but the legacy of slavery and the oppression of the white man is automatically dismissed.
‘Racism’ is used as an epithet for any criticism of black behavior or any favorable impression of police activity in high crime black neighborhoods. It is used for anyone who suggests that all white neighborhoods are admirable – areas of social integrity, high performance, and responsibility – and that attempts to ‘desegregate’ them are wrongheaded.
The current anti-racism ethos in America is hysterical, counterproductive, and the worst expression of political ignorance.
The same is true for the progressive initiative to transform traditional sexuality into a gender spectrum. One’s biological sex is irrelevant, they say, and everyone can and should choose their sexuality on the basis of preference. The highest level of such choice is transgenderism – men and women who have not only chosen a life style consistent with their sexual preferences, but have chosen to physically alter themselves to achieve sexual completeness.
There is absolutely no precedent for this; and while female impersonators and drag queens have been common in most cultures, they do not represent an ideal to which children should aspire. The Bible, the Koran, the Upanishads, and essential philosophical texts of China and Japan are profoundly heterosexual. These cultures might tolerate sexual aberrations, but do not champion them. To do so would be to challenge God’s law and the sensible, procreative mores of society.
So it is no wonder that the attempts of woke educators to promote transgenderism and the gender spectrum as legitimate options for any child – to suggest that a child should question his/her masculinity or femininity in the earliest grades - are met with angry parental protest. Gayness is not the apotheosis of sexual being. Far from it. It is and always has been an aberration, one to be respected and tolerated but not used as a primus inter pares.
The tide is turning, and state after state is rejecting both Critical Race Theory, Transgenderism, and the Gender Spectrum as legitimate curriculum options in schools. Parents groups are organizing and exerting political pressure on school boards to reject these political ideas. Public and private sector institutions as well as media celebrities are finally going after woke excess. It will not be long before this sorry episode of American history will be over and done with, forgotten, and ignored.