Posted on 08/15/2019 7:28:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If the news is any indication, Democrats and the progressive left generally have virtually nothing left in their political arsenal except for claims that their opponents are "racists" and "white supremacists." This pointless strategy -- evidence of Democrats' desperation -- is doomed to failure, for at least two reasons.
First, the word "racist" has become so overused and contorted that it no longer has any meaning. The term used to refer to someone who believed that his or her race was superior to others, and who behaved accordingly. But as the number of actual racists dwindled in the past few decades, those whose careers depend upon the existence of racist boogeymen (leftists in politics, the media, Hollywood and academia, most notably) had to devise a new definition. They now speak in terms of "systemic" or "institutional" racism. By condemning every institution that has been established by human beings characterized as "white" (more on that in a moment) as systemically racist, it's now possible to condemn as "racist" every person who has ever benefitted from those institutions. Thus, if you have been educated in the American educational system; borrowed or invested money in our financial system; purchased property; or worked your way up the American corporate ladder, then you become a racist.
It's tactically clever in that it no longer depends upon the existence of anyone who actually holds racist views (although those people certainly exist). But it's also a political Molotov cocktail with a very short fuse. People may not love being called out for things they have actually done. But they resent like hell being accused of things they haven't done, especially when they're simultaneously told that there's nothing they can do to remove the stain, or that they cannot take credit for their own achievements.
Authors like Tal Fortgang and J.D. Vance reveal the views of those who reject the notion of "white privilege." In 2014, Fortgang wrote an essay for The Princeton Tory that went viral. Titled "Why I Will Never Apologize for My White Male Privilege," Fortgang described his Jewish family's losses during the Holocaust, their escape to America and their penurious existence as immigrants here. Fortgang argues forcefully that his accomplishments are not the product of "privilege" but of hard work and difficult sacrifice.
Vance's bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, paints a bleak portrait of life in the rural Appalachia of his youth, where "white" Americans suffer with poverty, substance abuse, unemployment, broken homes and despair at levels that rival those of inner-city slums. The subjects of Vance's book would be shocked to learn they enjoy a "privilege" that America's black middle and upper-middle classes somehow don't.
In fact, the concept of "whiteness" (which the wokest of the woke are constantly apologizing for in the latest attempt at virtue signaling) is a fiction and a uniquely American creation. It started by describing people from Western Europe but soon expanded to include people from Eastern Europe. And people in South America who came from anywhere in Europe. And some people in the Middle East if they speak a European language.
But anyone who spends significant time in Europe knows that Europeans do not consider Hungarians to be identical to the Irish. Nor is being German synonymous with being Portuguese, and nor do Greeks get confused with Norwegians.
The point is that Europeans from these countries, and dozens of others, have relocated here and intermarried. Our children are blends of ethnicities. In my own case, I am a combination of German, Irish, French, Scottish and a small amount of Choctaw. (Insert Elizabeth Warren joke here ...).
Not only are Americans with different (and multiple) ethnicities intermarrying but those of identifiable "races" are as well. According to a Pew Research study published in 2017, the percentage of newlyweds married to someone of a different race has been on a steady increase since the Supreme Court struck down miscegenation laws in 1967. One in 6 are now married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. Blacks and whites are more likely to marry outside their race than are Asians or Hispanics, but even among the latter two groups, the numbers are substantially higher for those born in the United States and with more than a high school education.
If these trends continue (and there is every indication that they will), how long before racial designations are as meaningless as ethnic identification is now? When Mom's parents are African American and white, and Dad's parents are Indian and Japanese, what "race" are their children?
Even the racial designations we use now are malleable and indistinct. When Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, the man who shot him -- George Zimmerman -- was infamously referred to as a "white Hispanic." Applications for admission and employment now routinely permit applicants to choose multiple racial identifiers.
"Racism" has become a sloppy catchall accusation and an excuse to shut down argument. Race itself -- often argued to be merely a social construct as it is -- is an increasingly meaningless term, except to those who want to foment anger and resentment.
Will people find reasons to mistrust and discriminate against those who are "different"? Probably for as long as there are human beings. But "race" is just one of many, many things that make Person A different from Person B. It doesn't merit the attention it gets today.
It's time to put the terms "race" and "racist" to rest.
We have plenty of posters here who agree with this
They call me racist
At least once a week
If race doesn’t exist
How can these Freepers call me racist ?
Dinesh is confused on race to be honest
He clams the end of racism
Yet race baits over my part of the nation (south) like no other
I’ve always thought he’s got skin tone issues from India and British days
You can’t have your cake and eat it too
Thank you for common sense
Some folks here take platitudes like a quaalude
It’s numbing
It’s not race, it’s culture.
The former you cannot choose, the latter you can.
So, just who is it who has the implicit bias in this country?
I sure hope I can have a child that looks absolutely nothing like me...
So the black race has problems anywhere in the world it exists ....and it does I’ve lived worked and traveled pretty much all of it
And it’s all their cultures fault?
Their culture is a product of their inherent capabilities not the other way around although it does become the dog chasing his tail at some point
I blame the geographic isolation the black race lived in until slavers transported them around the world
It’s hard to catch up en masses in the blink of an eye human history wise and sub Saharan blacks weren’t the only isolated peoples
Yet blacks in America live under this illusion that their ancestry weren’t really tribal near Stone Age hunter gatherers just a few hundred years ago but rather had vast civilizations that created all manner of advancement and culture as you call it and that white people came and stole it all and set them back into 75 average IQ land
But then switch to Kunta Kinte and shucks that tribal was actually idyllic with days spent with mom happily making cassava pancakes and dad teaching you how to hunt and fish on the veld
We are a product of whom we descended from
And arguing that is denial
Some get lucky some not so lucky
Like a football team play the best with what you got and western civilization and America gives everyone from stupid to smart the best chance of success
And to be fair it’s not just black
Compare Latino culture
Latino culture with less Amerindian DNA is more successful
Take all your oriental or Asian nations
Which succeed most....the ones with a more Chinese or Japanese basically living in them
Is that racist?
God made us equal to him....I’ll go along with that...but we aren’t equal in capabilities here
And before anyone reminds me..Koreans
The Chinese Japanese hybrid
Who made the races?
When you drive through a city, do you not see Hispanics, Asians, Italians, Blacks, Indians and so forth congregate in small communities?
By in large, folks that have the most in common with one another tend to congregate, whether at home, work or play.
It is not racist to do so...unless you are a white male.
Folks need to realize, stupid people do stupid things...no matter the race. Being proud to be white is not racist anymore than being proud to be black.
Furthermore, if folks of the same race choose to watch programs that speak to them because of skin color, culture or whatever should be allowed to do so w/o criticism.
Good grief, I’ve seen programs for decades that are ALL black...even named “Blackish” or BET.
Folks need to get over themselves. Hate is hate. Racism is only a dirty word as ammunition to hurl at someone because you hate them. Period.
I for one am very proud to be a Southerner, Christian, Anglo, Conservative, Texan, American. I don’t hate anyone and I like hanging out with other folks I have things in common with...even if it happens they are white.
There are different BREEDS of the one human race. Lots of “mutts” now, though.
Indeed and Israel is lower because of they included Arabs who make up 25-30%
Naysayers will also say IQ tests even if the universal sorts of tests not based on contemporary knowledge but more on pattern and shape and other cognitive markers are indeed a social construct as well
Hence they always have a reply to deny what they see around them
It’s just an excuse to not have to accept the harsh reality of the human existence
I’m not bitter that my Scots Irish Anglo southern ancestry is likely not as smart as Jews or high Chinese or Germans
I do the best with what I’ve got as did my hardscrabble kin going back to plowshares and pikes days of lore long ago did long ago
I’m curious who tested Mongolia ..lol
I’m suspect on that one
My cousin married a Mongolian girl
Schwin
Kinda like the bicycle
She’s very pretty and clever
Mongolia has a lot of semi tribal folk but they always had a rigid communist compulsory education platform
Racist the new N word.
I’m of Irish descent. Stubborn, gift of the gab, and tough can get one pretty far in life. I do engineering as well, so I’m not a total idiot...
Testing IQ in the most sparsely populated country in a high desert. That sounds like fun...
In modern times only two political parties have fixated on race: The National Socialists Workers Party of Germany and the Democrat Party of the United States of America.
bkmk
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