American Progressivism Rejects Anti-Racism, Perpetuates Racism and Discrimination
In the wake of Geoge Floyd’s tragic death, there has been a hard push from members of the progressive left to “educate” the public about “anti-racism” and how individuals themselves can become “anti-racist” by shoving racial politics down our throats.
Prominent intellectuals such as Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi have devoted their careers to studying race, lecturing the public about how racist everyone is, and offering “solutions” to construct an “anti-racist” society. In recent weeks, many Marist students and faculty have proposed several ideas supposedly aimed at “combating” racism. These ideas include requiring students to take a universal course on diversity, creating some form of diversity training and hiring diverse faculty who are “activist oriented.”
It is this push for racial “diversity” and “inclusion” that has caused me to become increasingly convinced that the American progressives do not oppose racism, but rather oppose only those particular manifestations of racism that conflict with the left’s worldview. To illustrate this claim, I would like to draw attention to a proposition on the ballot in California this November that has gone virtually unacknowledged in mainstream media. I think it perfectly encapsulates why the progressive approach to race is unsavory at best and truly disgusting at worst.
Proposition 16, appropriately titled the Affirmative Action Amendment, is a Constitutional amendment that would repeal Proposition 209 from the California Constitution. Proposition 209, adopted in 1996, stipulates that the state of California cannot “discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting,” according to Ballotpedia.
The legislation that ultimately culminated in the proposition, which received unanimous support from California Democrats, was introduced by Democratic state Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-79), who said: “We have all survived and endured Proposition 209, and it has not been a luxury. It has been a hard journey.”
In other words, an amendment designed to prevent arbitrary discrimination on the basis of immutable characteristics, that embodies the concept of equal justice under the law and that utilizes almost identical language to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 –– the very bill civil rights activists championed –– has been a “hard journey” that’s “damage” must be undone.
If you are reading this and believe that reversing the achievements of the civil rights movement and reviving state-sanctioned forms of racial discrimintaion is eminently desirable, you are probably either a progressive or a white nationalist. This is the case because progressivism and white nationalism are guided by the same underlying ideological framework. Both place the preeminent value on the group as opposed to the individual, impute a massive significance to race and advocate for using the state to produce a specific racial outcome deemed desirable by its followers –– an outcome that invariably entails punishing groups deemed “unwanted” or “undesirable” in favor of another group or groups.
“The fundamental moral principles and axioms that guide a virtuous doctrine of anti-racism must not actually perpetuate more racism.”
The policy of the intellectuals and politicians of the South who proudly defended and endorsed Jim Crow was to preferentially select whites and penalize all others, the same policy mindset that accompanies white nationalism. Under affirmative action and progressive orthodoxy, this means government coercion is employed to benefit groups deemed “disadvantaged” or “oppressed” at the expense of groups that our “enlightened” progressive rulers declare to be broadly “advantaged” or “privileged.” In its current manifestation, the self-anointed progressive class has decided Blacks, Hispanics and other people of color are deserving of assistance, at the expense of those they have deemed appropriate for retribution, usually whites and Asians.
In fact, a study conducted by three researchers at Princeton University found that college applicants received advantages or disadvantages equivalent to points on the 1600-scale SAT. For simply being a Black or Hispanic person, an applicant received an admissions bonus equivalent to 230 and 185 extra points on the SAT, respectively. Asians, conversely, were penalized with a comparable loss of 50 SAT points. In this respect, the progressive left is not actually advocating for anti-racism. Rather, progressives simply shift the racial discrimination and racism toward different groups in the name of “diversity.”
The reason why this discrimination is permissible and even endorsed by progressives like the Democratic members of the California state legislature is because under progressivism, like all collectivisist ideologies, each human being is ultimately defined by the attributes of their group, such as their melanin concentration and genetic makeup, factors that are completely beyond an individual’s control.
Additionally, every person’s individuality must either be completely disregarded or subsumed by the accidental collective identity they were born into. Simply put, you are unavoidably defined by your race and are nothing more than your race. By stripping individuals down to their race and utilizing it as a core component for hiring, admissions and other practices, the progressive desire to force racial diversity through discriminatory means is fundamentally racist, deterministic and disempowering.
To any fair-minded person, these attributes of progressivism, like white nationalism, should seem not only off-putting, but disgusting and their ideas regressive in nature. The fundamental moral principles and axioms that guide a virtuous doctrine of anti-racism must not actually perpetuate more racism. It should reject race as a means of assessing political, social and moral value, and the rightful conclusion of such a doctrine would be government policy and laws that affirm the notion that the government has no legitimate authority to differentiate individuals based on race.
That is why it is time to recognize individualism as the cure and as a necessary component of anti-racism. Individual characteristics are the only real measure of diversity that is truly meaningful because it is individuals who bring different and unique thoughts, perspectives, interests, values, experiences and traits to social interactions and institutions. These elements are not tied to race or any specific race, and no one can seriously posit that they can fully understand or capture the complexities of a human being simply because they have knowledge about their race.
Placing race as the primary value –– or any value –– by which we judge someone’s personal and moral value is morally reprehensible. California voters were right to outlaw discrimination in 1996, and I hope they reject the left’s attempt to undermine the civil rights of Californians in November. Similarly, I hope Marist students oppose any measures adopted by the school that would return us to an age of racial tribalism. Judging someone based on their race was repugnant under slavery and Jim Crow and it remains repugnant now.
Source: Element5 Digital from Pexels