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The Power of Woke: How Leftist Ideology is Undermining our Society and Economy

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Neo-Marxism is a cultural cancer spreading through America and beyond.

“It’s an important part of society whether you like it or not,” lexicologist Tony Thorne, referring to “wokeness,” told The New Yorker’s David Remnick in January. That’s an understatement.

Wokeness is poisoning the Western workplace and constraining small and family businesses, midsized banks, and entrepreneurs while enriching powerful corporations and billionaires. It’s eating away at the capitalist ethos and killing the bottom-up modes of economic ordering and exchange that propelled the United States of America to prosperity during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It’s infecting Gen Z and millennials, who, suffering high depression rates and prone to “quiet quitting,” are not as well off as their parents and grandparents, and who feel isolated and alone even as they enjoy a technological connectivity that’s unprecedented in human history.

What, exactly, is wokeness, and how does it impact business and the wider society?

Subversion

The term as it’s widely used today differs from earlier significations. “Woke”, which plays on African American vernacular, once meant “awake to” or “aware of” social and racial injustices. The term expanded to encompass a wider array of causes from climate change, gun control, and LGTBQ rights to domestic violence, sexual harassment, and abortion.

Now, wielded by its opponents, it’s chiefly a pejorative dismissing the person or party it modifies. It’s the successor to “political correctness,” a catchall idiom that ridicules a broad range of leftist hobbyhorses. Carl Rhodes submits, in Woke Capitalism, that “woke transmuted from being a political call for self-awareness through solidarity in the face of massive racial injustice, to being an identity marker for self-righteousness.”

John McWhorter’s Woke Racism argues that wokeness is religious in character, unintentionally and intrinsically racist, and deleterious to black people. McWhorter, a black linguist, asserts that “white people calling themselves our saviors make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species.”

Books like Stephen R. Soukup’s The Dictatorship of Woke Capital and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc. highlight the nefarious side of the wokeism adopted by large companies, in particular in the field of asset management, investment, and financial services.

Hypocritical neo-Marxism

Wokeism, in both the affirming and derogatory sense, is predicated on a belief in systemic or structural forces that condition culture and behavior. The phrases “structural racism” or “systemic racism” suggest that rational agents are nevertheless embedded in a network of interacting and interconnected rules, norms, and values that perpetuate white supremacy or marginalise people of color and groups without privilege.

Breaking entirely free from these inherited constraints is not possible, according to the woke, because we cannot operate outside the discursive frames established by long use and entrenched power. Nevertheless, the argument runs, we can decentre the power relations bolstering this system and subvert the techniques employed, wittingly or unwittingly, to preserve extant hierarchies. That requires, however, new structures and power relations.

Corporate executives and boards of directors are unsuspectingly and inadvertently — though sometimes deliberately — caught up in these ideas. They’re immersed in an ideological paradigm arising principally from Western universities. It’s difficult to identify the causative origin of this complex, disparate movement to undo the self-extending power structures that supposedly enable hegemony. Yet businesses, which, of course, are made up of people, including disaffected Gen Zs and millennials, develop alongside this sustained effort to dismantle structures and introduce novel organising principles for society.

The problem is, rather than neutralising power, the “woke” pursue and claim power for their own ends. Criticising systems and structures, they erect systems and structures in which they occupy the center, seeking to dominate and subjugate the people or groups they allege to have subjugated or dominated throughout history. They replace one hegemony with another.

The old systems had problems, of course. They were imperfect. But they retained elements of classical liberalism that protected hard-won principles like private property, due process of law, rule of law, free speech, and equality under the law. Wokeism dispenses with these. It’s about strength and control. And it has produced a corporate-government nexus that rigidifies power in the hands of an elite few.

Consider the extravagant spectacle in Davos, the beautiful resort town that combined luxury and activism at the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum, perhaps the largest gathering of self-selected, influential lobbyists and “c suiters” across countries and cultures. This annual event occasions cartoonish portrayals of evil, conspiratorial overlords — the soi-disant saviours paternalistically preaching about planetary improvement, glorifying their chosen burden to shape global affairs. The World Economic Forum has become a symbol of sanctimony and lavish inauthenticity, silly in its ostentation.

The near-ubiquitous celebration of lofty Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategies at the World Economic Forum reveals a seemingly uniform commitment among prominent leaders to harness government to pull companies — and, alas, everyone else — to the left.

ESG is, of course, an acronym for the non-financial standards and metrics that asset managers, bankers, and investors factor while allocating capital or assessing risk. A growing consortium of governments, central banks, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), asset management firms, finance ministries, financial institutions, and institutional investors advocates ESG as the top-down, long-term solution to purported social and climate risks. Even if these risks are real, is ESG the proper remedy?

Attendees of the World Economic Forum would not champion ESG if they did not benefit from doing so. That plain fact doesn’t alone discredit ESG, but it raises questions about ulterior motives: What’s really going on? How will these titans of finance and government benefit from ESG?

Follow the money

One obvious answer involves the institutional investors that prioritise activism over purely financial objectives or returns on investment (for legal reasons, activist investors would not characterise their priorities as such). It has only been a century since buying and selling shares in publicly traded companies became commonplace among workers and households. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), created in response to the Great Depression, isn’t even 100 years old.

Until recently, most investors divested if they owned stock in a company that behaved contrary to their beliefs. They rarely voted their shares or voted only on major issues like mergers and acquisitions. In 2023, however, institutional investors such as hedge funds and asset management firms engage boards of directors, exercise proxy voting, and issue shareholder reports with the primary goal of politicising companies. As intermediaries, they invest pension funds, mutual funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, 401(k)s and more on behalf of beneficiaries who may or may not know what political causes their invested assets support.

If a publicly traded company “goes woke,” consider which entities hold how much of its shares and whether unwanted shareholder pressure is to blame. Consider, too, the role of third-party proxy advisors in the company’s policies and practices.

Big companies go woke to eliminate competition. After all, they can afford the costs to comply with woke regulations whereas small companies cannot. Institutional investors warn of prospective risks of government regulation while lobbying for such regulation. In the United States, under the Biden Administration, woke federal regulations are, unsurprisingly, emerging. Perhaps publicly traded companies will privatise to avoid proposed SEC mandates regarding ESG disclosures, but regulation in other forms and through other agencies will come for private companies too.

The woke should question why they’re collaborating with their erstwhile corporate enemies. Have they abandoned concerns about poverty for the more lucrative industry of identity politics and environmentalism? Have they sold out, happily exploiting the uncouth masses, oppressing the already oppressed, and trading socioeconomic class struggle for the proliferating dogma of race, sexuality, and climate change? As wokeness becomes inextricably tied to ESG, we can no longer say, “Go woke, go broke.” Presently, wokeness is a vehicle to affluence, a status marker, the ticket to the center of the superstructure.

ESG helps the wealthiest to feel better about themselves while widening the gap between the rich and poor and disproportionately burdening economies in developing countries. It’s supplanting the classical liberal rules and institutions that leveled playing fields, engendered equality of opportunity, expanded the franchise, reduced undue discrimination, eliminated barriers to entry, facilitated entrepreneurship and innovation, and empowered individuals to realise their dreams and rise above their station at birth.

When politics is ubiquitous, wokeness breeds antiwokeness. The right caught on to institutional investing; counteroffensives are underway. The totalising politicisation of corporations is a zero-sum arms race in which the right captures some companies while the left captures others.

Soon there’ll be no escaping politics, no tranquil zones, and little space for emotional detachment, contemplative privacy, or principled neutrality; parallel economies will emerge for different political affiliations; noise, fighting, anger, distraction, and division will multiply; every quotidian act will signal a grand ideology. For the woke, “silence is violence”; there’s no middle ground; you must speak up; and increasingly for their opponents as well, you must choose sides.

Which will you choose in this corporatised dystopia? If the factions continue to concentrate and centralise power, classical liberals will have no good options. Coercion and compulsion will prevail over freedom and cooperation. And commerce and command will go hand in hand.

This article has been republished with permission from Mises Wire.

AUTHOR

Allen Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall is an associate dean at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, executive director of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty, and Managing Editor of Southern… More by Allen Mendenhall

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Department of Critical Race Theory Neologisms: ‘To Racialize’

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In an article on the website of the Canadian Public Health Agency entitled “Inequalities in Health of Racialized Adults in Canada,” one reads that “populations who are racialized in relation to a ‘white’ or non-racialized social group experience stressors including inter-personal and systemic discrimination throughout the life course,” that “racialized adults are less likely to feel that their health is either good or excellent,” and that “racialized Canadians are disproportionately impacted by inequalities in safe and stable housing.”)

As a linguist, I was struck by the repeated use in this article of a new past participle that I was not familiar with — “racialized”. I began to wonder about the implications underlying the use of this verb form, which implies the existence of a verb “to racialize”.

So I looked on the internet to see if I could find other forms of this verb. My search turned up examples such as the following: “Coleman Hughes on how America racializes its citizens”; “Not all racializers do the same thing when they racialize”; “Discourses that are racializing and othering muslim*women [sic] can sustain hegemony, by disguising their particularities”.

The past participle of this verb therefore represents the person or group to which it is applied as having undergone the action of being racialized by some agent who is represented as a racializer. This leads to the question as to who is doing the racializing. A further search on the internet showed that the answer to that question is invariably the same — whites.

Behind that little past participle “racialized”, consequently, there lies a whole worldview which sees the relations between different races in terms of racializer/racialized or, in other terms, oppressor/oppressed. As Robin Diangelo states in White Fragility, “white people raised in Western societies are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions,” and this worldview “brings into existence whites and nonwhites, full persons and subpersons.”

The name of this worldview is Critical Race Theory, and its underpinnings are essentially Marxist. It divides the world into two opposing power groups: the oppressor (capitalists/whites) and the oppressed (workers/nonwhites). Since everything is governed by power-relations in this system, the only recourse of the oppressed is to use whatever power they have to rise up against the oppressor and throw off his yoke: as one of the foundational thinkers of Critical Race Theory, Ibram X. Kendi, has written in How to be an Antiracist: “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.”

One doesn’t have to be a linguist in order to see that the division of the world into racializer/racialized is a recipe for conflict and violence, and not for the resolution of unjust discrimination.

As Edward Feser points out in his book All One in Christ. A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory, “if one were to replace expressions like ‘whiteness’ and ‘white supremacy’ with terms such as ‘Jewishness’ and ‘Jewry’, it would be difficult to distinguish Critical Race Theory literature from the ugly propaganda of Nazism. Its claims are comparably extreme, even if it has not (yet?) led to comparable levels of violence.” Feser advocates that the way forward entails “not Critical Race Theory’s cancel culture and hermeneutics of suspicion, but rational discourse and mutual understanding. Not the demonization of any race as inherently oppressive, but solidarity and mutual respect.”

Amen to that.

AUTHOR

Patrick Duffley

Patrick Duffley is Professor of English Linguistics at Université Laval, in Canada. More by Patrick Duffley

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Why Do The Woke Hate Clarence Thomas So Much?

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Justice Clarence Thomas, being African American, is seen as a traitor to the woke cause.

After the overturning of Roe v Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas has been a particular target of venomous attack from the woke mob. Why do they hate him so much? One might be forgiven for thinking that it is due to his staunch anti-abortion views. But that explanation does not work.

Pope Francis has long expressed that opposing abortion is “closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right”, and yet, the Left is not obsessed with him (in fact, many even take a liking). At some point, even Joe Biden supported letting States overturn Roe v Wade, and again, the Left did not go ballistic on him.

Not behaving as expected

So, why the animus against Thomas? There can only be one explanation: race. In 1991, as he was accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill, Thomas countered that he was the victim of “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you.”

This was loose talk, as it trivialised the suffering of real lynching victims in America’s troubled history of race relations. But Thomas did have a point in arguing that in the United States, any black person who dares to deviate from the official narrative of how blacks are supposed to act, will face severe harassment.

In 1991, he anticipated a trend that would become mainstream in our times: if you are born with a particular skin colour, you are supposed to behave in a certain way, and uphold a specific ideology. If not, you are a race traitor. As Biden so neatly phrased it:

“[I]f you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Any competent scholar of the history of racism would immediately recognise this as race essentialism. As Angelo Corlett explains in his book Race, Racism and Reparations,
“proponents of race essentialism define human races by a set of genetic or cultural traits shared by all members of a ‘racial’ group.”

Who are the neo-Nazis now?

In the first half of the 20th Century, this view was popular amongst proponents of so-called “racial science”. They believed that racial biological traits determine how people behave. Hitler believed that no matter how much a person with Jewish ancestry tried to assimilate to German society (even converting to another religion), he or she would still be a dangerous Jew, because it was in his or her essence.

Race essentialism is abhorrent, and one might think that after 1945, the world learned a lesson. And yet, race essentialism is alive and kicking, but this time, under the guise of woke progressivism. As per today’s woke rules, if you are black, you must embrace the whole woke mindset.

White people (such as Pope Francis) may occasionally be forgiven for having anti-abortion views, but if you are black and you deviate from the woke line (such as Clarence Thomas), you are a race traitor, an Uncle Tom. Unsurprisingly, Thomas has been called “Uncle Clarence” multiple times.

If you are black, not only do you have to act a certain way, but you must also have a special sexual preference. The woke pay lip service to interracial relationships, but amongst them there is a sense of unease when they contemplate a successful black man marrying a white woman.

For example, when Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States, USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds wrote: “Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman.” Russell Adams, chairman of African American studies at Howard University, said that Thomas “marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community.”

Truly racist

Frantz Fanon is a figure beloved by the Left. In 1952, he published Black Skin, White Masks, a canonical text of wokeness. In that book, he also scorns black men who fall in love with white women. Fanon castigates himself for, at some point, having had these thoughts: “Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white. I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white… I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness.” The implication of this passage is that loving a white woman is an act of racial treason.

Fanon felt disdain for black people who embraced Western values. He claimed they were wearing white masks, as if somehow, they were deviating from their real essence, and were therefore living an inauthentic life. Therefore — so Fanon believed — Western civilisation must be rejected entirely. As he explained in The Wretched of the Earth, “When the colonized hear a speech on Western culture, they draw their machetes or at least check to see they are close to hand.” He who admires Western values is a sellout.

Ever since Fanon, racial essentialism in the name of progress has only grown worse. People of color are now encouraged not to honour punctuality, because being on time is part of whiteness. Black kids who are academically talented run the risk of being told they are “acting white”. Analysing things objectively is an act of white supremacy. And so on.

Consequently, Clarence Thomas is not allowed to have anti-abortion views. Nobody cares about his anti-abortion arguments, because he is not supposed to make them in the first place. Other jurists, philosophers or theologians will be allowed to oppose abortion, but only if they are white. Thomas is hated not because of his views, but because of his skin colour. He upsets the arbitrary racial classifications that the woke are so eager to embrace.

As per woke taxonomy, black people cannot be conservative, and if they are, they are only wearing a “white mask”. To paraphrase the late Christopher Hitchens, “identity politics poisons everything”. We can no longer have a meaningful discussion about anything as vital as the ontological status of a fetus, because the race of the discussants will determine who is allowed to uphold a particular view. It’s time to push back against this madness.

AUTHOR

Gabriel Andrade

Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Over Half Of Americans Don’t Think Schools Need To Teach About The Ongoing Impact Of Slavery And Racism

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This is what’s happening in public schools!

  • Over half of Americans don’t think schools have a responsibility to teach students about the ongoing impact of slavery and racism, according to according to a poll released Monday by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University in partnership with APM Research Lab.
  • Two-thirds of Republican respondents and almost half of Independents said educators should only teach the history of slavery, according to the “Mood of the Nation” poll. Only one-fifth of Democratic respondents said exclusively the history of slavery should be taught.
  • Most respondents said they didn’t think governors and state legislators should have a “great deal of influence” over how concepts such as racism, slavery, creationism and sex education are taught in public schools and responded in favor of parents having the greatest influence on those topics.

Over half of Americans don’t think schools have a responsibility to teach students about the ongoing impact of slavery and racism, according to according to a poll released Monday by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University in partnership with APM Research Lab.

Two-thirds of Republican respondents and almost half of Independents said educators should only teach the history of slavery, according to the “Mood of the Nation” poll. Only one-fifth of Democratic respondents said exclusively the history of slavery should be taught.

The survey polled 1,200 people over the age of 18 starting in late November 2021, and the results generally varied depending on political affiliation. That said, the poll showed that 90% of respondents believed schools have a responsibility to teach about the history of slavery and scientific evolution.

Most respondents said they didn’t think governors and state legislators should have a “great deal of influence” over how concepts such as racism, slavery, creationism and sex education are taught in public schools and responded in favor of parents having the greatest influence on those topics.

Almost half of respondents said that the biblical stance on creation should be taught alongside scientific evidence of evolution, according to the poll. Respondents with a bachelor’s degree, higher incomes and Democrats were the most likely to take the position that exclusively the scientific evidence of creation should be taught.

Respondents 45 and older were the most supportive of parents having the greatest influence in how evolution is taught.

“It depends on a person’s religious belief,” a 61-year-old Black Democratic woman from Florida who identifies as a born-again Christian said in the survey. “If they believe, as I do, that man was created by God, then I think they should decide what and how their children should be taught concerning evolution.”

Of those polled, 51% of respondents said parents should have “a great deal of influence” over the subject of sex education, the poll showed. Three-fourths of respondents said students should learn about contraception and the dangers of diseases during sex education, while nearly one-fourth said the dangers of diseases and abstinence until marriage should be taught.

Republicans, born-again Christians and respondents 65 and older were the most likely to say parents should have the greatest influence on their children’s sex education, according to the poll results. Additionally, forty percent of respondents said health teachers should also have “a great deal of influence” in sex education.

“Because government departments of education don’t care about students. Parents should be teaching them about safety along with health teachers and professionals,” a 28-year-old Democratic Hispanic man from New York said, according to survey.

Over the course of the pandemic, as school boards have fielded complaints from parents over topics like COVID-19 policies and Critical Race Theory (CRT), multiple state legislatures and governors have proposed legislation and put forth executive orders that would give parents more say and provide more transparency about what their children are taught in public schools. Critics, including many educators and progressives, argue that GOP-proposed legislation censors teachers and restricts how they teach.

The maximum margin of error for the “Mood of the Nation” survey is 3.7 points.

COLUMN BY

KENDALL TIETZ

Education reporter.

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Rep. Jeffries Blasted on Twitter For Saying ‘Lock Up’ Rittenhouse

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Wednesday afternoon on Twitter, social media users slammed mentally-challenged racist Rep. Hakeem Jeffries for tweeting, “Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key,” referring to the white teenager currently embroiled in a political show trial for shooting three white domestic terrorists in self-defense during a 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Jeffries happens to be a very vocal critic of America’s criminal justice system. He has often complained the country jails too many citizens and has called for the defunding of police departments. “End. Mass. Incarceration. Defund The Prison Industrial Complex,” he tweeted in June 2020. As recent as this March, he called mass incarceration a “stain on our democracy.”

Social media users quickly and rightfully pounced on his hypocrisy for calling for Rittenhouse to be imprisoned for life.

“What changed, dude?” one user questioned.

“This is a sitting congressman commenting on a jury trial as it happens. Very disturbing,” tweeted Fox News senior editor Will Ricciardella.

We all know that if Rittenhouse were a black BLM supporter who shot Trump supporters, Jeffries and the bloodthirsty Democrat media complex smearing Rittenhouse as a white supremacist would be supporting his right to self-defense.

Hakeem Jeffries

13 Known Connections

In a January 28, 2021 interview with MSNBC, Jeffries characterized supporters of former President Trump as “domestic terrorists and the white supremacists.” Asked “what happens if there’s no accountability for him or the rioters” who had occupied the Capitol on January 6, the congressman replied: “[P]art of the lesson of the first impeachment trial for him was that he could shoot holes in the Constitution on Pennsylvania Avenue and get away with it because Senate Republicans were prepared to bury their heads in the sand…. [E]very available option to hold him accountable for his actions should be undertaken…. And we’re not going to be cowed by the domestic terrorists and the white supremacists and the enemy combatants who want to stop us in our tracks. That would be giving in to them, and that’s not going to happen.”

To learn more about Hakeem Jeffries, click here.

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‘Intentionally Tearing Us Apart’: Tulsi Gabbard Says ‘More And More Democrats Are Pushing’ Racial Division In America

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During an appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday, Former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said that “more and more Democrats are pushing” the racialization of American politics and it is “tearing” the nation apart.

WATCH:

“Unfortunately as we see too often, more and more Democrats are pushing this racialization,” Gabbard told host and Daily Caller co-founder, Tucker Carlson. “They are pushing more fomenting of anger and hatred and divisiveness that really is destroying us. It’s causing more suffering and more harm to the American people and the fabric of our country and undermining these values that our country was founded on,” she continued.

The former Democratic presidential candidate said this division can be seen “in how everything in our the country is being racialized: that this is an intentional strategy to tear us apart based on the color of our skin because they think that there’s some political gain to be had from it and don’t care at all about the destruction that they leave in their wake.”

Gabbard argued that “voters need to reject” the strategy just as they “choose leaders who do put the American people and our country first, who share that objective from both political parties.” She also said Democrats and Republicans must share one absolute political objective: doing what’s best for the U.S.

The former congresswoman pointed to the recent gubernatorial election in Virginia as an example of Democrats dividing Americans, and argued that candidate Terry McAuliffe “represented that fomenting of divisiveness, this racialization, and Virginia voters rejected that.”

As the Virginia election results were broadcast on Nov. 2, some members of the left-wing media said the Republicans were winning because of “white supremacy,” despite the election of Winsome Sears, a black woman, who is now the lieutenant governor-elect in the state.

“[White supremacists] are dangerous, they’re dangerous to our national security because stoking that kind of soft white nationalism eventually leads to the hardcore stuff,” Reid said.

Gabbard has also specifically criticized Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters for using race to “divide” American voters. She has also said Biden’s immigration policy is failing and that he should reconsider reintroducing some of former President Donald Trump’s policies to end an “open border.”

COLUMN BY

DAVID KRAYDEN

Ottawa bureau chief. Follow David on Twitter. Send tips to Krayden@dailycaller.com.

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Madness: UCLA Suspends Professor for Refusing to Assign Grades Based on Skin Color

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My latest in PJ Media:

This is the state of American academia today: Gordon Klein has taught courses in business law, tax law, and financial analysis at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management for no fewer than forty years. He is a respected academic who has been on CNBC and quoted in the Wall Street Journal for his economic expertise. But now, after being suspended, he has filed suit in California Superior Court against the university regents over his suspension. Klein has a good case: He was suspended from teaching at UCLA for the crime of refusing to discriminate and treat his black students differently from how he treated others.

“I was suspended from my job,” Klein explained, “for refusing to treat my black students as lesser than their non-black peers.” His ordeal began on June 2, 2020, when “a non-black student in my class on tax principles and law emailed me to ask that I grade his black classmates with greater ‘leniency’ than others in the class.”

In a sane society, a “non-black student” who demanded that black students be graded with greater “leniency” than others would be castigated as a racist. But in the Left’s funhouse mirror ethics, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, and treating students differently based on race is racial justice.

The student wrote to Klein: “We are writing to express our tremendous concern about the impact that this final exam and project will have on the mental and physical health of our Black classmates.” Klein believes that the student was using an online racial justice form letter: “There was no project in this class, and it was unclear to me who the ‘we’ in this case was. I suspected the student simply used a form letter he found online and neglected to change the subject.”

The letter went on to claim that black students were too traumatized by racism to do well on the final exam: “The unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the life-threatening actions of Amy Cooper and the violent conduct of the [University of California Police Department] have led to fear and anxiety which is further compounded by the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community. As we approach finals week, we recognize that these conditions place Black students at an unfair academic disadvantage due to traumatic circumstances out of their control.” It concluded: “This is not a joint effort to get finals canceled for non-Black students, but rather an ask that you exercise compassion and leniency with Black students in our major.”

Klein notes that “in a subsequent conversation with a university investigator,” the student who wrote the letter made it clear that he “intended that the requested adjustments apply to Black students and not the class generally.” To strengthen the case, the student invoked the Anderson School of Management’s “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” agenda, which stresses that a “commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion as fundamental to achieving Anderson’s mission.”

There is more. Read the rest here.

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The Vague Grounds of ‘Systemic’ Racism

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David Carlin: Is “systemic racism” real?  Or is it an abuse of language, stretching the meaning of the word “racism” beyond its legitimate bounds?

The issue of equality is almost always on the American national agenda. It was so from the day the Declaration of Independence was signed; it’s been so again and again in the years since 1776. And today it is prominent as Americans once again consider how to reduce inequalities between men and women, between native-born and immigrants, and above all between whites and blacks.

The idea that “all men are created equal” wasn’t discovered in Philadelphia in 1776. For a precise time and place for its beginning, think of Athens around 300 B.C.  For that was the approximate year when Zeno of Citium founded the Stoic school of philosophy in the city that was the philosophical capital of the Greek world.  Stoicism taught that all humans are equal in that they possess reason, a godlike attribute; and that reason is the best of all human things, better than wealth, health, strength, fame, good looks, etc.  In other words, that all humans are equal is what is most important.

This was a great theoretical breakthrough, though it didn’t have much immediate practical effect.  In the immediate aftermath of this great Stoic discovery, slaves were still slaves; rich people could still lord it over poor people; men could still push women around, etc.

The coming of Christianity was another great leap forward in the spread of the idea of universal human equality, for a number of reasons.

(1) Christianity was a universal religion, that is, a religion open to any and all humans, regardless of race or nationality or sex or wealth or status as slave or free.  This made it a very different thing from the many local religions found in the Roman world, including the Jewish religion.  It did however require initiation (Baptism), but this initiation was open to all who were willing to subscribe to the basic Christian articles of faith.

(2) Christianity regarded God as a universal God, as the Creator and Father of all human beings, regardless of race, nationality, etc.

(3) Christianity held that that Jesus Christ had suffered and died in atonement for the sins of all human beings. Centuries later John Calvin and his followers held that Jesus had not died for all, but only for some, namely the Elect.  But this notorious Calvinist doctrine is a deviation from ancient Christian orthodoxy.

(4) The great Christian sacrament of the Eucharist was open to all Christians without regard to wealth or power or sex or social status. It was no less open to a slave than to a king, no less open to a homeless person than to a multi-billionaire, no less open to a woman than to a man, no less open to a Greek than to a Jew.

(5) Christianity taught that the rules of morality are the same for all human beings; that all humans should abstain from murder, adultery, theft, lying, and so on; and that all humans should love their neighbors.

(6) Christianity taught that all humans have the potential for becoming saints; that is, for enjoying eternal happiness in the company of God.

(7) Of course sanctity, according to Christianity, is not possible without the assistance of the grace of God; but Christianity also taught that this saving grace is available to all humans.  Again, Calvinists disagreed; they held that God’s saving grace is available to the Elect only.

It was inevitable that this religious or spiritual equality would eventually, if slowly, spill over into the secular realm. By the 18th century, equality in the eyes of God had evolved into the idea that all humans are – or rather, should be– equal before the law. This meant that nobles would have to lose their legal privileges, and it also meant that slavery would have to be done away with.

But in a post-slavery world, further inequalities remained, most notably the great gap between rich and poor, a gap that grew greater as capitalist modernization proceeded.  In the United States, we have tried to justify this gap with the idea of “equality of opportunity.”  To the degree that all runners have an equal chance of winning in the great and universal American race for social and economic prizes, we consider the resulting inequalities to be fair.  At the same time, we as a society have a duty to reduce or eliminate whatever might prevent an equal start in this great race – we must, for instance, reduce discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, class, religion, etc.  And to a great extent, we have done this. Impartial surveys such as the one here show America and other developed countries to be among the least racist in the world.

In recent years, however, many loud and increasingly influential voices have shouted, “Equality of opportunity is not enough; besides, it is impossible to bring about.”  Instead, we are told, our national equality slogan should be, “Equality of outcome.”  This is especially true when it comes to comparisons between whites and blacks.  When blacks (on average) are worse off than whites (on average) in income, wealth, education, arrests, imprisonment, drug addiction, residential quality, life expectancy, and so on, these inequalities are the results (so we are told by these clamorous voices) of “systemic racism” or “structural racism.”

One of the great merits of Catholic colleges in the old days, when these colleges weren’t very good academically in comparison with their secular peers, was that they made students take a course in elementary logic, a course that usually placed a strong emphasis on the nature and importance of definition.  Catholic colleges nowadays, far more up-to-date than they were when I was young, don’t worry much about elementary logic courses.  Too bad.  For before Catholics with a strong social conscience rush into battle against the evils of systemic racism, they should pause for a moment to ask for a definition.

Is systemic racism a kind of racism?  Or is it (as I suspect) an abuse of language, stretching the meaning of the word “racism” beyond its legitimate bounds?

COLUMN BY

David Carlin

David Carlin is a retired professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2021 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Leonydus Johnson – An Advocate for Post Racial Identity

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The popular woke notion that a white person has no right to express their opinion to a black person is a preposterous canard. Of course whites can speak out, because year after year, the Democratic party relies on black voters to change the outcome of every close election in America. When someone is altering your future, sending it careening into an abyss, you have the right to try to talk them out of it.

Nonetheless, it is always a relief to find another black influencer who is willing to challenge the Democratic machine. At the risk of playing the same game at which the woke Left excels, we’ll just state for the record that of the 348 records now populating the Winston84 directory, 58 of those individuals are black. That’s almost 17 percent. And today we proudly add another, Leonydus Johnson, who bills himself on Twitter as “an advocate for post racial identity.”

Until the next wave of cancellations, influencers like Leonydus Johnson may not be boosted by the big platforms, but they’re making their presence known. With 111,000 followers on Twitter, and a growing presence on the other mainstream venues – Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube – Johnson is a man to watch. It would be a shame if he had to move onto the alternative platforms, but how he has been harassed so far is an indication of how the threshold for tolerable speech is being relentlessly lowered.

For example, on his Instagram account, Johnson has a screenshot of a Tweet where he wrote “How can Americans be so arrogant as to believe that what happened in places like Maoist China cannot possibly happen here?” Good question! And for his trouble, Twitter notified Johnson that “Your post didn’t follow our Community Standards on hate speech. No one else can see your post.”

Are you kidding?

Johnson’s website is called “Informed Dissent,” where he discloses that “His sociopolitical and economic views are heavily influenced by the likes of Murray Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Milton Friedman, and Jordan Peterson.” His content is fact based, rational, and delivered with a controlled passion that will move the uncommitted.

People like Leonydus Johnson are going to save America. Because they are rising up, as post-racial individuals, and demanding that “Who I am has very little to do with my skin color.” These awakened warriors against the woke Left are a sleeping giant. They are the heart of America, they are united, and they will prevail.

EDITORS NOTE: This Winston84 Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Oldest Hatred Now Fulminates and Flourishes at 1600

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In February, not two weeks into the, ahem, presidency of Joe Biden, I described in my article, “Joe’s Jews,” the appointments he made of 11 longtime Jew-haters and Israel-loathers to key positions in his cabinet/regime.

A month later, in my article “More about Joe and the Jews,” I described 12 more Jew-haters and Israel-loathers that Joe appointed to key positions in his cabinet/regime.

There have been many other alarmingly similar appointments since then, making it clear to even the most casual observer that the Biden White House has a particularly hostile––even hateful––attitude toward Jews and their ancient homeland Israel, combined with a perverse infatuation with and allegiance to any group or individual intent on destroying the Jewish state.

There is no doubt that Biden’s presence in the Oval Office has been interpreted by these career haters and organized thugs as an unmistakable nod of approval to continue and even expand on the tsunami of anti-Semitism now sweeping the entire globe––from the contamination of most American colleges and universities to brutal physical assaults of Jews in the streets of New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and around the world––a phenomenon writer Victor Rosenthal elaborates upon in chilling detail––to condemnation of Israel by the Irish parliament and other governments to the racist obscenities vomited out routinely by Democrat members of the U.S. Congress.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

In fact, Joe Biden and his entire coterie/staff/cabinet/appointees of left-wing, blatantly anti-Semitic radicals demonstrate their noxious racism on a daily basis, notwithstanding his boilerplate pronouncements about support for Israel…at the exact same time he embraces, applauds and funds Israel’s mortal enemies. Want proof? Here is the very very short list:

  • Biden appeased and clearly agreed with the growing number of Jew- and Israel-haters in the Democrat Party by sending the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians $167 million dollars––enough to finance the recent war against Israel by Hamas terrorists.

But we really shouldn’t worry. After all, just the other day, Biden told an ABC-TV reporter that Hamas is “just an idea. It’s more of a concept, an a-a-abstract, a, the, you know, the, the, the thing. A sym––a symbol. Hamas is more of the journey, the, the destination. The real Hamas is just the, you know, just the friends we made along the way.”

“So who is launching the rockets then?” asked the interviewer.

“Come on, man!” Biden replied angrily. “Want to arm-wrestle? I took down ole Bucktooth Joe back in my college days. He was one of the best arm-wrestlers east of the Mississippi. And pow! I took him down. Right in the kisser. Let’s go, me and you, right now. Or maybe a push-up contest. You know, the — the thing about the push-ups…”

  • Biden––when it was clear that the aggressors of Hamas were getting trounced by Israel––was sent a letter by no less than 500 of his anti-Israel campaign staffers––begging him to “hold Israel accountable for its actions.” Bad Israel for fighting back!
  • Biden dispatched Michael Ratney to represent the U.S. in Israel––the same guy, according to Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart––whose role in the Obama administration was to interfere in Israel’s 2015 election with the goal of ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • Biden, instead of allowing Israel to turn Gaza into a demilitarized zone, initiated the ceasefire that Hamas was begging for and demanded that Israel––not the terrorists!––meet three demands:
    • Desist from evicting the Arabs who have been squatting on Jewish property for decades without paying rent,
    • Appease the fanatically militant Arabs who don’t allow Jews to pray at their most sacred site, the Temple Mount,
    • And stop celebrating Jerusalem Flag day which honors the State of Israel. “Imagine if another country demanded we stop celebrating the Fourth of July or Memorial Day!”
  • Biden, like Obama before him, believes in rewarding terrorists, and so has pledged billions––not millions or even multimillions, but billions!––to rebuild the breeding ground of hatred and terrorism known as Gaza. He has also committed $150 million to––as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley describes it––the systemically corrupt United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that was suspended under the Trump administration.
  • Biden and Kalamity Harris enthusiastically supported Rev. Raphael Warnock when he ran, victoriously, for the U.S. Senate in Georgia last year, knowing full well of his rabid anti-Semitism and hatred of whites, as spelled out here by journalist and blogger Jeff Dunetz.
  • Biden’s nominee for a top State Department position, according to writer Alana Goodman, “played a key role in assembling a book on the nefarious influence of the ‘Israel lobby’ while working for an organization that promoted claims about Jewish media control and dual loyalty to Israel.”
  • Biden chose attorney Kirsten Clarke as the Assistant Attorney General to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, she whose loathing of Jews and whites is extensively documented by the esteemed Daniel Greenfield, as well as by writer/editor David Rosenberg. Clarke has posited that “the human brain was structured in a way that makes black people superior to white people.”
  • Biden, only a year after being elected, delivered Egyptian disinformation to Israel––to the besieged country’s detriment––ahead of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, as described by writer David Israel.
  • Biden, just the other day, ordered U.S. Embassies around the world to fly the Black Lives Matter flag to commemorate George Floyd’s murder “on May 25 and beyond.” You remember BLM––the Marxist terrorist group rampaging across the U.S. for the past year and responsible for about $2 billion in property damage, devastating arson, widespread theft, the injuries of more than 240 police officers and destruction of hundreds of police precincts, upward of 30 murders, and the defacement and vandalizing of synagogues, at which they screamed “F… the Jews and Kill the Police.” That BLM! That Joe Biden!
  • Biden’s House Democrats last week rejected–– unanimously––a Republican effort to provide Israel with emergency security funding for its life-saving Iron Dome system. A couple of days earlier, they stopped legislation that would sanction foreign entities doing business with Hamas. Getting the picture?
  • Biden & Co. fully support the World Health Organization, a toxic arm of the United Nations cesspool, which held a meeting the other day to address the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, and predictably––given their entire history of fanatical anti-Semitism––singled out Israel to condemn for violating the rights of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, although the charge is objectively untrue and Israel has been at the international forefront of the research and development of anti-Corona vaccines.
  • Biden has brought in Islamic activists––among them Hina Shamsi, who fought on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation, the leaders of which were convicted of providing material support to Hamas—to investigate “extremism” in the U.S. military. In essence, writes Daniel Greenfield, “American military personnel are being put at the mercy of advocates for their worst enemies. To Biden, defending Al Qaeda and Hamas terrorists is the only qualification needed for going after American soldiers.”

OLD WINE, NEW BOTTLE

One thing about Jew-haters and Israel-loathers:  they are remarkably unoriginal. While their reasons for hating Jews may have changed over the centuries, the symptoms of their racism have remained the same:

  • Thinking obsessively about Jews,
  • Fulminating with hatred,
  • Blaming everything wrong in their lives and society on Jews,
  • Joining with other racists to inflict harm,
  • In many cases, devoting their lives to this obsession.

All of it driven by pathological jealousy!

Interestingly, they never seem to wonder why it is that out of eight-billion people in the world––including 2.2-billion Christians, approximately one-billion Protestants, and 1.8-billion Muslims (the majority in 49 countries), they cannot deal with or destroy the 15-million Jews––seven-million in the U.S., seven-million in Israel, and about one million around the world.

It must make them feel immensely stupid or impotent, hence even angrier than their usual fixated state of fury.

But like every liberal, leftist, progressive––whatever they’re calling themselves these days––who thinks that the crashing failures of socialism and communism in world history were a function of bad management and that they will do it better, so the Jew-haters of the world think they will finally get the anti-Semitism thing right and once and for all get rid of the people, and their country, that make them feel so bad and inferior and stupid and impotent every minute of every day and night––including weekends and holidays!

THE FISH STINKS FROM THE HEAD

“The Biden administration has revealed the president’s long-seething hostility toward Israel,” writes former professor of political science Abraham Miller, “going back to his encounter with Israel’s then-prime minister Menachem Begin, in which Biden threatened to cut off aid to Israel.”

“As Israelis were crouching in hallways and bomb shelters and Hamas launched death from the skies against them,” Miller writes, “the Biden administration’s representatives in Vienna were negotiating an overture to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal”––Iran being the foremost supplier of arms to Hamas.

Larry Gordon, editor-in-chief of the 5 Towns Jewish Times (Long Island, NY), asks: “Do Jewish Lives Matter?”

“A great deal of the recent debate [about the Hamas-Israel conflict], Gordon writes, revolved around the issue as to whether Israel has the right to defend itself….under what possible circumstances would it be acceptable or okay for Israel not to defend itself?

“Over the last several weeks Jews are being clubbed and beaten at random.” Gordon continues, “but the president so far has not found it within himself––like the Jewish Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer––to stand up and condemn these types of hate crimes. Perhaps they will see themselves as being aligned too much with Jews which may impact on their political standing….what a shameful situation!”

Economist and political commentator Valerie Sobel states that it is “entirely inexplicable how such a large caucus of American Jewry can be so irreparably injured by a presidential tweet on media bias, yet be entirely untouched by the ‘Death to Jews’ chants in the violent, politically underwritten Jew-hatred festivals of their own party and tirelessly anti-Semitic media.

“Impossible to digest how their Jewish offspring, their contaminated social justice warriors, the very grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, are so indoctrinated that they march with Black Lives Matter and the Boycott-Divest-Sanction Jew haters while holding ‘Free Palestine’ signs. And entirely irreconcilable––the supine silence of predominately liberal Jewish Community leaders on the Kristallnacht-style pogroms in L.A., London and New York.

“How can we explain this craven desire to throw ourselves onto the sword in the name of wokeness?” Sobel asks. “Who would applaud this desperation for acceptance into a club of liberal ideals that includes vile Jew-hatred? And why in the world would a political party with such a vast anti-Semitic ledger and clinically Israel-allergic membership be valued at such a premium by Jews themselves?”

Psychiatrist and historian Kenneth Levin also talks about the Congressional enablers of genocidal anti-Semitism. “Hamas is explicit in wanting to kill not only all Israelis but all Jews,” Levin writes….

“The current Administration,” Levin continues, “has stated as one of its essential goals the reassertion of American moral authority in the world…[but] the further, ugly phenomenon of a sizable segment of the Congressional delegation of a major American political party serving as supporters of or apologists for the criminal actions of a genocidal anti-Semitic terrorist group…[is] rather a demonstration of moral bankruptcy.”

Liel Leibovitz, writing in the NY Post , states: “As Jews were being pummeled, punched, spat at, intimidated with explosive devices and singled out for violence and harassment all across America this week, the righteous men and women of the Democratic Party were quick to denounce the twin scourges behind these mini-pogroms: anti-Semitism and—drumroll, please—Islamophobia.

“That’s the thing with morally muddled thinking, “Leibovitz continues. “It’s a simple principle that seems to be completely lost on nearly everyone in today’s Democratic Party. Hopefully, its Jewish voters will wise up before it’s too late.”

Journalist and author John Perazzo, in Israel’s Fake ‘Friend’––an in-depth, comprehensive timeline of Joe Biden’s relentless hostility toward Israel from 1982 to just a few months ago––describes “a long destructive track record of undermining Israeli security.”

“Joe Biden has made a habit of describing himself as a loyal, stalwart friend and ally of Israel,” Perazzo writes….but a careful examination of Biden’s track record reveals his long and extremely troubling history of undermining Israel’s security and public image.”

In his timeline, Perazzo describes eight long years of Biden’s steadfast support of Barack Obama’s deep hostility and sabotage of Israel, which Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon, chairman of Likud’s international outreach branch, said were “catastrophic.”

Writer Andrea Widburg has the last word in Biden’s ignominious role toward Israel: “Biden may say he believes Israel has a right to self-defense,” Widburg writes, “but his actions reveal that his real sympathies lie with the Islamists who seek to destroy Israel and kill every one of her inhabitants. He is an indecent excuse for a human being.”

©Joan Swirsky. All rights reserved.

Nancy Pelosi, High Priestess of the Left’s Cult, Gives Thanks to Floyd Her Savior

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Smirnoff) has been getting a lot of heat, as Matt Margolis detailed, for thanking George Floyd for being good enough to die “for justice.” But amid all the scorn and ridicule Pelosi is justly receiving, a key point is being overlooked: While her words may have sounded mawkish, maudlin, and incomparably tone-deaf to outsiders, to true believers in the left’s new secular religion, everything she said was entirely appropriate. In her capacity as high priestess of this religion, Pelosi was performing a hieratic role and giving thanks to the new savior.

The priestess began by giving thanks to the deity for his salvific sacrifice: “Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice.” Then she recounted a bit of sacred history for the edification of the believers: “For being there to call out to your mom — how heartbreaking was that — to call out for your mom, ‘I can’t breathe.’” She concluded by explaining to the faithful how much they owed to the savior: “Because of you and because of thousands, millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice.”

Pelosi is ostensibly a Catholic, and this statement closely follows the pattern of the Catholic Mass, which contains texts giving thanks to the Lord, recounting the institution of the Holy Eucharist, and explaining how Jesus gave his life for the salvation of the world.

In the left’s new religion, racism, or whiteness, is the original sin. This sin manifests itself in all sorts of “systemic” ways, most notably in the alleged police double standard for blacks and whites. George Floyd, in Pelosi’s clouded vision, sacrificed himself just as Jesus did. In Christian thought, Jesus submitted to death in order to destroy it and enable human beings to enjoy eternal life; now George Floyd submitted to racism and police brutality in order to destroy them and enable Americans to enjoy racial justice.

Pelosi’s statement thanking Floyd is thus not only a religious one, but it’s a Christian heresy, a twisting of Christian doctrine for nefarious ends, in this case substituting Floyd for Christ in an effort to sanctify the left’s race-baiting and dangerously irresponsible ratcheting-up of societal tensions by means of hysterical false charges.

While Pelosi is a high priestess of the Floyd cult, she is not its founding prophet. That honor goes to some anonymous spiritual seer in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where last June, according to Dr. Reza Parchizadeh, a political theorist and analyst, “the Iranian regime has turned the late #George_Floyd into Saint George, Shiite-style!” Parchizadeh posted a painting of Floyd depicting him in the way Shi’ite Muslims often depict their holy figures: in a green robe and surrounded by an aura of holy light. As incongruous as the image was, it was perfectly fitting: Floyd, whose murder touched off the rage for destruction that is still afflicting America today despite the conviction of Derek Chauvin, is the perfect symbol for the Iranian Islamic regime’s oft-repeated aspiration: “Death to America.”

Now that Pelosi has endorsed this cult, expect it to grow further, even exponentially. The inconvenient details of Floyd’s life have already been glossed over for months. Never mind the fentanyl, never mind the convictions for robbery, theft, and drug dealing, never mind the pistol he held to a woman’s stomach while robbing her – none of that matters or besmirches Floyd’s salvific mission in any way. Basketball great Magic Johnson tweeted Tuesday: “Great speech by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison describing George Floyd as a father, family man, and beloved member of his community. It was beautiful and sent chills down my body! If you didn’t see it, I encourage you all to watch it.”

That’s a big miss for me, Earvin, but you’ll have to pardon me, you see, I am not an adherent of your religious faith. Don’t be concerned, however; many people are, and their numbers are growing every day. Now that Derek Chauvin (aka Satan) has been driven out, a new messianic era of racial justice will dawn, in which the faithful will gather together joyfully to sing their praises to the savior, the one who died to give them life. In this glorious year of Our Floyd, our racial redemption is finally at hand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Meghan and Harry’s soap Oprah

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Have the Sussexes set fire to the house they fled from?

Adding to the 56 million articles already published about Prince Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview may seem a fool’s errand: another scribbler has already noted that of 31 stories on the website of the British tabloid, The Mirror, at some point in the last 48 hours, 30 were about the Sussexes and the 31st was about something similar.

For a moment it seemed like just another Royals frenzy, but an accusation of racism at the Palace have turned the Sussexes’ Royal woes into something much more serious. In the uproar, Meghan’s other problems with the Royal household have been eclipsed.

Royalty has always presented itself as glamorous and powerful, but on the inside life is tough and individuals relatively powerless. Think of the first five wives of Henry VIII. Though execution for failing to live up to expectations has fallen out of fashion, being a British Royal is still very demanding. Not everyone is cut out for a life of relentless ribbon-cutting and speeches, or tours to culturally diverse parts of the Commonwealth.

It’s easier if you are born to it.

Coming into the British Royal family from the free, it’s all-about-me world is very, very hard. So Meghan Markle has discovered by marrying into the Mountbatten-Windsor clan, apparently without doing any homework whatsoever. In the famous tell-all interview she revealed that, five minutes before she met the Queen for the first time, she did not know how and when to curtsey. She could not even sing the British national anthem (which is “God Save the Queen”).

Much less was she prepared for the loss of freedom and privacy that joining an institution like the British monarchy entails, in particular its delicately-balanced relationship with the nation’s tabloid press.

Though her friends warned her, the savagery of that institution seems to have hit her like a ton of bricks. As an exotic newcomer with a past, Meghan was bound to attract a lot of attention, but the press and social media seemed to really have it in for her.

The last straw was the Daily Mail’s publication in February 2019 of a plaintive letter to her estranged father Thomas Markle that she had written after her wedding the previous May — which he had sold to the paper. Last month the Sussexes won a lawsuit against the Mail’s owners for breach of privacy and copyright. (The paper’s campaign against them continues: “Back to Basics at their $14.5 Million Mansion!” runs a recent headline.)

What they have not won, according to the Oprah interview, is any protection by the Royal household from ongoing media harassment, or rebuttals of fake news about her and Harry. Meghan was pregnant with their son Archie when the Thomas Markle letter was published and says she became suicidal when she failed to get any support from the institution other than from Harry, who was equally “trapped”. When she asked for inpatient care for her mental health, she was told that would not be good for the institution.

Harry insists in the interview that Meghan is great for the institution, “one of the greatest assets to the Commonwealth that the family could have ever wished for.” He points to the success of their tour of the South Pacific in October 2018, during which she revealed her pregnancy, but hints that her popularity in the former colonies raised the ghost of Diana in a similar setting and evoked jealously back in the Palace.

A year later, on their visit to South Africa, Meghan would admit to a television reporter that life at home had been “um, hard.” Indeed, “unfair”. That did not go down well with The Firm.

Her most sensational claim, however, is about racism. Before little Archie came into the world looking nice and white, someone in the Royal household, she says, told Harry of “concerns” about the colour he might be. This is, of course, very damning, especially in the current climate of hysteria about racism. Harry refuses to say who made this blunder, though we are assured it was not the Queen, whom the couple insist they are on good terms with. In addition, Meghan learned that as a minor Royal, Archie would not have a title or security details.

On this showing – and we only have their story to go on – the Sussexes decision to “step back” from Royal duties and seek their fortune in Canada, then the United States, seems reasonable. If the Palace is as unfeeling and racist as they say, then good riddance.

Yet they seem to want reconciliation; after all, it is Harry’s family.

So why on earth rake over resentments in front of a global audience? Can it make the Palace repent? Not likely. Can it get the US media, at least, on their side. Perhaps. But, judging by commentaries on the interview so far, for every person who is sympathetic, there is at least one other who thinks it wrong to complain about your family in public. It did not help poor Diana.

In fact, the British Royal Family with its divorces and its major and minor scandals, like others, has been disintegrating before our eyes for decades, and the institution itself seems less and less relevant in a democratic age. Possibly the only reason the whole edifice hasn’t already collapsed is Queen Elizabeth herself, who embodies a moral sense and spirit of service that is simply disappearing from public life.

Anti-racism is the new morality, however, and one serves humanity by denouncing it wherever it is even suspected. Reactions over the past two days to the allegation that it is alive and well among the British Royals may be a fatal blow to their institution. In polls, young Brits have given it the thumbs down and the Commonwealth is showing its colours.

A monarchy riddled with divorce and adultery is just like the rest of us, but one harbouring racists is beyond the pale. It’s looking more and more like Harry and Meghan have set fire to the house they deserted.

COLUMN BY

Carolyn Moynihan is the former deputy editor of MercatorNet More by Carolyn Moynihan.

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Institutional Racism in Higher Ed

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Institutional racism and systemic racism are terms bandied about these days without much clarity. Being 84 years of age, I have seen and lived through what might be called institutional racism or systemic racism. Both operate under the assumption that one race is superior to another. It involves the practice of treating a person or group of people differently based on their race.

“Negros,” as we proudly called ourselves back then, were denied entry to hotels, restaurants, and other establishments all over the nation, including the North. Certain jobs were entirely off-limits to Negros. What school a child attended was determined by his race.

In motion pictures, Negros were portrayed as being unintelligent, such as the roles played by Stepin Fetchit and Mantan Moreland in the Charlie Chan movies. Fortunately, those aspects of racism are a part of our history.

By the way, Fetchit, whose real name was Lincoln Perry, was the first black actor to become a millionaire, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 1976, the Hollywood chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People awarded Perry a Special NAACP Image Award.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>

Despite the nation’s great achievements in race relations, there remains institutional racism, namely the widespread practice of treating a person or group of people differently based on their race. Most institutional racism is practiced by the nation’s institutions of higher learning.

Eric Dreiband, an assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, recently wrote that Yale University “grants substantial, and often determinative, preferences based on race.”

The four-page letter said, “Yale’s race discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular Asian American and White applicants.”

Yale University is by no means alone in the practice of institutional racism. Last year, Asian students brought a discrimination lawsuit against Harvard University and lost. The judge held that the plaintiffs could not prove that the lower personal ratings assigned to Asian applicants are the result of “animus” or ill-motivated racial hostility toward Asian Americans by Harvard admissions officials.

However, no one offered an explanation as to why Asian American applicants were deemed to have, on average, poorer personal qualities than white applicants. An explanation may be that Asian students party less, study more, and get higher test scores than white students.

In court filings, Students for Fair Admissions argued that the University of North Carolina’s admissions practices are unconstitutional. Its brief stated: “UNC’s use of race is the opposite of individualized; UNC uses race mechanically to ensure the admission of the vast majority of underrepresented minorities.”

Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, said in a news release that the court filing “exposes the startling magnitude of the University of North Carolina’s racial preferences.”

Blum said that their filing contains statistical evidence that shows that an Asian American male applicant from North Carolina with a 25% chance of getting into UNC would see his acceptance probability increase to about 67% if he were Latino and to more than 90% if he were African American.

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative) that read: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

California legislators voted earlier this summer to put the question to voters to repeal the state’s ban on the use of race as a criterion in the hiring, awarding public contracts and admissions to public universities and restore the practice of institutional racism under the euphemistic title “affirmative action.”

When social justice warriors use the terms “institutional racism” or “systemic racism,” I suspect it means that they cannot identify the actual person or entities engaged in the practice.

However, most of what might be called institutional or systemic racism is practiced by the nation’s institutions of higher learning. And it is seen by many, particularly the intellectual elite, as a desirable form of determining who gets what.

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COMMENTARY BY

Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams, a columnist for The Daily Signal, is a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: .

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Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…

For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.

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VIDEO: Let’s Talk About Racism In America Featuring Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and More

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The Freedom Forum posted the below comments and video on YouTube.

This is the conversation about racism in America that the Mainstream Is hiding from you. Honest moments from interviews featuring people like Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Lil Wayne, Larry Elder, Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, and others give their take on racism in America right now.

WATCH:

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A Few of the Democrats Biden Missed When He Called Trump Our First Racist President

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My latest in PJ Media:

If President Trump is really a “racist,” as Joe Biden claims, he is one of the strangest racists who ever lived: before the coronavirus hit, black and Hispanic unemployment was at record low levels, the president has repeatedly hailed the achievements of black Americans, and Trump himself, before he entered politics as an unapologetic, non-establishment Republican, was widely respected even by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for his work for the black community. But none of that matters to Joe Biden or whomever is putting words in his mouth: they want us to believe that Trump is a racist, indeed, the first racist president, because for years they’ve been destroying Republicans with this charge, however false it may be. Why stop now? But Biden has missed a few Democrats.

Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster recounts that progressive hero Woodrow Wilson, for example, was born in Virginia a bit more than four years before the Civil War broke out. Throughout his life, he retained the racist attitudes he learned in his youth, and when he became president, he made them U.S. government policy. In 1915, the notorious film The Birth of a Nation became the first motion picture to get a screening in the White House; the film portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, denigrated blacks in numerous ways, and quoted Wilson as a respected authority.

Wilson was also quoted decrying the supposed “policy of congressional leaders” to “put the white South under the heel of the black South.” In response, Wilson went on, as quoted in the film: “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

The showing of The Birth of a Nation was indicative of Wilson’s attitudes: during his administration, government departments in Washington were segregated.

Rating America’s Presidents also shows how another Democrat, James Buchanan, presided over the dissolution of the Union in the years leading up to the Civil War, appealing to the South not to secede by adopting a full-hearted, enthusiastic endorsement of slavery and all it represented. On March 6, 1857, two days after Buchanan took office, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, published its infamous ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, a case that had been brought by Dred Scott, a slave who had been taken into free territory and argued that, as a result, he was now free. The court voted 7–2 against Scott. In his opinion, Taney wrote that blacks were a “subordinate and inferior class of beings” who “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.”

There is much more. Read the rest here.

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