Originally published August 24, 2022
https://queensjewishlink.com/index.php/opinion/7128-institutionalized-racism-is-alive-and-well-in-usa
Hardly a week goes by without the claim being made that America is a systemically racist country to its core. Despite decades – centuries even – of Americans trying to live up to the Founding creed, there will be those who use the original sin of our nation as a weapon to earn power and superiority to others. They work to make sure that racism in America never dies.
The phrase “institutional racism” or “systemic racism” has replaced simple “racism” recently. The idea is to obfuscate the issue, to make it so broad, vague, and general that no clear definition could be made. It’s a phrase crested in the laboratories of the university system that has an academic definition so dense that even asking for an explanation earns a scoff and a shaking of the head. To define words is a grave sin in today’s society, because to define a thing means that the thing can be debated. Debate is discouraged.
Institutional racism can most simply be defined as disparate outcomes in any process between white people and people of color. It goes back to the fallacy of “equity,” that everyone must be able to reach the same goal, regardless of circumstance. As Kamala Harris recently put it, “So equity, as a concept, says: Recognize that everyone has the same capacity, but in order for them to have equal opportunity to reach that capacity, we must pay attention to this issue of equity if we are to expect and allow people to compete on equal footing.”
Think about that for a second. Everyone has the same capacity? That is clearly untrue. Physical strength, mental aptitude, height, weight, and even things like vision and hearing vary from person to person. For everyone to have the same capacity, we would, by definition, need to reduce individual achievement to the lowest common denominator. That is equity. Anything else is “systemic racism.”
This is used constantly by the Left. It’s an old joke that at the end of the world, The New York Times headline will be “World Ends – Women and Blacks Most Affected.” Even when everyone is on equal footing, the literal end of the world, the Left must always make it so someone is having a disparate outcome. So when Joe Biden, or Kamala Harris, or any number of politicians or pundits claim that America is guilty of “systemic racism” or “institutional racism,” many who reject the woke vocabulary instantly scoff. They have no definitions, no examples, nothing but a lack of equity that has another, likelier explanation than simple racism.
When you make a claim, the onus is on you to prove it. If you’re going to claim that America has institutional racism, you need to show which institution you are referring to. This country has countless institutions. Every school, police department, company, and government office can be considered an “institution.” In order to fight the scourge of racism, they must be identified and exposed if they are truly racist.
There are many institutions guilty of racism, and that racism is endemic to the institution itself. Yet these are not the examples that the Democrats want to focus on. This past week, a new contract for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers was publicized, and it is systemically racist. The Minneapolis public school system is now an institutionally racist system.
There is a contract provision stating that in the event of layoffs in the school district, black teachers (or teachers of color) have higher priority than white teachers. Of course, they use flowery language to describe what is essentially a morally-bankrupt policy. “If excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population.”
After backlash, the district and the union vehemently defended the provision. “To remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) mutually agreed to contract language that aims to support the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented groups as compared to the labor market and to the community served by the school district,” the district said. The president of the teachers union, Greta Callahan, called it, “just one teensy, tiny step towards equity.”
This language echoes the rhetoric of preeminent race hustler Ibram X. Kendi, who said, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” He added, “The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
This is merely the latest in a long line of racist institutions. At the University of California, Berkeley, an off-campus housing co-op bans white students. When entering the 5-story, 30-room building, you must sign in your race and announce when you are bringing a white guest in. Washington University has segregated dorms for black people to keep them away from white people.
Then there are the corporations and non-profits that engage in this. Coca-Cola had a mandatory racial sensitivity training that included the phrase, “try to be less white.” The Smithsonian Museum put out a list of “white traits” that included things like hard work and timeliness. All in the name of “progress.”
There is literally no reason to believe that this won’t continue, and get worse over time. This country has had racist laws in the past, most famously the Jim Crow laws of the south. Democrats passed those laws, and they have the same mindset today. We could easily see laws discriminating based on skin color in the future as well, because the only way to remedy past discrimination is present discrimination. All for equity.
Moshe Hill is a political columnist and Senior Fellow at Amariah, an America First Zionist organization. Moshe has a weekly column in the Queens Jewish Link, and has been published in Daily Wire, CNS News, and other outlets. You can follow Moshe on his blog www.aHillwithaView.com, facebook.com/aHillwithaView, and twitter.com/HillWithView.
