The Racism of the "anti-Racists"

Some people are obsessed with the evils of racism.  Not surprisingly, these people often seem to be projecting their own racist attitudes and schemes upon others.

Take this Meme I came across this morning, for instance:

Of course the author of this meme is engaged in dishonest semantics to turn a strategic retreat into an advance.  It apparently has been pointed out that white people, like black people, face all sorts of challenges in their roads to success.  How can you describe some hard-scramble Appalachian like J. D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy) as being "privileged?"  And how do you know what challenges I have faced in my career?  

So the author wishes to say, "Maybe so, but one variable, race, was at least not an impediment in your case, as it was for black people."  

But that's racist and presumptuous, too. 

What this really means is, "We assume, without any specific evidence having to do with any advantages or disadvantages you have actually faced, that the mere fact that you have white skin means you have at least not suffered from the systematic and general abuses that people with skin of other color generally suffer."

And that, without knowing the facts about a single European, African, Asian or Native American on the planet.  You have this skin color, so we have the right to make generalizations about you.  Blacks, poor dears, have suffered from those racist whites.  Whites, born with silver spoons in your mouths, you owe everyone else.

How racist.  How presumptuous.  How ignorant.  How stupid.

Let us ignore, shall we, that the SAT score of the average person with black skin admitted into leading universities can be somewhere around 200 points lower than that of someone with white or yellow skin.  The millions of "majority" (somehow including Asians) students are "privileged" by being actively discriminated against in college admissions?  Never mind if their parents immigrated from a poor Romanian village 20 years ago, while a given black student is son of the president of South Africa, maybe?

From the Los Angeles Times: 

"Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term "bonus" to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth. She points to the first column.

"African Americans received a "bonus" of 230 points, Lee says.

"She points to the second column.

"Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points."

"The last column draws gasps.

"Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission." 

Let us pretend that such racial discrimination does not also go on in hiring.

And what about a white child who has been bullied by black thugs in some inner-city neighborhood?  "Oh, what a cliché! You must be a racist yourself!"  I hear the predictable response.

Sorry, violence among young black men may be a cliché, as is dedication to basketball, but it is also reflected in FBI statistics, as the latter cliché is reflected in NBA roll calls.  Ignoring reality won't make it go away.

My point, of course, is not that life is harder or easier for any broad group of people.  Still less that any given person, of any color skin, may make it harder or easier for anyone else.  Let bigots of all colors make that sort of argument, I reject them all with disgust that is intellectual as well as moral.

What challenges each person may or may not face in life is an empirical question.  It is irrational to presume that in the modern United States, any given young person of whatever race will automatically receive consistent encouragement or discouragement based on whatever pigmentation they happen to have been issued with.  Still less that that sole factor will so outweigh other factors that the Left should remain as obsessed with race even in 2019 as it actually is.

Unless, that is, all this yacking about racism is an excuse to engage in actually racist policies, such as discriminating against young people of European and Asian ancestry in college admissions.  (Along with the sheer pleasures of self-righteousness.)

What happened to Martin Luther King's dream that people would be judged on the content of their character (or their real-life experiences) rather than on racist and bigoted generalizations?

The Left has left that far behind.  And I think we all know why.