Many years ago, I was doing a weekly talk show on WGNU radio, a station that prided itself on its diversity of hosts. Two of its most popular hosts were radical blacks. Because of their vitriol, passion and high ratings, they had much more air time then the rest of us. The male was a loudmouth who would outshout you if he could not outthink you.
He based much of his thinking on the falsehood that black people can never be racists because they didn’t have any power. Any idea that is based on hatred or such a deep-seated racial prejudice that compels one to wish harm and injustice on the innocent members of any individual or group is immoral, no matter what race one is.
It must have been 1964 when I first encountered the term affirmative action at some religious convention. I was visibly upset by its very concept. I thought to myself, as a Catholic do I have to agree with this? From its very beginnings, I knew there was something very wrong with this idea. It had failed my personal test of reason and logic.
One of my favorite priests, the late Jesuit from Holy Cross, Father Joseph LaBran, was also in attendance. I asked him if we had to believe this? I can still see the visible consternation on his face. He shook his head and told me something to the effect that this idea was not binding on Catholics. Unfortunately, in a few years, affirmative action and its anti-democratic quota system was the law of the land. Then suddenly came the landmark decisions, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College…and the University of North Carolina. In the bat of an eyelash, this racist principle that had codified racial discrimination was consigned to the waste can.
A cartoon I spied in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution inspired me to write my first letter to the media since moving to Georgia a year ago. From the Left cartoonist, Mike Luckovich exposed his ignorance in a recent frame about the Supreme Court. His black-robed justice could easily have passed for himself since he is blind to his own ignorance on the true meaning of Justice. The statue of Lady Justice has been wearing a blindfold since the 16th century. Her scales date back to the ancient Greeks. Taken together, Justice is impartial to a person’s religion, wealth, power, party affiliation and race. All people are to be considered equal before the law.
Since the Warren Court, She has lifted her blindfold off her left eye and put heavy weights on many issues, especially race. This has rendered many of the Court’s rulings, as neither impartial nor equal. For nearly 60 years the government has unconstitutionally violated Lady Justice by favoring black students, which is a clear violation of the true meaning of Justice.
As for the particulars of the Students cases, the best narrative I could find appeared in the Wall Street Journal. This summary of the fallacies connected with affirmative action was written by New York Times correspondent, Abbie Vansickle. Her op-ed piece, Black Justices Spar Over Decision, focused on the opposing opinions of the two black members of the Supreme Court, Justice Clarance Thomas and newly minted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Both were raised by black family members who suffered under the restrictions of the Jim Crow laws and separate but equal educational and social facilities.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Thomas leveled his criticism at her tainted thinking on affirmative action. He said that as she sees things, we all are inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historically subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today. This is just a repetition of the philosophy of a new Black Power Movement that has been energized by the Marxist’s praxis, called Critical Racial Theory. Her opinion had little to do with jurisprudence and everything to do with her personal ideology.
He also critiqued her opinion by describing affirmative action as a panacea where society would unquestionably accede to the view of elite experts and reallocate society’s riches by racial means to level the playing field. While Thomas did concede that American society has never been color blind, wealth gaps between the races were constitutionally irrelevant.
Thomas’ major point was that affirmative action had acted as the walking stick of victimhood, an idea that he has detested since he was at Yale. It was this false idea that had held back racial progress for over a 100 years. He returned to his origins when he said, even in the segregated South, where I grew up, individuals were not the sum of their skin color.
Thomas delivered his knockout blow when he wrote what few have had the temerity to say: Jackson’s philosophy would keep blacks locked into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste. Thomas follows with the truth that affirmative action is an insult to individual accomplishment and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers, rather than consign them to permanent victimhood.
Personally, I believe Victimhood is the new slavery that dare not speak its name. It has replaced slavery’s chains with promises and the whip with an obligation to follow their new masters. The Democratic Party now serves as its new plantation. In essence, it has robbed millions of their integrity, individuality and character. They now belong to the state. Try to act individually and one will be swiftly reminded where he came from.
Just ask black scholars, such as Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele, surgeon Ben Carson, Senator Tim Scott, coach Tony Dungy, and the Heritage Foundation’s Kay James. Thomas was vilified during his Senate persecution by the claim that he received his Court nomination only because he was black, a charge which Joe Biden mindlessly held up as a badge of honor when he chose Justice Jackson for the latest vacancy on the Court. He then shamelessly boasted that her choice had strictly been based on her gender and race.
The roots for Justice Jackson’s opinions were founded on a subtle form of racism, dating back to the early 20th century when Progressivism began as a viable political philosophy. Its early proponents ranged from Herbert Croly, the founder of the New Republic to the Oval Office. The Republican Roosevelt and the Democrat Woodrow Wilson rested their progressive beliefs on the belief that they were far superior to all of the people they purported to serve. Their ideas were based on their exceptional intellects and their spirit of noblese oblige that characterized that period in American history. This view has permeated nearly all progressive ideas, policies and legislation for the last 120 years.
As a result black people have been treated like children who cannot help themselves without perpetual government assistance. After almost three generations and a great number of identifiable successes, income and status elevation, the Left still demands more. This is mainly the work of race-baiters, like Al Sharpton, who have lived off the fat of affirmative action for many years.
Most blacks seem completely oblivious to the fact that the Democratic Party’s quadrennial promises have been vain and empty. Despite this, Democrats still amass up to 90% of black votes in virtually every election. They continue to elect and re-elect the same people who have made them a permanent underclass. Were black people to wise up to their treatment and leave in mass for other parties, the Democratic Party might just fade into History.
Other than a few specifics mentioned by Justice Thomas, the greatest harm of affirmative action has been the fact that many qualified black students were mismatched with elitist schools, like Stanford, Cal Berkeley and the Ivy League. As a result many were overwhelmed and often dropped out. Many observers say that had affirmative action not been involved, most black students would have found an educational environment more suitable to their abilities.
But the most important factor in the lack of black success at these top-rated colleges and even their K-12 schools has been the poor performances of the public-school system. I have found it difficult to find accurate statistics, which demonstrate the true drop-out rate for black students. But given the chaos of the urban areas today, I fear it is approaching 40-50%. I think this may be true because of the poor state of the black family, which had been devastated by President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the sixties.
I have always viewed it as a War on Poor People. The use of offering welfare checks, based on the number of children a woman has, is an immoral practice because it includes a caveat there can be no resident male in their homes. Consequently, 69.3% of black children are illegitimate and most grow up without fathers.
This system has perpetuated two generations of single-parent homes. Boys without fathers will often join a new family, the Bloods and Crips for example. Drug wars are usually a side effect of this policy. This has perpetuated an untenable and violent situation, which dominates our major cities, such as Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Parents can thank Randy Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers. For many years she has relentlessly wielded tremendous power. The public schools in most urban areas, are in shambles. The unspoken truth is that most have been under Democratic control for generations. Weingarten knows that the biggest threat to her power has been the private and charter school systems. She fears their competition more than a snake fears a mongoose. Together they provide an alternative for many of these beleaguered students. Where school choice exists, there has been a mass exodus of black students voting with their feet.
To justify their actions and further brainwash the students who actually show up, Critical Race Theory has been the center piece of their curricular indoctrination. This pernicious philosophy was revived by New York Times Columnist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, who published an inflammatory study, The 1619 Project, in a Sunday Magazine edition in August in 2019. It immediately drew the serious criticism of several renowned historians, such as James McPherson, James Oakes and Victoria E. Bynum. They correctly cited that her study put ideology ahead of historical fact and cannot be classified as history.
What was not reported at this time is that CRT was a pure Marxist doctrine. Marxism underwent a profound change in the 1920s, thanks to the pen of Communist ideologue Antonio Gramsci. He changed the focus of Communism from economics to culture. He thought the West could be conquered through its women and the disruption of religious belief.
In short, CRT argues that America’s legal, economic and political systems are predicated on racism. It rejects the principle of equal opportunity, which is at the heart of the Harvard decision. It also rejects ideas like merit, because they believe only those in power can decide that. It promotes equity, which is the equality of results, no matter how little effort is put in. Why work or study if one is guaranteed the same pay or grades of those who do? To demonstrate how far these ideas have permeated our culture, these words could easily have been taken from ideas promoted by the Biden administration.
While the Feminist Movement of the 1960s had Gramsci’s finger prints all over it, the same can also be said for race, ethnic and sexual groups. They have been quickly added to the growing legion of alienated, dissatisfied and mentally ill people in America. They have become the new proletariat and it is on their backs Communism hopes rise to its political pinnacle.
These groups exist primarily to destroy America. While the term white supremacy abounds, that is just a racist epithet that is part of the conspiracy to annihilate America’s social institutions, such as the family, the church, capitalism and our Republican form of government.
In truth, these Supreme Court decisions have caught many people’s attention and imagination. Thanks to the Trump Court, there has been serious opposition to the Democrats’ destruction of America. Normal and uncontentious people are seeing the first steps of a return of THEIR rights that have been nearly obliterated after several years of the Warren Court’s philosophy of jurisprudence.
This court, which had reigned for several years, had nearly destroyed the doctrine of the separation of powers by looting it from Congress. Now, the Court has rebuked Biden’s excesses on several fronts. In doing so, it has established a beachhead of freedom that should inspire Americans, like the soldiers at Omaha beach, to destroy the Marxist bunkers that have been raining violence, fear and abuse on America’s spirit of freedom.
