[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
Progressivism is a house of cards built precariously on a foundation of sand. It hinges entirely on demonstrably false narratives intentionally designed to sow division and to “rub raw the resentments of the people,” as Luciferian Left-wing strategist Saul Alinsky put it. One of those narratives is that America was founded as, and continues to be, a systemically racist, white supremacist nation in which the purported “Land of Opportunity” excludes the awkwardly termed “people of color” from its promises and prosperity. Racism resides in our country’s very DNA, claimed Barack Obama.
Obama’s condemnation of the country that twice elected him President of the United States and enabled him to build a net worth that tops $70 million (along with his incredibly privileged wife Michelle, who has also been known to grouse that America remains racist) is common among other black elites, as has been demonstrated several times in the last week alone.
Multi-millionaire journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates has built his lucrative career as a leading black intellectual on the back of this Progressive narrative that the country which rewarded him with a National Book Award and a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant is infected with white supremacy. Recently he had the tone-deaf nerve to smear murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk, assassinated by a Leftist for daring to challenge Progressive orthodoxy in peaceful debate, as a hate-mongering, “unreconstructed white supremacist.”
Multi-millionaire political commentator and former MSNBC host Joy Reid too has built a career on the assertion that, “Yes, this is a racist country,” a claim she believes is proven because “racial disparity” exists. During a recent BET Talks interview, she fear-mongered that “we are in a fascist moment,” one in which her Republican opponents want to take us back to “a right-wing, White nationalist, White supremacist moment that is centered around hierarchy.” Her evidence is that Republicans are contemplating doing away with income tax. She believes this is fascist – even though fascism is all about state power, and abolishing income tax would reduce that – and racist – even though blacks too would not owe income tax.
This past March, Reid engaged Coates in conversation at a public event in which she shared that her mother immigrated to the U.S. from Guyana despite her realization that the U.S. was an “evil” place. “My father was from the Congo and my mother was from Guyana and so they were the immigrants who came here on purpose and they got the rude awakening” that “this is the land of opportunity but not for me.” [Emphasis added]
Black comedian and actress Leslie Jones went on the Left-wing propaganda outlet The Daily Show a few days ago and ranted about why America harbors “so much hatred for black people.” The relentlessly unfunny Jones, with a net worth estimated at over $8 million from a career which includes gigs on Saturday Night Live and in the failed, all-female Ghostbusters reboot, had the gall to demand reparations from her fellow Americans: “Forty acres and a mule is not enough anymore. I want 40 acres and a trust fund, how about that?” She added, “Matter of fact, throw in the mule if you want to. I need something to carry my money.”
Former tennis superstar Serena Williams sparked a minor controversy days ago when she posted to Instagram an odd short video in which she expresses discomfort at the sight of a New York City hotel hallway decoration displaying a cotton plant. “All right, everyone,” she says in the video. “How do we feel about cotton as decoration? Personally for me, it doesn’t feel great.” In a second post, she holds a piece of the cotton from the decoration and tells viewers it “feels like nail polish remover cotton.” She touches it, cringes a little, and exits the frame.
Williams, whose wavy blonde tresses are an appropriation of white culture, did not elaborate on why the hotel décor “doesn’t feel great,” but the widespread assumption about this viral video is that she was hinting at the historical association of cotton plants with slavery in the southern United States. She has not subsequently denied this in the ensuing controversy – nor did her white husband when he posted a defense of his wife on social media – so it is reasonable to assume that this is not a misinterpretation.
“Great example of celebrity millionaire using victimhood for currency,” wrote one social media commentator.
Serena Williams’ net worth hovers around $300 million. Are we supposed to believe that she is so traumatized by the sight of a cotton plant that she has to share a video about it with her 18+ million Instagram followers? Does the shadow of the slavery which white Americans ended over 150 years ago, and which everyone today condemns as a moral evil, still darken her consciousness? Yes, in fact, it does. “Black people have been out of slavery now for just over a hundred years…” she said once, “It hasn’t been that long.” How long does it need to be, to let go of the false notion that America is inherently racist and oppressive?
Intellectuals, political commentators, celebrities, sports legends – wealthy and respected black elites all, and yet they cling to the ideological insistence, utterly divorced from reality, that America is uniquely in world history bigoted toward blacks and denies them the opportunities freely granted to all white people – opportunities they themselves took advantage of to rise to fame and fortune. And now they use their prominent platforms to perpetuate the lie that white America actively oppresses “people of color.”
I was a guest on a local Los Angeles morning TV program a few years ago to debate the notion that America is systemically racist, and the first question I was asked was, “Does racism exist in America?” “Of course,” I replied, but “on all sides” – meaning that non-whites can be racist too. Racism, like murder, poverty, and other ills we would love to eradicate, will always be with us – people of all colors – because humans are broken, fallen beings.
The question should not be Does racism exist in America? but Is America systemically racist? Is racism in our DNA? Does America hate black people? Are we a white supremacist nation? The answer to all these is a resounding no, and the most privileged black beneficiaries of American opportunity, freedom, and equality must stop flogging a lie that fosters a victim mentality in their fellow blacks and that stokes in them a bitter, racist resentment.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior