“Anti-Racism” = Leftism's Racism

Bari Weiss                        Batya Ungar-Sargon

The founding documents were .   .   . “magnificent,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, because they were “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” In other words: The founders themselves planted the seeds of slavery’s destruction. And our second founding fathers—abolitionists like Frederick Douglass—made it so. America would never be perfect, but we could always strive toward building a more perfect union.

No longer. American liberalism is under siege.

— Bari Weiss, Tablet 

Bari Weiss resigned in protest last July from the New York Times. You can read her resignation letter, which in part states, “intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times.” To me, Weiss is a hero.

Batya Ungar-Sargon on Twitter praised Weiss’ letter. The two share their Jewish heritage and histories with Jewish publications, as well as their concern about leftist racism.

Ungar-Sargon presents here her insights into affluent white racism. She, for example, describes “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” training sessions. They shift from values they purport to support—equality before the law; the consent of the governed; democracy itself— to the opposite, ranking people by one’s unalterable race. The sessions place anyone who disagrees—especially millions of working-class Americans of all ethnicities—outside acceptable society.

The progressive social-justice movement is anything but “just.” “Anti-racism” ends up racism. Ungar-Sargon, who earned a Ph.D. from Berkeley, asks, “What equal society silences people because of the group they belong to? Wasn’t the point to get away from classing people by group, by race, by ethnicity?”

Where Marx’s class struggle pits a powerless proletariat against the all-powerful bourgeoise, critical race theorists place white people and people of color into two separate camps, with one side having all the power and the other none. Marxists used “False Consciousness” to explain away why the working class cared more about living lives that resembled the bourgeoisie who lorded over them than they did about joining any “revolution".

Postmodern leftists similarly labor to explain that today’s culture is only a way for one group to oppress another. To them, the Constitution didn’t build the U.S. on principles of equality that we then failed to honor. No. In their eyes, the Constitution denied rights to those deemed ineligible, it justified slavery, and it continues to target non-whites.

As Marxists feared the proletariat becoming bourgeoisie, so do postmodernists feel threatened by “equality of opportunity.” They worry about a common humanity that treats everyone equal before the law. The progressive left does not believe equality is possible. They seek to differentiate people solely by how much power they have, and then they favor the oppressed. 

Ungar-Sargon explains:

Since they recognize only power, every progressive proposal is designed not to create a more equal society, but to transfer power from oppressors to oppressed—while allowing those designated as victims to maintain claim to the status of oppressed. This is why race is so important: Race is immutable, so it doesn’t matter how much real power a person of color wields; their race means they will never be anything but oppressed. [emphasis added]

Progressive elites don’t really want a more equal society. They enjoy today’s imperfect meritocracy—the rule of the smart, the talented and the rich, while believing the fiction they earned their status. Progressives see themselves as compassionate. They now identify with the meritocratic system’s permanently oppressed. They now are “good” without having to disrupt the life they love.

They have successfully vested “whiteness” with the moral panic linked to race. It is an immutable characteristic one can do nothing to change. “Anti-racism” is the elite’s “luxury belief” the burden of which falls almost entirely on whites below (see earlier blog).

If it distresses you to see how close progressives — aided by their media handmaidens — are to making our racial divisions permanent by “cancelling” those fighting for the racial equality that defines American history, then please consider joining the Bari Weiss-supported Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). Join here. It costs nothing.