“To be white is to be racist, period.” This statement was made by a high-school teacher to his class in Norman, Oklahoma. The statement was recorded by a student when she became offended by what her teacher was saying. The teacher continued, “Am I racist? And I say ‘yeah.’ I don’t want to be. It’s not like I choose to be racist, but do I do things because of the way I was raised?” The student’s parents confronted the school over the issue, and the school responded by saying that the topic of racism is an important issue, though conceding, “We regret that the discussion was poorly handled.” The Norman Public Schools superintendent pledged to immediately address the issue, saying that members of the school board “are committed to ensuring inclusiveness in our schools.”

To conflate social standing and past injustices with ethnicity is racist. The Left’s demand that Americans accept their Marxian view of equality — that societal injustice is inherently tied to ethnicity — is the same argument used by the eugenicists of the 1930s. Those who venture down this road can then be easily persuaded to accept the conclusion that for the sake of social justice there are certain ethnic groups of people — white, conservative Americans in this instance — who for the good of society need to be at best suppressed and at worst eliminated. Teaching children to view everything through the lens of race will only lead to more mistrust, division and conflict rather than greater unity. What has always united Americans has been those shared values espoused in our Constitution. The Left’s utter obsession with race can only divide us.