The Patriot Post® · Yesteryear's Anti-Racism Is Today's 'Racism'

In these increasingly upside-down times, one of the most profound examples testifying to our altered reality is the popular redefinition of racism. While racism is still considered by the vast majority of America as evil, the leftist-driven understanding of what constitutes racism is fast becoming the exact opposite.

Those who battled for civil rights by and large were fighting for equality in society under the law. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously espoused in his “Dream” speech, he was pushing for a colorblind society where individuals are not judged by “the color of their skin, but the content of their character.” In today’s world, King would be branded a racist for failing to see color.

In fact, today’s leftist “anti-racists” share more in common with George Wallace and his views on race than they do King. Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader insightfully notes, “America’s colleges, media, and cultural institutions are being swept by the ideology of ‘anti-racism.’ It openly advocates racial discrimination against white people, and promotes bigoted, lower expectations for black people.”

Bader further points out, “Being an ‘anti-racist’ means advocating discrimination to transform society. The bible of ‘anti-racism’ is ‘How to Be an Antiracist,’ by Boston University’s Ibram X. Kendi. The ‘key concept’ from How to Be an Antiracist is that to remedy the underrepresentation of minority groups, you need to engage in discrimination in the opposite direction — i.e., discriminate against whites.”

Power Line’s John Hinderaker astutely observes, “The bottom line … is that today’s liberalism is profoundly racist. It assumes that blacks are inherently unable to compete on a level playing field, and therefore the level playing field — meritocracy — must be done away with. This is contrary to every American precept of equal opportunity, and it is also utterly false as an empirical matter. In my lifetime, at least, we have not seen an overtly racist movement that can begin to rival contemporary liberalism.”

The sad irony is that, far from working to eliminate racism, today’s “social justice” radicals are actually stoking the fires of genuine racism.