The Patriot Post® · 'Antiracism' and the New Segregation

“I rob banks because that’s where the money is,” said bank robber Willie Sutton. Or maybe he didn’t say it. But if not, he should have.

Ibram X. Kendi might not rob banks, but he certainly knows where the money is. It’s in elite schools and on college campuses, and in woke corporate boardrooms, and across government at all levels — which is why his writings and teachings on the racist dogma known as antiracism are so popular in those places. “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination,” says Kendi. “The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” And it’s racist language like this that’s made him a rich man.

One wonders whether all these enlightened folks know what they’re getting for their investment, because it isn’t racial harmony. Indeed, it’s the opposite. By telling one group of people that they’re privileged and another group that they’re disadvantaged as a result, antiracism attempts to instill both guilt and resentment, and it stokes a desire for each to avoid the other.

As Christopher Caldwell writes in National Review:

The most troubling innovation of equity is its tendency to move in a direction that will, in time, reintroduce segregationist thinking. Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth announced in March that she would vote to block the confirmation of all white nominees (except for gays) until the president nominated more Asians. Boston mayor Kim Janey is experimenting with an approach that combines the zip-code hierarchies of Muriel Bowser’s Washington and the race-based benefits of London Breed’s San Francisco, offering free public-transport and bike-share passes to 1,000 residents of minority neighborhoods, including Nubian (formerly Dudley) Square and Jamaica Plain. The Uber Eats app allows diners to order from “black-owned businesses.”

Even last week, Chicago’s racist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, decreed that she’d only give one-on-one interviews to journalists of color.

By insisting on equity — by demanding equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity — Kendi and his acolytes are breeding bitterness. And they’re stoking this bitterness, at least among the “guilty” group, by forcing them to undergo training in the workplace and by indoctrinating their young children in the classroom.

The heavy-handedness of this approach reminds us of a famous quote — and not a pleasant one: “I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

That was Alabama Governor George Wallace, and the year was 1963. And if those who wish to tear our country apart are seeking a means by which to do it, they’ve found a powerful tool in the doctrine of antiracism.