Race Baiters Are Trying To Divide Us

Americans are barraged with messaging from left-wing politicians and their supportive media informing us we are a fundamentally racist nation, frozen in amber from our slaveholding past, and denying it only proves how racist we are.

But the fact case is against these purveyors of resentment. Yes, racism exists, duh – but America is the least racist nation on earth. To label us unregenerate bigots is a slur purposed to divide us by skin color.

First, America in this century has elected to its highest offices two members of racial minorities, if anything aided, not hindered, by their race. Hundreds of other blacks hold elected positions, cabinet posts, and positions of influence.

Moreover, this nation of supposed bigots boasts the largest legal immigrant population in the world, with 40 million citizens born outside the country, quadruple the immigrant population in 1965. America is the world’s greatest magnet for immigrants, who seek freedom and fairness.

Black Americans, both native-born and immigrant, have also benefited from the promise of liberty and equality. It is true they have not obtained the financial and social success of some other groups. But know that family breakdown and substandard education have caused more harm than racial animus ever could.

The linchpin of systemic racism allegations is the charge that blacks are regularly gunned down by rogue cops. Again, facts intrude.

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report last year, policemen made 10 million arrests which resulted in 1004 fatalities, 41 unarmed, nine of those black. The same year 89 police officers and about 10,000 black citizens were murdered.

Yet the left continues to attack normal Americans as racists. When usual indices of racism i.e., actual mistreatment of minorities, failed to materialize, the definition of racism was expanded to include believing in the goal of color blindness.

When “racism“ lost its bite due to overuse, “white supremacy” became the all-purpose insult. Whiteness is composed of such subversive notions as “merit“, “family“, “rationality“, “getting the answer right“ and “capitalism”.

This racialized environment was the background in which the recent Virginia election took place. When Terry McAuliffe lost, predictably out came the race card.

“He’s run a racist campaign from start to finish“ it was said of Glenn Youngkin. It was asserted that Republicans decided “tap dancing with white supremacy is their way back to power“, Youngkin made “racial appeals to working-class white voters“ and “this country simply loves white supremacy“.

These claims not only lacked evidence but were laughable because Youngkin’s successful running mate for lieutenant governor was Winsome Sears, a black woman of Jamaican descent and his attorney-general was Cuban-American. Sears spoke movingly of her experience as an immigrant, later a Marine, and an American living the Dream.

Evidence of Youngkin’s racism was based largely on his opposition to Critical Race Theory in the public schools and his support of parents who were threatened for opposing it. CRT is the thoroughly un-American notion that character is determined by skin color. Whites are inherently racist as is the country they founded, while blacks are incapable of racism by nature.

The racial haters defending CRT first defended it as necessary, then denied it was being taught. By the time of the election, analysts were insisting that CRT “isn’t real“ and is “code for white parents don’t like the idea of teaching about race“.

Again, they have a problem with their facts. There is a torrent of published information showing state and local education officials supporting CRT and schools surreptitiously teaching it. Under Governor Terry McAuliffe, the Virginia Department of Education declared that “teachers should embrace Critical Race Theory“ in order to “re-engineer attitudes and beliefs systems“.

The relentless lies and deceit about race are a political strategy of the Left, which has determined the future of the Democrat party lies in racially dividing the nation while posing as the champion of the growing minority groups.

Martin Luther King‘s dream was of a nation where we would judge each other by the “content of our character“ not skin color, where race wouldn’t really much matter. Whether his vision or its opposite prevails will determine the future character of America itself.

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Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute