Larry Elder is a white supremacist? America in 2021 is a deeply racist country? You’re denials of your own racism are just more evidence of your racism? You may think these statements are incoherent, but you’d be wrong. What many don’t realize is that racism has been redefined amongst the intelligentsia of the social justice class. You are still thinking of racism 1.0 when they are referring to racism 2.0.
Racism 1.0 : Personal animosity/bigotry toward a particular racial group in attitudes or behavior.
Racism 2.0 : Any system, actions or people that support any system that results in a racial disparity. (Also called systemic or structural racism)
These are wildly different definitions. So when you hear the word racist just remember you likely are hearing about racism 2.0. Under racism 2.0, Larry Elder would clearly be able to be labelled a white supremacist because he upholds systems that currently produce disparate results between blacks and whites. In other words he upholds a “white system” (a system created by whites that results in better outcomes for whites). America does not have racial “equity” (meaning equality of results between racial groups). Therefore, America can and should be deemed a deeply racist 2.0 country. In addition, if a system was built by white men and still perpetuates inequities where white men end up at the top, then one should clearly see the moral imperative to fight these injustices.
So whats the problem?
The first problem you find, if you examine these assumptions critically, is that this logic would lead us to absurd conclusions if we were consistent. You will notice that this logic is never applied to systems in which whites or men suffer disproportionate negative outcomes. For instance, by this flawed assumption about disparities we would have to assume that there is massive systemic sexism in policing because men make up almost 10X more of the prison population than women. We would also have to assume massive racism in the NBA as people of color dominate the sport. However, we know that’s nonsense because we understand that men are in jail more than women for reasons other than sexism and people of color excel in the NBA for reasons other than racism. So why do racial disparities exist? If we are all equal why don’t black people and white people have the same outcomes, isn’t the only difference skin color? No… not even close. Not at all.
“Any serious study of racial and ethnic groups, whether in a given society or in a wide variety of societies in countries around the world, repeatedly encounters the inescapable fact of large and numerous disparities among these groups, whether in income, education, crime rates, IQs or many other things. These differences cannot be dismissed as mere “perceptions” or “stereotypes,” nor can they be automatically attributed to some one given cause, such as genetics, as was often the primary cause cited in the early twentieth century, or to maltreatment by others, as was equally often cited in the late twentieth century.
The sources of these disparities are numerous and complex, and they must be confronted in their complexity, if we are seeking the truth, rather than trying to promote a vision or an agenda.
A example of the kind of simple demographic fact that is often overlooked by those who automatically equate statistical disparities in outcomes with Discrimination is that different ethnic groups have very different median ages. Japanese Americans, for example, have a median age more than two decades older than the median age of Mexican Americans... A group with a median age in their twenties will obviously not have nearly as large a proportion of their population with 20 years of work experience as a group whose median age is in their forties. One group may therefore have a disproportionate number of people in high level occupations requiring long years of experience, while the other group may be similarly over-represented in entry-level jobs, in sports or in violent crimes, which are all activities disproportionately engaged in by the young.
Patterns of very skewed distributions of success have long been common in the real world...Yet that flawed perception of probabilities—and the failure of the real world to match expectations derived from that flawed perception—can drive ideological movements, political crusades and judicial decisions, up to and including decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States, where “disparate impact” statistics, showing different outcomes for different groups, have been enough to create a presumption of discrimination...no burden of proof whatever is required for the presumption that disparate outcomes at a given institution constitute prima facie evidence of discrimination at that institution...
— Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell
So while we are absolutely equal in worth and dignity as human beings, on average different groups are different in all sorts of ways that make disparity WHAT WE SHOULD EXPECT. In other words the question is not if there is disparity, the question is how much disparity should we expect given the difference between two groups. For example, how much of an income disparity should we expect between blacks and whites given that 70% of black households are single parent households? Any analysis that does not account for significant factors like this is simply incomplete.
Why use the word racist at all?
Now this is not to say that racism 1.0 can't be the cause of a disparity. It may be, or it may not be. However, if a system results in a disparate outcome between racial groups, but has no racism 1.0 present, why use the word "racist"at all? It should be pretty clear. Activists use the term “racism” because racism 1.0 is the ultimate sin in modern culture. In the culture war it’s a form of linguistic judo. By conflating terms, you put your opponent on the same side as the modern satan- Adolf Hitler. Language is a critical component of shaping culture. The ability to label racist any system or person resisting your attempts to change society is a very convenient club to carry around.
So no, the people on TV saying Larry Elder and Candice Owens are white supremacists are not crazy, they simply are engaging in "newspeak" in order to push their narrative and agenda through linguistic manipulation and shame. Let's hope our fellow citizens can see through the lies.
