ACCORDING to John McWhorter, an associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University and author of Woke Racism, calling people ‘racist’ in contemporary America ‘is practically equivalent to calling them a paedophile’.
While Professor McWhorter, who happens to be black, might be accused of exaggeration, he is only exaggerating a bit. I know teachers, cops, employees of large corporations, who live in fear of being labelled racist. I am acquainted with educators and school administrators who are afraid to discipline disruptive black males in their classrooms for fear of being called racist, an accusation that sticks to you like flypaper and is almost impossible to remove. Once accused, regardless of guilt, the stigma remains in perpetuity.
Of course, those who suffer the most from this – that is, apart from the majority of pupils who aren’t disruptive in class but whose learning is hindered by the bad behaviour of a small minority – are the young black men themselves, deprived of proper discipline in their often-fatherless homes and in the classroom. If the much-discussed ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ exists, it is because those who end up in it are deprived of the discipline that all young people, especially young men and regardless of race, need at a time when it counts most.
Despite what the race hustlers are saying (and America possesses a glut of such individuals), this has little or nothing to do with race. Surely, honourable men and women, irrespective of political affiliation or racial background, can agree that families function best when there are a mother and father in the home.
When I was teaching in high schools and had an issue with a student, I would check the school directory that listed their parents’ emails, telephone numbers, and, most tellingly, their street addresses. Almost every time, I learned that the father did not reside at the same address as the mother and the student who was causing me grief. I found this to be true regardless of race. I taught mostly at private Catholic high schools. I shudder to think what it’s like in public schools. No wonder young teachers are leaving the profession in ever-growing numbers. Fatherless homes are an increasing problem in the United States, affecting all races and ethnicities, but harming working-class black families disproportionately.
It’s not only educators who live in fear of being accused of racism because they are doing their jobs conscientiously. Many white police officers feel the same when interacting with people of colour. Accusations of racism can end officers’ careers and destroy their lives.
Two such cases in recent years stand out, the first being the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. A white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot Brown six times as 6ft 4in Brown, who had just robbed a convenience store and was reportedly walking in the middle of the street with a friend blocking traffic, wrestled with Wilson in an attempt to obtain the officer’s gun. Clearly, Wilson feared for his life.
After a brief candlelight vigil the following evening, rioting and looting began, intensifying as the days progressed and quickly spreading to other parts of the United States. Among other consequences, the violence catapulted Black Lives Matter, an organisation founded by self-proclaimed ‘trained Marxists’ and dedicated, among other things, to the disruption of ‘the Western-prescribed nuclear family’, on to the world stage. America has never been the same since.
Despite the fact that two racially mixed grand juries refused to indict Officer Wilson, and that there was not a shred of evidence to indicate racial animosity on Wilson’s part, the death of Michael Brown quickly became about race, and virtually nothing else, attracting attention from Barack Obama’s White House.
Within days, US Attorney General Eric Holder flew to Saint Louis to meet Brown’s family, and Brown’s funeral was attended by a long list of celebrities including Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, director Spike Lee, rapper Snoop Dogg, music mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and comedian Nick Cannon; three representatives of the Obama White House were present.
The racialisation of Brown’s death gave rise to the so-called Ferguson Effect, the belief that police officers throughout America, fearing accusations of racism, are being less proactive in their interactions with people of colour, resulting in increases in violent crime. Ironically, due to geography and much higher rates of violent crime among blacks and Hispanics, this affects people of colour more than other demographics because their victims are invariably black or Hispanic.
And then, as practically everyone on Planet Earth knows by now, came the death of George Floyd while being apprehended by police in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. The riots that followed resulted in 42 deaths and $42billion in property damage, and in retrospect this can be seen as a world-changing historical event. Yet, again, Floyd’s death was not racially motivated, and even the far-left Attorney General of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, declined to charge the police officer eventually convicted of killing Floyd with racial animus.
That officer, Derek Chauvin, now languishes in a federal prison, fearing for his life – white cops charged with killing black men are under a constant threat of violence – having been sentenced to 22 and a half years, despite the fact that many who have studied the case believe that Floyd died of fentanyl poisoning and an enlarged heart, not as a result of Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s shoulder, a restraint technique taught to all recruits of the Minneapolis Police Department, including Chauvin. Still, never let an opportunity to fan the flames of racial division go to waste, regardless of the facts on the ground and the lives you ruin.
At a time when many indicators suggest that anti-black racism among whites is at an all-time low – lest we forget, Barack Obama was elected president twice, gaining the votes of many white people, and polls show that huge majorities favour interracial marriage – accusations of systemic and institutional racism are seldom far from the public eye.
Having lived in America since 1983, I would be so bold, based on countless interactions with Americans of all social classes and racial and ethnic groups, to say that anti-black racism is now so rare that one can experience life here without ever being aware of it.
To be sure, I speak as a white man, a person of pallor as a black friend calls me, and thus a bearer of the Original Sin associated with the unforgiving religion known as Anti-Racism. But I can say without equivocation that race relations have never been better. They will become even better still when we stop weaponising the words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ and use them only where applicable. ‘Racism is not dead,’ said the great Thomas Sowell, a black man who grew up in the Jim Crow South, ‘but it is on life support, kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as racists.’
