Identity Politics Are Anti-American
Why "people of color" is a racist term.
December 16, 2016
David Horowitz
I spoke on this campus in 2001, when I was conducting a campaign against reparations for slavery because the reparations were going to be paid by people who had never owned slaves to people who had never been slaves. Reparations was just a left-wing scheme to isolate black Americans and divide the country. A little over a thousand students were in attendance. Because of protests organized by the Black Students Union and a radical organization called By Any Means Necessary, the university assigned 12 policemen with German shepherds to keep the peace. Three university vice presidents sat in the balcony, but not one of them approached me or attempted to speak to me. When the event was over not a single student or student organization responsible for the threat of violence was reprimanded or put on probation.
Barack Obama said recently that racism is in the DNA of America, and is passed on through the generations. This statement, which is false, is probably the greatest libel ever uttered by an American President against his own country. Here's the reality: Slavery existed in Africa for a thousand years before anybody deemed it immoral. It existed at one time or another in all countries for over 3,000 years. During all those years, nobody ever said that slavery was immoral, not Moses, not Jesus, not Aristotle. Not until Protestant white males -- William Wilberforce prominent among them – did so at the end of the 18th Century. In America, a slave-owner named Thomas Jefferson wrote into the birth certificate of a new nation the proposition that all men are equal in the eyes of God, that they have rights that are God-given, which include liberty and equality, that cannot be taken away by government. Within a little over a generation, at the cost 350,000 Union lives, slavery was abolished in America and then throughout the Western hemisphere.
Every black person in this country owes their freedom to America. The DNA of America is liberty. And why is that? Because America’s Constitution recognizes individual rights as primary, over-riding collective identities based on race, color or creed. It doesn't matter whether you are black or yellow, or brown, Protestant, Catholic or Jew, you are endowed by the Creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s the American way.
Identity politics are the anti-American way, erasing the individual in favor of the collective. They are designed to imprison individuals in their birth status, as in the hierarchical societies of the past, and Communist societies of modern times. Here is an official rationale, from a Cheka official of the time of Lenin, for the disposal of 30 million human souls: “We are not carrying out war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. We are not looking for evidence or witnesses to reveal deeds or words against the Soviet power. The first question we ask is – to what class does he belong, what are his origins, upbringing, education or profession? These questions define the fate of the accused. This is the essence of the Red Terror.”
...
You hear leftists say that America is a white supremacist nation. People who say this belong in mental institutions. The Democratic Party in its official 2016 platform claims that there is “systemic racism” in America that has to be rooted out. What in the world is wrong with them? In part, it is their inability to understand statistics. According to the left, since blacks are only 13 percent of the population but 37 percent of the prison population, there’s systemic racism putting them there. But that's not the way to read statistics. The baseline measure is not blacks’ percentage in the population but the percentage of blacks involved in criminal activities. While it’s true that blacks are only 13 percent of the population, they commit 40 percent of the violent crimes, and fifty percent of the homicides. So the fact that they make up the 37% of the prison population should be no surprise, nor cause to supposed discrimination is responsible for their incarceration.
The genius of America lies in the fact that our Constitution enjoins us to judge people as individuals, on their merits. We don’t judge them by their race (unless we are leftists), and we don't judge them by their gender. The American idea that we try to live up to is that everybody is equal before the law. Everybody deserves to be judged by who they are and what they have done, not by their skin color or gender. That is the idea that divides our country as we move into the Trump era. It is the idea on which this country will stand or fall depending on which side in this battle prevails.
Identity Politics Are Anti-American
Why "people of color" is a racist term.
December 16, 2016
David Horowitz
I spoke on this campus in 2001, when I was conducting a campaign against reparations for slavery because the reparations were going to be paid by people who had never owned slaves to people who had never been slaves. Reparations was just a left-wing scheme to isolate black Americans and divide the country. A little over a thousand students were in attendance. Because of protests organized by the Black Students Union and a radical organization called By Any Means Necessary, the university assigned 12 policemen with German shepherds to keep the peace. Three university vice presidents sat in the balcony, but not one of them approached me or attempted to speak to me. When the event was over not a single student or student organization responsible for the threat of violence was reprimanded or put on probation.
Barack Obama said recently that racism is in the DNA of America, and is passed on through the generations. This statement, which is false, is probably the greatest libel ever uttered by an American President against his own country. Here's the reality: Slavery existed in Africa for a thousand years before anybody deemed it immoral. It existed at one time or another in all countries for over 3,000 years. During all those years, nobody ever said that slavery was immoral, not Moses, not Jesus, not Aristotle. Not until Protestant white males -- William Wilberforce prominent among them – did so at the end of the 18th Century. In America, a slave-owner named Thomas Jefferson wrote into the birth certificate of a new nation the proposition that all men are equal in the eyes of God, that they have rights that are God-given, which include liberty and equality, that cannot be taken away by government. Within a little over a generation, at the cost 350,000 Union lives, slavery was abolished in America and then throughout the Western hemisphere.
Every black person in this country owes their freedom to America. The DNA of America is liberty. And why is that? Because America’s Constitution recognizes individual rights as primary, over-riding collective identities based on race, color or creed. It doesn't matter whether you are black or yellow, or brown, Protestant, Catholic or Jew, you are endowed by the Creator with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That’s the American way.
Identity politics are the anti-American way, erasing the individual in favor of the collective. They are designed to imprison individuals in their birth status, as in the hierarchical societies of the past, and Communist societies of modern times. Here is an official rationale, from a Cheka official of the time of Lenin, for the disposal of 30 million human souls: “We are not carrying out war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. We are not looking for evidence or witnesses to reveal deeds or words against the Soviet power. The first question we ask is – to what class does he belong, what are his origins, upbringing, education or profession? These questions define the fate of the accused. This is the essence of the Red Terror.”
...
You hear leftists say that America is a white supremacist nation. People who say this belong in mental institutions. The Democratic Party in its official 2016 platform claims that there is “systemic racism” in America that has to be rooted out. What in the world is wrong with them? In part, it is their inability to understand statistics. According to the left, since blacks are only 13 percent of the population but 37 percent of the prison population, there’s systemic racism putting them there. But that's not the way to read statistics. The baseline measure is not blacks’ percentage in the population but the percentage of blacks involved in criminal activities. While it’s true that blacks are only 13 percent of the population, they commit 40 percent of the violent crimes, and fifty percent of the homicides. So the fact that they make up the 37% of the prison population should be no surprise, nor cause to supposed discrimination is responsible for their incarceration.
The genius of America lies in the fact that our Constitution enjoins us to judge people as individuals, on their merits. We don’t judge them by their race (unless we are leftists), and we don't judge them by their gender. The American idea that we try to live up to is that everybody is equal before the law. Everybody deserves to be judged by who they are and what they have done, not by their skin color or gender. That is the idea that divides our country as we move into the Trump era. It is the idea on which this country will stand or fall depending on which side in this battle prevails.
Identity Politics Are Anti-American
