As the page in the calendar turns, we see ourselves in a new year. We understand that despite the new year, we still carry over old problems, but somehow, as January begins, we believe we have an opportunity for a new start, a new direction. It can be a time for optimism, self-reflection, and for resolutions as we move to change our lives for the better.
As Barak Obama would say when he was trying to sell us on something, “This is who we are as Americans,” and although many may not have agreed with his conclusions, it is a worthwhile exercise to contemplate every now and then who we are as Americans.
Due to our pioneer history, we have historically viewed ourselves as rugged individualists; a people who had nothing; left behind family and friends in order to build a new lives that were better for themselves and their communities.
In the post-civil war era, Horatio Alger grabbed the imagination of the American people by celebrating our unique American culture by portraying poor boys who through their own hard work, determination, honesty, courage, and frugality brought themselves out of poverty to enjoy a middle-class life.
America was the land of opportunity along with the freedom to exercise it. As a nation of immigrants, the American vision was not limited to the native born or certain ethnic groups but open to all who were willing to work hard, take risks and bet on themselves for their success.
Slavery was an aberration to the American culture of individualism and reward based on hard work. While slavery was not banned at the Constitutional convention, it began to be limited shortly thereafter in 1808 by Congress which prohibited the importation of slaves. The years following were to limit slavery’s expansion waiting for what most believed would be a natural economic and moral collapse of the slave institution. When that didn’t occur, a bloody war was fought which cost 620,000 American lives to what can be argued as a war for freedom for the slave class which extended the American principle of opportunity to all.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
As we moved from slavery to the civil rights movement, American society concluded that what was best and right for the country was to provide a legal opportunity for all regardless of their race, gender, ethnic origin, or religion. No one was guaranteed success or fulfillment, but the dream was that all were guaranteed a legal right to equal treatment under the law regardless of racial or ethnic status. The highlight of the civil rights movement culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This law was not a coercive measure against a recalcitrant majority, but the reflection of a consensus of Americans that discrimination on the basis of a number of protected categories was wrong. Discrimination artificially inhibited freedom and excellence and therefore progress of groups of people who had been marginalized in the past. Although not perfect, America was still the best place in the world for freedom and opportunity for those who wanted it.
Martin Luther King symbolized the aspiration of the consensus of our society when he said in his “I Have a Dream” speech that he longed for the day when people were evaluated on the content of their character, not the color of their skin. This returned to the values of America articulated by Horatio Alger of hard work, determination, honesty, courage, and frugality.
A Step Back Toward Racism: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
We have come a long way since King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, but it has not always been positive. After such a long effort to change American culture to recognize that consideration of race was not a valid qualification for anything and therefore wrong, the strict uncompromising principle of color blindness as articulated by Dr. King, accepted by America, and enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was rejected in 1978 in the Supreme Court case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
UC Davis had set aside a quota of 16 slots in its medical class reserved exclusively for racial minorities. While the Court held that it was a violation of Title VI of the Civil rights Act to establish racial quotas, Supreme Court Justice Powell went beyond what was required to decide the case and suggested that a consideration of race for admission “could” be legal if the school could show there was an educational benefit of taking racist action in order to have a diverse student body. Since the court had already ruled that Bakke had been discriminated against by the use of quotas, and his admission to medical school was ordered, UC Davis was not put to the test to articulate how having students of different skin colors would make someone a better doctor.
Supporting the decision that would allow institutions not to be strictly color blind, Supreme Court Justice Blackman actually stated in his concurring opinion, “In order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.” With this intellectual nonsense, the acquisition of governmental benefits, jobs and advantages moved from merit to race. The societal consensus that racism was bad had changed from an “absolute” to “it depends”, and affirmative action was born.
Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court sanctioned the practice of setting aside a certain percentage of governmental contracts to be awarded solely to black and women owned businesses without regard to merit, price or quality of the preferred contractors compared to non-minority business entities.
Race and gender considerations were now an established alternate path to societal benefits and personal success other than hard work, persistence, and merit. Personal goals could be satisfied if one could only place oneself on the lists of groups of approved victims experiencing societal wrongs.
Identity Politics and Victimization Take Hold
The age of modern identity politics had begun, and the movement exploded. In political campaigns, the presumption was that as a racist society, minority and other protected group candidates could not achieve electoral success. However, the professionals knew that this was not the case. We only need to look at the campaign of Barak Obama. A mixed-race man with no particular record of accomplishments, Obama chose to run as a black man rather than white or mixed race. The presumption of identity politics was that Obama would receive more votes because he identified as black than he would lose as a result of presumed latent American racism. That presumption was correct, and Obama became the 44th President of the United States. Others who ran began “playing the race card” highlighting their affiliations to purported disadvantaged groups. Women, gays, Hispanics, and blacks all touted their racial and gender credentials over any job-related qualities such as experience, leadership, or ability to draft or understand legislation in order to get elected.
The campaign shifted from having the best person qualified to represent the interests of their constituencies to a blatant appeal to race/sex/sexual orientation; to have the 1st woman this and the 1st openly gay person that or the 1st transgender or the 1st bisexual US Senator, (See Sen Kristen Sinema D-AZ) abandoning color blind principles as if belonging to a victim group was a qualification for political positions.
At the same time, the awarding of societal benefits to people in purported victim groups exploded. Instead of rewarding those who were best at accomplishing the tasks and requirements of positions or responsibilities placed before them, the focus became awarding those solely because they were members of victim classes under the guise of “diversity” not only for those groups identified in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but also new classes of victims including the aged, the disabled, the transgender community, gays, lesbians, those who are married and those who are not, the pregnant, and all the groups represented in the LGBTQIA2S+ coalition. To these, we now add the unhoused, drug addicts, the mentally ill, opioid users, the children of single mothers and alcoholics, and others who have had a “hard” childhood and those who claim to have been bullied in the 7th grade.
With the rise of success in creating victim classes, there has developed a powerful Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) industry whose employment, funding, and personal self-esteem is entangled in the victim grievance industry. The industry is comprised of academics, executives, consultants, lawyers, trainers, authors, and nonprofits whose very existence rests on the continued victimhood of the American people. This industry has been given huge amounts of funding and employment opportunities with governmental, educational, and corporate entities to examine any decision for perceived equity/diversity implications.
Who, as Americans, have we become?
Are we still the land of the free and the home of the brave, the land of opportunity which values traits of hard work, determination, honesty, courage, and frugality, or have we become a nation of victims dependent on the whims of government officials for affirmation and accomplishment of our economic and personal goals? Have we lost so many of our institutions to wokeism that it is too late to change course? I don’t know.
Our country and its people are in a place that we could never have imagined where we now have to defend the concept of work, merit, and personal responsibility over alleged grievance and victimhood. DEI and its resultant racist and sexist tenets are woven deep into our educational, governmental, and economic institutions like a cancer.
I am encouraged that despite the gains of powerful DEI forces implementing sweeping equity initiatives that good people are fighting back. In nine states, (California, Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Idaho) the people or their legislatures have banned race based affirmative action. Citizens are rising up against school boards teaching Critical Race Theory and opposing the concept that gender is a matter of whim. After struggling for 45 years after Bakke to justify a race conscious system of awarding limited educational positions, the Supreme Court is poised in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina to overturn racist decision making for the awarding of limited college and law school positions reimposing the dream of Martin Luther King for a colorblind society.
While racists (in addition to racist DEI adherents) still exist, I believe that there remains an overwhelming consensus in the general populace that supports a non-racist color-blind society.
What are we going to do about it?
Well, we could do what we have been doing, which is nothing, but there continues to be a rising tension in the country that will require resolution.
The racism arising from DEI appears to be supported primarily by academic, governmental, and leftist elitists. We cannot expect the DEI or Critical Race Theory racists to change their minds to accommodate a color-blind merit-based society. So, what may need to happen is to reform the institutions that DEI zealots inhabit. The primary and secondary educational schools are crying for reform, not just to eliminate teaching CRT but for failing to accomplish their basic mission to teach our children how to read and write. Reading scores are down. Math scores are down. Teachers’ unions are allowed to take actions contrary to the best interests of their customers, the children, and their parents. If education was not a governmental monopoly, it would have collapsed a long time ago. Perhaps now is the time to enhance the private charter school and home school movements and allocate tax dollars generated for public schools to follow the student rather than the public school. There is nothing that says that schools have to be run by the government.
Universities are similarly in decline. They are simply too expensive for the value that they are providing. Parents can no longer pay exorbitant tuitions to have their children indoctrinated down the path of victimization.
There are too many colleges with too few students who are paying too much money. Colleges will close and those that do remain will have to compete and go through an economic retrenchment in order to survive. The unessential and woke “studies industries”, women’s studies, ethnic studies, black studies etc. will continue to be cut as students learn that unless they get top jobs in the grievance industry, their degrees and education will be worthless.
In government, the solution will have to be a political one starting at the ballot box and implemented through the budget process. As COVID spending ends and recession ensues, and money for these woke programs dry up, hopefully government will be required to make hard choices on where to allocate its funds. The DEI grievance industry would be an easy first place to cut when its principles are exposed as being racist and resulting in lifelong victimhood for those who it purportedly is designed to help.
Teaching Americans to be perpetual victims is ultimately demotivating, depressing, and self-destructive to a country. We teach our children skills as babies so that they can gain competence, first to walk, then to speak and ultimately throughout their childhood to exist and thrive in a potentially hostile and competitive world. With achievement comes competence, confidence, pride and ultimately the ability to take care of yourself, your family, and your nation. Achievement comes only from hard work and persistence, not from victimhood and grievance. While some may feel that they are acting compassionately fostering victimhood for those who they view as less competent or inferior to themselves, it is in fact a curse… A curse of dependence in the short run and worse, a generational and national curse.
We are at a tipping point. Who are we as Americans? We shall find out.
Dave, Excellent work - on what is for many a "radioactive" topic. Steve Randall sent me to the Kerb appeal - and of course my wife Lynn was friends with your wife Sheila (church bible study) when we lived in Colorado.
Blessings on your work and greetings from Georgetown, TX.
Alan Miller