Racial Privilege

A recent Rasmussen poll found that one-in-three Democrats actually believe it’s racism any time a white politician criticizes a politician of color. This is both stunning and depressing.

To be sure, this is not as high as the percentage of Democrats (51%) who believed George W. Bush was somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Towers, but it does reflect the same curious deficiency in common sense.

Commenting on the Rasmussen poll, Matt Margolis at PJ Media writes:

Let’s put this another way: A third of Democrats believe that minority politicians should be immune from criticism by white politicians. Their policies can’t be challenged without there being an inherent racist motive. This is what a third of Democrats actually believe.

If you’re a white politician and oppose raising taxes, you can debate higher taxes with another white politician, but if you have the same debate with a minority politician, you’re racist.

Just so. The term "racist" has been used so promiscuously by folks on the left that it no longer carries the opprobrium it once did. If it's racist for white politicians to criticize the words and policies of minority politicians then the concept of racism has been debased to the point of being little more than a joke.

Moreover, we're evidently abandoning the ideal of racial equality, an ideal that has been tacitly rendered obsolete, at least in the minds of a third of Democrats. After all, if minority politicians have to be protected from criticism by granting them some sort of race-based privilege or immunity then the implication is that they're not really mature, intelligent adults, but are rather like children with such fragile self-esteem that they must not be held responsible by members of another race for anything they say or do, no matter how silly.

It's fatuous nonsense, of course, but that's the world the intersectional left is creating for the rest of us to live in. In that world skin color is a totem to be venerated, an idol to be worshipped.

If we want to realize the dream of those who fought and died for the cause of racial equality in this country we need to reject any notion that anyone of any color is immune to criticism, and reaffirm the idea that all men and women of whatever race or ethnicity should be held to the same standards of reason, logic, behavior and treatment from others.

Otherwise, we will continue to generate ever increasing resentments among ever more isolated racial groups in this nation, but then that may be precisely what some on the left (and right) would very much like to see happen.