My Woke Friends Are Right

Like you, probably, I have some woke acquaintances who like to remind me that the United States is racist both personally and structurally and who are incredulous that I'm skeptical of their claim.

After all, "everybody knows" that there are lots of racists out there, that, indeed, just being white makes one a racist and that, in any case, our institutions work to the disadvantage of minority groups, especially blacks, even if the people who work in those institutions don't intend to disadvantage anyone.

Unfortunately, though, the only evidence adduced to support these claims is some disparity or other which could as well be explained by a dozen other factors, but for my woke friends racism is the only factor they'll consider.

Anyway, I think I'm coming around to their point of view.

I did a post the other day in which I concluded that the minimum wage, which disproportionately harms minority workers, especially young black males, is ipso facto systemically racist, and today I read an article in the Wall Street Journal by William McGurn in which he offers a compelling argument that policies adopted by educational institutions dominated by progressives are clearly harming racial minorities.

McGurn writes,

The North Thurston Public Schools in Lacey, Wash., made headlines in November when their “equity report” classified Asian-Americans along with whites instead of as “students of color.” Apparently the Asian-Americans were doing too well academically to be students of color. After what the district said was “an overwhelming public response,” it admitted its “category choices” had “racist implications” and dropped the equity report from its website.

To normal Americans, it makes no sense. How are Asian-Americans not “people of color”? But give the North Thurston folks credit for following progressive logic to its conclusion. Modern progressive theory more or less divides the nation between the oppressors, defined as whites, and the oppressed, defined as everyone else. In this framework, achieving success puts you on the side of the oppressors and thus makes you white or “white-adjacent”—even if your family came from China or India.

Evidently the progressives who obsess over the fine points of racial distinctions fail to see that by defining achievement as white they provide a handy rationalization for the failures of those who don’t achieve. If I'm not white I can't succeed in this world so it's no wonder that I don't succeed. It's not my fault.

McGurn goes on to point out how this prejudice against Asians is a rerun of some of the most inglorious episodes in American history:

Bigoted laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 or actions such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II were once thought among the worst stains on American history left by anti-Asian racism. But these days the characterization of Asian-Americans as the “model minority” triggers the woke.

“Asian-Americans are caught in a bind—condemn the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be ‘banished’ from the victim group as white-adjacent,” says Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights. “The end goal here is to pit people against each other as if our hyphenated identities are bigger than our common destiny as Americans.”

The director is correct, of course. It has always been the goal of the left to divide this nation into factions in perpetual tension with each other. An America at peace and harmony is not the sort of soil in which one can easily grow a socialist revolution.

Asian-American achievement, McGurn asserts, is "an embarrassment to progressives because it undermines the claim that structural racism dooms nonwhite citizens to the margins of the American dream. So Asian-American achievement must either be dismissed as somehow white, or sacrificed at the altar of equity."

A good example of how progressives address their dilemma is found in the reaction to a report which found that public schools in America’s most progressive cities have been failing their black and Latino children for decades.

The solution in New York City under the aegis of progressive Mayor Bill deBlasio is to punish those who are succeeding:

In January America’s self-styled progressive in chief announced that New York will abolish the entrance exam for the city’s gifted-and-talented programs for young students. If you can’t fix the schools that are broken, you cut down to size the schools that are working.

In 2019 Mr. de Blasio’s School Diversity Advisory Group reported that though Asians are only 17% of New York’s kindergarten population, they account for 42% of the gifted-and-talented seats.

Plainly the mayor’s “success” requires reducing the number of Asian-Americans no matter how qualified they are. The mayor has also tried to abolish the entrance exam for the city’s high-performing high schools, where Asian-American students again are “overrepresented.”

This not only manifests systemic racism on the part of the educational institutions which are failing blacks and Hispanics, but it also demonstrates personal racism on the part of the mayor. After all, would he take such measures if the numbers for Asian students and black students were reversed?

McGurn goes on to give other examples of how progressive policies and institutions are punishing Asians, ostensibly for being successful, and it's worth taking the time to read his entire piece.

As he says, Asian-Americans are an embarrassment to progressives because their success gives the lie to the trope that America is inveterately racist against people of color. The irony is that in their embarrassment Progressives actually adopt the racist policies against Asians that they imagine are being employed by others against blacks. Their policies are also terribly harmful to blacks because they inculcate the ridiculous idea that academic success is a sign of white supremacy which puts it out of reach for all but the most exceptional black students who, it’s alleged, betray their race by “acting white.”

McGurn closes with this:

In the past, anti-Asian bigotry took the form of direct assaults. These reflected claims that Asian-Americans were inferior, incapable of assimilating or stealing jobs. But today many Asian-Americans are learning that the progressive form of discrimination may be the most insidious of all.

“What do progressives say to a Chinese-American or Indian-American when she realizes their ideology means her children will be held to higher standards to get into college simply because of their race?” asks Wai Wah Chin, charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.

“Should she really have to tell her children they must just accept that because of their race they will have to work harder to get the same opportunities as others—and accept this new racism as the price of a woke America?”

So yes, I’m coming to see that my woke friends are right, after all. There is indeed a lot of systemic racism in our progressive institutions and among our progressive friends. Unfortunately, they’re too blinded by their own self-righteousness to see it.