White Supremacism, Liberal-Style 

The affirmative-action debate has returned to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Bush administration, defying liberal demagogy, has weighed in against racial preferences. President Bush himself says the University of Michigan’s anti-white admissions policy is unconstitutional.

This comes as something of a surprise from a Republican Party that flinches easily at charges of racism, especially after the recent uproar over Trent Lott. Ever since that episode the Democrats have been screeching that Lott merely exposed the Republicans’ true feelings about race. But all the Republicans have really done has been to adhere to the color-blind principles the Democrats used to espouse, but have long since abandoned.

The Democrats have moved on — to white supremacism. Nearly four decades after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which the Democrats at the time swore would never be used to authorize racial privileges — especially quotas — for minorities, they have committed themselves to quotas for all eternity.

Yes, of course, these measures are “temporary.” But like so many “temporary” measures, they have no expiration date. No Democrat says they will be necessary for only a definite term — say, 10 or 20 more years. There is no clear criterion by which their success can be judged, so that we might say, one fine day, that they are no longer needed. By now it’s clear the Democrats intend to maintain them permanently.

Why don’t they come out and say it? They don’t believe blacks and Hispanics will ever achieve equality on their own in competition with whites, any more than a paraplegic will ever be able to discard his wheelchair. The Democrats thrive on racial inequality, especially while racial privileges are politically lucrative.

Different racial groups have different aptitudes. Why? Who knows? Even some “Hispanic” groups have different aptitudes than others. It’s the same with white and Asian groups. It’s absurd to ascribe all these differences to racism, prejudice, and discrimination. In fact it’s a sign of human diversity.

The Democrats pay lip service to “diversity,” as long as it means uniformity. And uniformity requires discriminatory coercion. Whites are presumed capable of success without government assistance; even, in fact, when burdened by conditions imposed by government itself. The implication is that whites, unlike minorities, can take care of themselves. They don’t suffer from individual acts of injustice, it seems, because they are a superior race. They can handle it.

This implicit white supremacism also assumes that only whites can be treated as responsible moral agents. They can be expected to behave properly, to transcend mere causation. Minorities can’t. They are mere passive victims of an environment created by others, and those others are white.

But to treat only whites as responsible or guilty is to reduce nonwhites to a subhuman level. The old-fashioned white supremacists contradicted themselves by simultaneously blaming nonwhites for acting like animals while insisting they were capable of nothing better; the liberal white supremacists contradict themselves by demanding equality for blacks while excusing them for gross behavioral failings.

The height of circular reasoning is reached when whites are blamed for black crime rates. This is the liberal version of blaming the victim: whites are reproached for fleeing black-dominated neighborhoods, even though interracial violent crime is disproportionately committed by blacks (and would be even more so, but for “white flight”). But liberal ideology is immune to objective facts of life. Oddly enough, black rates of crime, illegitimacy, and other social disorders were much lower before liberal thinking — and liberal policies — caught on.

Many so-called racial prejudices aren’t prejudices at all, but sensible empirical conclusions. People often reach them, for their own safety, in spite of official propaganda. They don’t want to be robbed, raped, stabbed, or shot, that’s all. If whites were merely racist, they would be as fearful of Asians as they are of blacks.

And what about those Asians? This category includes Arabs, Indians, Chinese, and many others who thrive here without racial privileges. Think of the Vietnamese “boat people,” who arrived in this country destitute, racially different, not even speaking English, certainly not privileged; yet a few years later their children were high-school valedictorians. How did that happen?

Maybe someone forgot to tell them they were victims of the white man.

Joseph Sobran