Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers
Part Two.
Here are the last two of five observations about our current woke racial mania.
4. What were race relations like before the death of George Floyd? Did stats show that of the millions arrested each year by police, unarmed blacks were disproportionally lethally shot? Does a systemically racist country in the last twelve years elect both a black president and a black vice president? Does a racist nation canonize affirmative action for 55 years that provides reparatory preferences to those who are nonwhite as a means to ensure equality of opportunity in reaction to the past racism of those mostly now dead?
Does a contemporary racist country strive to achieve minority unemployment in 2019 of 2.5 percent for Asian-Americans, 3.9 percent for Latinos, and 5.5 percent for African-Americans? In a systemically racist country, why do so many ethnic groups out earn the per capita household income of the purported oppressive majority of whites, in some cases by $20,000 per year? Why in popular culture are media racial imposters, such as a Ward Churchill, an Elizabeth Warren, a Rachel Dolezal, or a Shaun King mostly whites faking minority identities when it is said to be a purported disadvantage?
Would not instead the media more likely be exposing the non-white posing as whites in search of tapping into systemic privilege of the unearned kind? Are whites stalking Jews and Asians to inflict hate-crime violence upon them? In a systematically white racist society, why would college attendance in terms of percentage of particular races be nearly homogenized (42 percent of whites attended college; 36 percent of blacks; 39 percent of Latinos;58 percent of Asians), with Asians, for example, far exceeding white college participation?
5. Where does the new woke racism ultimately lead? To cities without policing and open season on the weak, young, old, and vulnerable? Will it be considered racist or non-racist for white cops to avoid going into the inner-city’s danger zones? Will we soon see tit-for-tat hate crimes, as we all descend into the former Yugoslavia, with our bankrupt intellectuals contextualizing cause and effect? Will we wear our DNA badges along with vaccination stamps that certify our racial fides and earn us proportional entitlement consideration?
As we reach $30 trillion in debt, are we to forget about ruining our currency and destroying the idea of interest, as we obsess over race? A destructive inflation on the horizon, terrible drought in the West, buildings collapsing in Florida, gas approaching $5 a gallon in California, China gloating at our discord, a woke military damning working-class and rural whites, its traditional font of recruitment, a border that is nonexistent and immigration laws a joke—are all these crises to pale in comparison with race, with Megan Markle’s psychodramas, with another embarrassing 4-star general’s or admiral’s rant about his bemedaled commitment to “equity and inclusion,” with Michelle Obama’s latest racialist snark, with billionaire LeBron James’s most current incoherent tweet about the racist police?
How long can a superpower keep flopping on the quay in racial angst, as its very fuel, food, currency, security, and health are in crisis—and ignored?
