To say the left is racist is like saying Christians hate Jesus. The left is all about equality and uplifting the downtrodden. Talk of a minority’s flaws is often shut down swiftly, the fear being that any honest discussion of problems will only breed more racism and contempt. When Bill Cosby encouraged blacks to stop blaming whites for all their problems, he was met with nothing but derision from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Acknowledging racial differences is so anathema that when it came to the fact that African Americans typically score lower on IQ tests, California simply banned them from being administered to blacks, citing the tests’ cultural bias. Thus was born the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (That’s right, the B.I.T.C.H.). It showed that if words like “honky” and “dynomite” were used (It was 1972 after all.), blacks would score better. They did. Are these IQ differences real? Maybe. Maybe not. It actually is a bit complicated. But really, who cares? Apparently, the left does.
The left is indeed all about uplifting the downtrodden. But if we strip away politics and frame racism as simply a belief in inferiority, here is where we can start some trouble.
I remember walking to a taco shop one day. A woman had a t-shirt that said, “Black Woman. Mother of the Earth”. This saddened me because Darwin’s seminal work was actually a scientific argument for racial superiority. The true title was“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. I never hear talk about evolution’s implications for race. If you are a Neo Darwinist, an atheist, you, by definition, believe that blacks are closer biologically to monkeys than are whites and other races. How many of these types are on the right? Not many. For all Richard Dawkins’ claims to enlightenment, he is a simple racist. For those who believe the universe was created, even those who believe in theistic evolution, the answer is different. Scientific Adam may have had dark African skin but the first man, black or otherwise, was made in the image of God.
Perhaps what best illustrates the left’s marriage to racism is the period known as “The Progressive Era”, 1900-1917. New ideas and political energy spawned minimum wage laws, antitrust statutes, assistance to immigrants and the poor, and women’s suffrage. Hillary Clinton compared herself to the Progressives, people like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Stanger, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Left out of the glowing tributes to the heroes of this era is the ubiquitous racism that characterized the time. This is when Jim Crow flourished and lynchings were most abundant. A firm believer in eugenics, Stanger founded Planned Parenthood "to stop the multiplication of the unfit." She called the endeavor, “The Negro Project”. Woodrow Wilson sympathized with the birth of the KKK because of the unleashing of “an ignorant and inferior race”.
The left worships education and intelligence. Barack Obama was a former editor of the Harvard Law Review. The left swooned. The right yawned. For a lefty, the highest goal is enlightenment, which cannot exist without education. To be valued and special is to be enlightened. The right, however, values wisdom. A man with a 5th grade education can be wise. Wisdom needs only experience and openness. Self reliance, loyalty, honesty and reliability are the values of the right. So, inherent in the left’s worship of knowledge is the obvious: a condescending, patronizing view of those who don’t graduate high school or worse, those who attend mediocre universities like Idaho State (See Palin, S.).
The sinister side of the left’s care and concern for minorities (which is often genuine) is a paradox: freedom to do and say the ugliest things. Democratic Sen. Harry Reid called white Supreme Court justice Scalia "one smart guy” while proclaiming the black Thomas "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court," adding, "I think that his opinions are poorly written." A number of cartoons portrayed Condaleeza Rice, PhD., as Aunt Jemima, Butterfly McQueen from "Gone With the Wind," a fat-lipped Bush parrot and other racist clichés. She was branded as inexperienced and incompetent. When former Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, ran for senator in Maryland in 2006, he was depicted in black face with huge red lips by liberal blogger Steve Gilliard. Oreo cookies were rolled down the aisle at Steele during a gubernatorial debate in 2002.
So when Newt Gingrich got snarky with Fox News’ black liberal commentator Juan Williams asking typical leftist tripe in a debate, liberals instantly saw it as evidence he was racist. How? When you’re a racist, race is just the first thing that comes to mind. Simple as that.
