White Supremacism, Liberal-Style
January 16, 2003

by Joe Sobran

     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.

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