“Good” Racism?

A professor of history at Harvard took a parting shot at that venerable institution in his retirement letter. While not as epic as Bari Weiss’s epic flounce from the New York Times half a decade ago, it is nevertheless a scorching indictment of what used to be one of the premier institutes of higher learning in the world.

The central assertion of Professor Hankins’ flounce is that the university deliberately denied acceptance to amazingly qualified students simply because they were white males, and denied graduate school acceptance to perfect-fit candidates for the same reason.

Modern progressivism, in one of its countless bits of arrogant conceit, redefined “racism” as a combination of prejudice and power. This linguistic stunt was intended to assert that blacks could by definition not be racist against whites because they lacked whites’ power.

Make that “systemic” power. It’s obvious where the in-the-moment power lies if four young men mug an old lady, no matter the skin color. But, is there anything more “systemically powerful” than the admissions staff of the nations’ top universities? Doesn’t discriminating against whites - and asians, as we know they did and still do - fit the bigotry+power requirement to a tee?

This is the hollowness of the racism card that the Left plays in order to achieve its ends.

It is a hollowness that often leads to farce. Consider this story about how the University of Minnesota informed us that,

If you were born or raised in the United States, you have grown up in the Whiteness Pandemic.

Or how Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is screaming “white supremacy” in response to the exposure of the multibillion dollar frauds committed by Somalis in his state.

To modern progressives, to be white is to be racist. Inherently, as with Original Sin. Also, irredeemably, meaning that, as with Original Sin, you are expected to pursue a lifetime of atonement simply for being born with a certain skin color.

That this itself is racist is so obvious that the mystical, magical reality alterer known as cognitive dissonance prompted progressives to add a carve-out to the definition of racism in order to save their brains from sizzling like that egg in those old “brain on drugs” PSAs.

Unfortunately for those reality-changers, humans are not blank slates upon which anything can be chalked. We have innate senses of right and wrong, justice and injustice. While race and class hustlers routinely play games with those senses, they can only go so far before incredulity restores us to reality. We all know that it’s unjust to deny someone “of merit” something merely because of the color of his skin. No matter what that color is. No matter arguments about cosmic scales and rebalancing of past wrongs. Those who put forth such arguments are either the aforementioned hustlers themselves or earnest naifs who have been suckered into past support and are now trying to save face (again, cognitive dissonance rears its ugly head).

Racism is bad, full stop. If the individual is to matter at all, punishing one person for the sins of another is also bad, full stop. Since we are, in fact, individuals and not pieces of a hive mind, reality is on the side of the individual, and no amount of “greater good” arguments can ever justify an injustice perpetrated on a person because of the color of his skin.

If you think otherwise, I challenge you to check your motives. Are they pure? Or are they deflecting from a less pleasant reality?

If you still think that our elite educational institutions deserve special respect and deference, I ask, “why?”