One major problem in the progressive movement is that its members do not judge people by the content of their speech but by the color of their skin. Freshman Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) recently made anti-Semitic comments that have spurred yet another debate about the left’s blatant double standard with regards to racism and hateful language.
If any white, Christian, cis-gendered, conservative male had made remarks even a fraction as bigoted as the ones made by Omar, his career would have been over faster than you could say “intersectionality.”
Omar, by contrast, seems to be wearing a cloak of invincibility. She and other intersectional figureheads like Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, can spew hateful comments, such as likening Jews to termites, with no repercussions for their careers or public reputation. Sarah Jeong was also able to obtain a position on The New York Times editorial board despite hateful anti-white messages on Twitter such as “#CancelWhitePeople.” It’s almost as if these left-wing figures have been given a special superpower that shields them from accountability.
That’s closer to the truth than you think.
New-Speak
Many students educated in the humanities at an American university in recent decades will tell you that non-whites are incapable of being racist because racism is defined as “prejudice plus power.” Since whites have “white privilege,” they are the only group that can be racist.
Hang on, you might say, you can’t remember ever agreeing to that definition of racism. Didn’t racism use to be defined as “prejudice based on race”? When did it change?
A shockingly low number of people, all of whom were radical leftists, invaded the most ambiguous part of academia – the social sciences and the humanities – and took over an entire field by the process of colonization. This process is thoroughly documented by professor of philosophy Dr. Stephen Hicks in his book Explaining Postmodernism. This tiny group of academics then culturally appropriated the English language and redefined words like “racism.”
The irony is that if any other group of academics had done the same thing to the language of any non-white minority, leftists would have branded it as cultural imperialism and identity theft of the worst kind, and rightfully so.
The Separation of Powers
Lord Acton’s adage, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” conveys a truth that was profoundly understood by the Founding Fathers of the U.S. and the intellectuals of that time. They had read the works of French judge and philosopher Montesquieu, who first formulated the separation of powers as a mechanism to prevent the toxic effects of absolute power. The current governmental system of checks and balances grew from that body of work.
Contrast that line of reasoning with the postmodern academics who have granted “superpowers” to minorities. The result? The wisdom of the enlightenment thinkers who understood the nature of power is proven correct by the behavior of the likes of Ilhan Omar. She does of course not have the power to make death threats or the like, but her minority status gives her a special cloak of invincibility to make bigoted statements others could never get away with – and she does.
Unchecked power is bad, no matter the color of your skin. But it is not too late to put the genie back in the bottle. The American people do not have to accept the dictum by radical leftists that defines what words are supposed to mean. Racism is racism, regardless of the color of the person wielding it.
