Heather Mac Donald optimistically declares “The end of the race hustle.” Heather’s article is long, and data-rich. I recommend reading it all. She credits President Trump with being uncowed by the Left’s accusations of racism, and offers hope that race-baiting no longer works:
For decades, pointing out that any action, public or private, had a black target or fell disproportionately on black people was sufficient to discredit that action, regardless of whether it was couched in terms of race or had a racist intent.
Want to fire an employee? Good luck if that employee is black; such a dismissal would be presumptively racist. Tempted to criticize a government official for alleged incompetence or unethical conduct? If that official is black, think twice, since blackness is used as a shield. Try to jail a serial violent offender, such as Brown Jr., who happens to be African-American? That would contribute to racial inequity.
Is that description overdrawn? Maybe, but it describes a strong current in the reality that we have been living in.
Criminal justice, in particular, has been badly compromised by race ideology:
The idea that racial disparities in arrest and incarceration rates reflect discrimination and not disparities in criminal offending has been a staple of Democratic policymaking for years. The “systemic criminal justice bias” conceit has led district attorneys across the US to stop prosecuting and stop seeking jail terms for a host of crimes, simply because penalizing those crimes would have a disparate impact on black criminals.
The “systemic bias” claims are false, but they have impaired public safety across America.
Education is, of course, another area where racism has reigned supreme. So what is Heather’s basis for thinking the era of race-baiting will soon be behind us?
The race hustle has been one of the dominant forces in American society for decades. But is it finally losing its power? It has had zero effect on Trump. He continues to promise further federal deployments to high-crime cities. A few hours after Trump again criticized Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s failure to control crime in Chicago, the city’s gang members obligingly proved the President’s point with a drive-by rampage in Bronzeville (on Chicago’s South Side). Seven people were shot. That late August outburst was part of the usual violence that accompanies holiday weekends in urban America – in this case, Labor Day weekend. Bronzeville saw another mass shooting with five victims on Labor Day itself. All in all, nine people were killed and 52 wounded in Chicago’s South and West Sides over the three-day weekend.
Notwithstanding Mayor Scott’s earlier charges of racism, Trump has re-upped his threat to order federal resources to Baltimore. …
Trump has not backed down from his efforts to remove federal bureaucrats and to extirpate federal agencies which he believes impede his agenda, regardless of the racial incidence of those cuts. [Federal Reserve Board member Lisa] Cook’s blackness did not scare him.
Trump’s indifference to being called a racist may be having a wider effect. Americans have played along for decades with the race hustle, terrified to be accused of bias or of insensitivity to the premier victim group. Now a collective fatigue may be setting in.
This latest round of racial critique seems to be falling flat and to be out of sync with the times. Maybe not everywhere and maybe not even now. But in four years, after the public has watched a President who is patently and shockingly indifferent to identity-based blackmail, arguments from skin color may be met with an eye roll.
I agree that the culture is shifting, in part because of the growing number of blacks who express appreciation for President Trump’s policies, especially on crime and illegal immigration. Personally, I have never understood why conservatives should care about liberals’ accusations of racism, which are at least as dumb as their other smears. But for some reason, those particular lies have been effective. Still, irrationality always fails in the end, and we can hope, as Heather suggests, that the reign of the race-baiter is drawing to a close.
