The cause of “racial justice” continues to gain popularity, and its most vocal advocates at the current time are progressives. However, the progressives do not seem to know the history of the movement, or even what the fight is about.
Robert L. Woodson Sr. is the founder
and president of the Woodson Center, formerly known as the Center for
Neighborhood Enterprise. He has long been a warrior for racial justice, and he
is calling the progressives out for their lack of knowledge.
At the beginning of the civil rights
movement, we fought to open doors that had been closed to us by law. We wanted
to end the systematic legal and political restrictions on black opportunity; we
wanted black people to be evaluated for our character and capability, not our
skin color or assumptions people made about us because of it.
Somewhere along the way, our vision for
racial justice got hijacked by bureaucrats, academics, and activists who
understood civil rights to mean something entirely different.
For these interlopers, racial justice didn’t
mean equality of opportunity; it meant the fantasy of equality of outcomes. And
racial justice advocates now insist on redefining the black American struggle
as a quest to trust our lives to elites who promise to make sure we all get the
same amount of stuff. What began as a grassroots movement for equality has
become an elitist project, one that’s more about power than it is about real
justice.
Woodson condemned the “elitist
condescension toward black Americans” and the idea that black people are “problems
to be solved, rips in the social fabric that need to be mended by well-meaning,
though often seriously misguided, public policy interventions.” He continued, “Now,
we’re often viewed as nothing more than helpless victims awaiting rescue from
our privileged white oppressors.” [This is the very thing that proponents of
critical race theory (CRT) want to teach in our K-12 schools. They want to
teach little white children that they are oppressors and little black children
that they are victims – neither of which is true.]
Woodson acknowledge that there are
problems in the black community. However, “the majority of black people are
doing just fine: We are middle class or wealthy, and our educational attainment
continues to increase.”
The problems facing lower-income black
people are the same problems facing low-income residents of any race or ethnicity:
problems such as a lack of access to good schools, broken families, and a
dearth of economic opportunities. Instead of targeting these problems, today’s
elitist racial justice advocacy focuses on devising new ways to give black
people handouts arbitrarily.
This approach not only pathologizes black people,
but it also directs our attention and energy away from initiatives that could
actually work to improve life for low-income people of all races….
Poverty happens in all races, and it
should not be a cause to divide the nation. Money given by corporations to help
poor people never gets to the people that need it because there are too many
people making a living off exploiting the poor and using the race card.
One of the latest ideas is to change
the fight from equality to equity. Equality means to level the playing field
for people of all races and give them equality of opportunity. Equity is to
give equality of outcomes, which can never happen because people are different.
We do not all want the same thing, and we do not all have the same talents or
desire to work hard. However, we can give equal opportunities.
One place that can be equal is equality
in educational opportunities. No child should be forced to attend a school
where they are not taught the skills necessary to improve their lives. If
teachers are not qualified to teach, they should be forced to find another
occupation. All schools should be of equal quality no matter where they are
located. Every child deserves the chance to learn and to develop their
potential, and every adult deserves the opportunity to gainful employment.
No comments:
Post a Comment