Dakota Beacon

What is in a word whose meaning has morphed from legitimate to dishonest?

Racism is one such word. The term is so overused, misused and abused that it no longer possesses veracity. So what if a person is called a racist? Who’s to say they are or aren’t? Who cares? The term lost its potency long ago. Essentially, any Caucasian is automatically a racist by virtue of their DNA.

Think I am kidding? Check out the next paragraph. In the meantime, think about the last mandated census form. No minority was left unidentified. Everyone not on the long list of minorities is lumped into a catchall category called “white” – which, loosely understood, is a color, not a race. Could this be a bias against Caucasians by the minority-dominated Census Bureau? But, I digress.

Conventional wisdom pronounced by textbooks, institutions of higher learning and the US Department of Justice (DOJ) maintain that minorities could not possibly be racist. Why? They do not have power. Here is how liberals and progressives, and many blacks themselves, define racism. This definition is succinctly lifted from the 2014 film “Dear White People” as spoken by the character Sam. “Racism describes a system of disadvantage based on race. Black people can’t be racist because we don’t stand to benefit from such a system.” Therefore, by definition, black people cannot be racist. That settles it. End of discussion.

By what system would minorities benefit so they, too, could become racists? Maybe with enough redistribution of wealth minorities holding to this definition would become rich enough to become racist. Or, maybe without redistribution of wealth minorities would remain poor, powerless -- and pure as the wind driven snow. Come to think of it, rich Hollywood types must be really, really racist. Why does their wealth not offend their progressive sensitivities regarding race?

Here is a traditional and functional definition of racism. Racism is simply defined as hatred and animus held by an individual against a race different from their own. A black racist can hate Caucasians. A Caucasian racist can hate blacks. An oriental racist can hate Latinos. And so on. It is that simple. Cut through the faux socioeconomic claptrap.

The term “racist” would be immaterial if it had not been codified by congress and institutionalized by the DOJ. “Racist” is a nasty, antagonistic weapon in the arsenal of the liberal left to bludgeon opponents into submission.

When used slanderously as an epithet (playing the race card) rather than factually describing hatred, animus, hostility and enmity toward another race, the person using the term “racist” in a frivolous and flippant manner appears rather stupid thus reflecting their own ignorance. For liberals and progressives to twist the definition of “racist” like a pretzel to their own ends in hopes of using it to smear and slander for personal, political or even economic gain renders the term wildly irrelevant.

As a highly politicized department, the DOJ does not enforce the law equally in spite of their rhetoric. It is doing just the opposite. It is stoking racial grievance. It is enforcing the law in a race-centric way. DOJ policies are “racialist”, i.e. they want racial outcomes. Racial spoils include requiring New York City to hire ethnic minority firefighters even though they can’t pass the exams. Spoils include prohibiting students from being expelled from school because they are black after they repeatedly beat other students. Spoils include Obama campaigning with the New Black Panther Party. Spoils include the DOJ not prosecuting the New Black Panthers when they conducted voter intimidation at Philadelphia polling places in 2008. Candidate Obama campaigned with the New Black Panther Party in 2008. AG Loretta Lynch gave a shout out to Black Lives Matter: “Do not be discouraged.” This was after Obama welcomed Black Lives Matter activists in the Oval Office in February 2016. These are all intended as racialist outcomes.

Over a hundred years ago Booker T. Washington, Negro educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute (1881), identified a problem that continues to plague us today.

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” – Booker T. Washington, Chap. V, “The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob,” 1911, p. 118.

It would seem that little racial progress has been made in the past century because of those who sustain and profit from it. On the other hand, and as a consolation, the old meaningless epithet “racist” is dying a natural death. Fare well.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)