The Racial Equity Fallacy (part 3): A Douglassonian Critique

Frederick Douglass has had a noticeable presence in a number of my commentaries since I started this blog a few years ago. He truly is one of my favorite historical figures. This is probably so because of his oratory eloquence, historical impact, and his intellectual ferocity when it came to the abolition of slavery and advocating for the interests of Blacks, intellectually, politically, spiritually, and economically.

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one passage stands out as one of the more memorable and defining statements for who he was and what he represented.

The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, "Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?" These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race.

These words demonstrate a Douglass who was fully in touch with and convicted about the enormity of chattel slavery and what was needed to overcome the hellish conditions that plundered life, liberty, and happiness for slaves in America desperate for freedom and basic human dignity.

Douglass hammered home the issue of freedom throughout his life and in many of his speeches. This only makes sense, for he bore witness to some of the most depraved and despicable atrocities in human history, horrors that violated humanity's most fundamental God given right, human freedom. This compromise was indefensible to its core because in Douglass' worldview, humanity was created for every individual to freely pursue their chosen purpose free from oppression, injustice, and human atrocity.

In parts one and two of this series, I highlighted a wide range of conceptual, practical, and Constitutional problems associated with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its related movements (Social Justice, Racial Equity, and Systemic Racism). Core to this community is the shared belief that a robust emphasis on equity over equality is the pathway to true racial justice. It is well established, however, that in order to achieve equity, inequality is a natural and accepted outcome wherein Whites, it is believed, must surrender their privilege, entitlements, and the benefits that accrue from whiteness. The CRT community does not regard this as problematic but rather vindication and justification for historical disparities. In the end, the move of equity over equality is necessary in order to achieve the greater goal of equitable outcomes and the redistribution of social benefits and burdens. In short, not only is this moral compromise, but it is Unconstitutional at its core because CRT is both hostile to and incompatible with the very virtues and values of freedom and fairness safeguarded by our Constitution.

While today's racial challenges are a far cry from those of Douglass's day, his thoughts from well over a century ago offer prescient words of wisdom that should not be ignored nor confined to the past. Like all historical figures, Douglass, in particular, embraced the challenges of his day with extraordinary passion, relentless conviction, and purpose-driven principles to accomplish great things for humanity. HIs life is relatable to contemporary America through his courage and inspiration which should motivate us to remain resilient amid crisis and conflict. From the thoughts and words of Douglass, we can be inspired to overcome the flaws and failures of what we are witnessing today in this moment of rising radical racial antipathy.

Douglass's speech in 1890 titled The Race Problem confronted the efforts of southern Resurrectionists to deny African Americans their newly won civil rights that became legally protected by the federal government. This address took place in Washington, DC at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, and his goal was to educate the public and advocate for the continued protection of African American civil rights as authorized by federal law. Throughout his lecture, he referred to the frequently cited "Race Problem" with suspicion and annoyance seemingly to suggest there is something wrongheaded about this expression, language that to Douglass deserved outright condemnation and rejection.

In the opening, Douglass shares his objection to how the problem is viewed and defined exclusively as "The Negro Problem", a term that had taken root in the South post Civil War. Douglass states the following:

For this reason, and for my own self-respect, I shall endeavor to say only what I believe to be the truth upon what is popularly called "The Negro Problem...."

. . . It has been well said that in an important sense words are things. They are especially such when they are employed to express the popular sentiment concerning the Negro: to couple his name with anything in this world seems to damage it and damage him likewise. Hence I object to characterizing the relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country as the Negro problem, as if the Negro had precipitated that problem, and as if he were in any way responsible for the problem....

Clearly, Douglass seeks to challenge myth and inflammatory rhetoric with truth and sociological facts. The same applies today with respect to CRT and how they deconstruct race and history through the lens of equity and the use of social disparities and dogma at the expense of established norms and principles that are grounded in the Constitution, namely equality, due process, and equal protection.

Douglass continues his brilliant treatment of the so-called Negro Problem with the following:

With their usual cunning, these enemies of the negro have made the North partly believe that they are now contending with a vast and mysterious problem, the mere contemplation of which should cause the whole North to shudder and come to the rescue. The trick is worthy of its inventors, and has been played for all that it is worth. The orators of the South have gone North and have eloquently described this terrible problem, and the press of the South has flamed with it, and grave Senators from that section have painted it in most distressing colors. Problem, problem, race problem, negro problem, has, as Junius says, fitted through their sentences in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.

. . . The true problem is not the negro, but the nation. Not the law-abiding blacks of the South, but the white men of that section, who by fraud, violence, and persecution, are breaking the law, trampling on the Constitution, corrupting the ballot-box, and defeating the ends of justice. The true problem is whether these white ruffians shall be allowed by the nation to go on in their lawless and nefarious career, dishonoring the Government and making its very name a mockery. It is whether this nation has in itself sufficient moral stamina to maintain its own honor and integrity by vindicating its own Constitution and fulfilling its own pledges, or whether it has already touched that dry rot of moral depravity by which nations decline and fall, and governments fade and vanish.

Douglass shows how the deceptive tactics of southern "Resurrectionists" agitated the North through exaggerated rhetoric by using race to portray and define the problem as Black and extreme. While race continues to be a problem in America today, one that is present in a number of different manifestations, Critical Race Theorists exploit narratives, history, stories, current events, data, and anecdotes to create an ominous portrayal of systemic racism as a ubiquitous yet flawed threat to American society writ large. But notice Douglass's charge: to preserve and defend the integrity of the Constitution with truth, fidelity, and moral courage! By making this a Constitutional issue, Douglass has expanded the scope of the problem from a regional North-South dynamic to a national one vis-à-vis the Constitution, civil rights, and the federal government. Douglass makes this explicitly clear in the next section, as he presses the matter further with his own brand of today's intersectionality. In the following, he directly appeals to the cause of women's suffrage to make the case that equality, under the banner of civil rights, is federally protected and, therefore, morally defensible.

Our American women are asking for a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution, whereby they may vote. They ought to have it. If the American people shall adopt such an amendment, the women problem will cease to exist.

In like manner, when the negro was declared free by the highest authority in the land, when the whole system of his bondage was broken up, when he was invested by the organic law of the land with the title, dignity and immunity of an American citizen, and when it was declared that any discrimination made by any State against him on account of race or color was unlawful, I hold that his race condition could no longer be consider a problem. The thing was done: it was finished. The nation had taken its position and all the parts of the nation must ultimately adjust themselves to the whole. The individual States may be great, but the United States is greater. The mountain will not and cannot go to Mahomet, so Mahomet must and will in the end go to the mountain. Herein is the ground of my hope.

....The time may never come this side the millennium when men will not ask "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" But what business has government, State or National, with these prejudice? Why should grave statesmen concern themselves with them? The business of government is to hold its broad shield over all and to see that every American citizen is alike and equally protected in his civil and personal rights. My confidence is strong and high in the nation as a whole. I believe in its justice and in its power. I believe that it means to keep its word with its colored citizens. I believe in its progress, in its moral as well as its material civilization. Its trend is in the right direction. Its fundamental principles are sound. Its conception of humanity and of human rights is clear and comprehensive. Its progress is fettered by no State religion tending to repress liberal thought: by no order of nobility tending to keep down the toiling masses: by no divine right theory tending to national stagnation under the idea of stability. It stands out free and clear with nothing to obstruct its view of the lessons of reason and experience.

The Race Problem by Frederick Douglass is refreshing because it reinforces core American principles and ideals and offers the kind of timeless and transcendent thinking that is desperately needed today to restore the efficacy of equality and the Constitution. As Douglass battled southern racists and the Democratic Party, he was clear-eyed and unapologetic in his fidelity to and support for the Republican Party who paved the way for emancipation and civil rights for African Americans nationally.

I affirm that while the National Government shall remain in the hands of the Republican party and under the principles of that party, no State will or can permanently disfranchise any of its citizens because of race or color or previous condition. Attempts may be made to do this, but the race problem in that respect is solved, and the case cannot be permanently reopened.

For Douglass, this was a monumental triumph by the federal government and The United States over the tyranny of individual states, for these states alone did the unthinkable by seceding from the Union to form a Confederacy that trampled over the authority of the Constitution and basic human rights to uphold and prosper from an evil and unjust system we know as chattel slavery, a system that indelibly harmed America and African Americans to this day. Through Douglass, however, we can unite as Americans by fiercely defending the sanctity of equality as protected by our Constitution and thereby use Douglass to champion equality over the hazards of equity and all that it seeks to undo through Critical Race Theory.

The Racial Equity Fallacy (Part 2): Determinism, Dogma, and the Denial of Moral Agency

In part 1 of my Racial Equity Fallacy series, I addressed a few of the conceptual and practical problems associated with this growing movement in law and public policy circles. In particular, the issues discussed were the problematic and improper exchange of equality to equity resulting in Constitutional incoherence, the influence of Socialism through egalitarianism, and an overall defective and diluted Constitution due to the rejection of equality practically and conceptually. Not to mention, Racial Equity's threats to the Fourteenth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause result in a serious crisis by directly attacking the integrity of the Constitution. Collectively, these challenges combine to make Racial Equity a fundamentally flawed strategy that is legally and politically hazardous to not only race relations, but polarizing to national unity and the national interest as well.

Core to the Racial Equity argument is the assumption that American society is racially biased and systemically structured against African Americans. Racial Equity advocates argue that these structural disadvantages have created a pattern of inequitable outcomes that are historically driven, pervasive, and can only be overcome by redistributing benefits and burdens with race being the decisive factor overriding all other considerations.

One of the most common problems in the history of ideas is determinism. From psychology to biology to economics, the problem of determinism is rooted in two complex issues, causation and moral agency. Under causation, all acts, mental states, and choices are the result of some preceding cause. Hence, for example, even economic activity is explained through the lens of determinism by suggesting that everything from recessions to bull markets to poverty is caused by predetermined forces. Determinism construed in this manner cancels moral responsibility and true moral knowledge given that moral knowledge and moral truth are eliminated if there's no such thing as moral choice due to determinism. If Racial Equity Theory asserts structural determinism as the primary cause for pervasive racial disadvantage, then the conceptual issues just mentioned above will significantly challenge the efficacy and validity of this position.

Racial Equity is an outgrowth of social justice, systemic racism, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), all three of which are social critiques of policies, institutions, and cultural practices that CRT defenders argue have interlocked to create historical disparities for marginalized communities, particularly African Americans. When it comes to Critical Race Theory and systemic racism, theirs is a highly deterministic approach that makes racism ubiquitous and, in essence, baked into society and the primary or sole cause for societal disadvantage and conflict. As such, it's very much akin to the problem of original sin wherein human evil is imputed through the Adamic curse and is an inescapable reality for humanity without exception. Racism, for CRT, is a predisposition endemic to society and whiteness, and as some would argue, is constituted in the DNA of White people universally. Not only is this offensive and fallacious, it defies logic, science, and reasonableness. By reducing all instances of racial and social disadvantage to the lone issue of racism, all other considerations are ignored without rigorous intellectual scrutiny or challenge. Again, CRT's approach is irrational, anti-intellectual, and antithetical to the pursuit of truth and must therefore be rejected.

An additional problem with determinism is that it is incompatible with freedom and invalidates moral agency. By relying on a deterministic approach to race and racism, Racial Equity Theory fails to allow for human agency and the ability for any group or individual to overcome the preexisting problem of racism. You can't impose a perverse predisposition on an entire race (i.e. determinism) and then expect them to be free moral agents capable of making racially responsible choices just the same; racial determinism refutes freedom and denies moral agency and rational racial responsibility.

Perhaps Racial Equity Theory's biggest failure, when it comes to freedom, is ascription without action. In other words, Racial Equity advocates ascribe noxious racist beliefs and attitudes to an entire demographic group based on racial history and stereotype without evidence of individual racial wrongdoing. Before you can even commit racial wrongs, Racial Equity advocates have already declared Whites to be racist without proof of wrongdoing whatsoever. Racism is grounded in race rather than racist behavior, and the presumption that whiteness is predisposed to wrongness is ascribed purely on the basis of racial grievance, animosity, and stereotype.

Again, CRT's overly deterministic model is irrational, intellectually irresponsible, hostile, and unapologetically discriminatory. To argue that we live in a white supremacist society that is systematically racist is an argument that recklessly rides the rails of determinism and denies basic human agency and dignity. Without freedom, our fate results in relentless racial conflict thus making all notions of and efforts for equality and reconciliation meaningless and moot. In so doing, CRT defenders have denied a legitimate pathway to racial progress because racial injustice becomes a permanent threat to society that simply cannot be overcome because whiteness is synonymous with racism and is automatically guilty of and morally responsible for all social injustices.

As I think through this trifecta of epistemic intolerance that fuels Critical Race Theory (Social Justice, Racial Equity, and Systemic Racism), the term Dogma quickly comes to mind. Dogma is an expression usually applied to matters of religion and is often associated with sectarianism, which refers to a narrow set of "inspired" teachings that thrive on tensions between inferior and superior groups. Dogma is the handmaiden of zealots, who typically become intolerant of challenge or rebuke, especially when their belief system is attacked externally or questioned internally by disaffected followers. When something is believed through explicit indoctrination because the goal is to both explain and change the world (i.e. ideology), and this belief is grounded in a doctrinaire set of proofs, narratives, or principles that are used to sanction objectors or skeptics, devotees become dogmatic in what they believe, how they impose their belief system on others, and why they are hostile to competing truth claims. Thus is the case with CRT, where ideology and dogma go hand-in-hand, and racial determinism quickly degrades into racial dogma with little to no room for disagreement. Challenge a defender of Racial Equity on the merits and demerits of what they believe, and you will quickly be reduced to accusations of being a racist simply for using rational argument and critique. A recent story of a hit-list in Loudon County, Virginia is a perfect example of CRT dogma in action.

In the article Virginia parents threatened after criticizing critical race theory, CRT defenders turned "zealots" are highlighted and shown to be employing tactics not seen since McCarthyism. The article states,

Critical Race Theorists believe that people who they claim benefit from ‘systemic racism,’ which they declare to be the ordinary state of affairs in society, want to maintain it, which is why Critical Race Theorists say virtually everyone is racist,” writes scholar and political commentator James Lindsay.

“Regarding the anti-CRT movement, we’d like to compile a document of all known actors and supporters,” she wrote. “Please comment below with legal names of these individuals, area of residence and or school board Rep known, known accounts on social media, and any other info that you feel is relevant.”

These revelations are both appalling and alarming and are proof-positive of the dogma that is now defining the CRT movement. Here you have alienation that leads to annihilation simply because objectors publicly questioned the local school system's commitment to Critical Race Theory.

The hazards of Critical Race Theory highlighted above demonstrate how far astray we have moved from our accepted and foundational understandings of America's founding principles. Conferred by Creator God, these timeless truths are to be preserved and embraced by both government and the governed so as to further the great American experiment. These principles are hallmarks that make America exceptional among all nations.

Critical Race Theory, as I have argued, violates these very principles. Lost is any appreciation for freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and the benefits that derive from these truths, collectively and individually. By rejecting Critical Race Theory, we ensure that freedom, truth, and self determination as free moral agents define humanity as created by God thus ensuring that racism does not and will not define America. Without question, we acknowledge the wrath of racism in our history, but we MUST affirm that humanity’s inherent value is centered on the eternal truth that we are beings created in the image of God and that this essence is inviolable and incompatible with any notion of racial superiority or the derogatory treatment of racial difference whatsoever. We must affirm that through God’s grace, sovereignty, and authority, we are empowered over the evils of racism to reconcile with one another to create better realities whereby humanity can truly prosper and flourish, but we can only survive and flourish together as one race, the human race, whereby we see beauty in our uniqueness and redemption through His atonement. Critical Race Theory and all its derivatives (Social Justice, Racial Equity, and Systemic Racism) are incompatible with the ideals expressed above because these are flawed systems that thrive on and inspire the failures of determinism, dogma, and the denial of moral agency to the detriment of equality and justice before the law.

Democrats and Immigration: Racism, Rhetoric, Recklessness, & Responsibility

According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, psychosis is defined as:

The word psychosis is used to describe conditions that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. When someone becomes ill in this way it is called a psychotic episode. During a period of psychosis, a person’s thoughts and perceptions are disturbed and the individual may have difficulty understanding what is real and what is not.

Having worked in the mental health field for a number of years before re-careering to politics (and If you want to classify politics as mental illness I'd be fine with that just the same), I am very familiar with those who experience impaired and distorted thinking as evidenced by an inability to relate to and understand what's true and real for the norm versus the incoherent and otherworldly reality they experience firsthand. Simply put, theirs is a world of profound confusion, conflict, inner-turmoil and inexplicable terror that is hard to share and make understandable to others.

This brings me to President Joe Biden and the Democrats, who seemingly are caught between two polarizing Americas: one is the racist America they remind us about all too often with claims that racists are lurking around every corner and behind every policy that's authored by anyone White, conservative, and Republican. The other "reality" liberals and Democrats promote is an America steeped in egalitarianism, utopian ideals, openness, acceptance, and government largess. When it comes to the latter, they frequently reference the words enshrined at the Statue of Liberty, which read as follows:

"...A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The poem is by Emma Lazarus, and it was written before the Statue of Liberty was built. It was eventually inscribed at the base in 1903, seventeen after its completion and opening in1886. And while it continues to be used to assert a false immigration narrative that's not supported by the poem's meaning or intent, it echoes the "immigration dream" espoused by the majority of Democrats(1). Thus, we have two competing Americas promoted by one party, the Democrats, who together with their newly elected President seek to expand immigration like never before; Reuters News states that Biden's goal calls for125,000 new refugee admissions who will call America home starting October 1 of this year(2). This push drastically conflicts with "America the land of the racist" imagery promoted by Democrats through-and-through. Such was the case in February 2020 at the Democratic Primary debate, where Democratic dogma was on full display for all to see. One after the other, Democratic candidates perpetuated American racial antipathy without hesitation or qualification. Here's a snapshot from a New York Post post-debate article:

About an hour into the debate, they found their message: America, Bernie Sanders said, is “a racist society from top to bottom.”

One by one, the candidates echoed the message that “systemic racism” characterizes America.

“We can’t legislate away racism,” said Andrew Yang, because racism runs so deep in the American soul.

Joe Biden, verbatim (poor Joe): “The fact is that we in fact there is systemic racism.”

Elizabeth Warren even declared that “we need race-conscious laws in education, in employment, in entrepreneurship to make this country a country for everyone.”(3)

Again, the above is just a sample of a chorus of "racist America" rants that dominated the scene that night. But here's the rub: Democrats can't have it both ways. If America is so racist, then why is the Biden Administration set to flood America with 120,000 immigrant refugees starting October 1, 2021, the very country Biden and the Democrats scorned and professed to be systemically racist? Not only is this contradiction, it is political psychosis. To speak contradiction out of both sides of your mouth destroys credibility and defies common sense politically. To speak with a distorted sense of reality is not only negligent, it is morally reckless if what you believe about America is true and will jeopardize the safety of thousands of new arrivals. On the other hand, if you also speak of the utopian America, then your "racist America" rhetoric will have recklessly and irresponsibly tainted your new arrivals' views of America over which you obviously are conflicted. This also conflicts with the immigrants understanding of America because all they've heard and believe is America, the land of opportunity, which is why they migrated over many miles and at great risk to their lives in the first place.

Rhetoric or reality, Democrats should be held accountable for their double-talk and the confusion and harm they do to America's reputation and the psyche of newly arriving immigrants, who we all want to see flourish and embrace America for all its greatness, past, present, and future. Democrats would be well served to read one of Frederick Douglass's most famous speeches for a proper perspective on America, this from a man who truly saw and experienced unfathomable horrors for an entire race of people under the systemic brutalities of chattel slavery. HIs speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, is truly remarkable and a testament to his convictions about America, her ideals, flaws, and the essence of freedom. After a scathing rebuke of American slavery, Douglass concludes the following, a conclusion truly lacking from Democrats today given the rhetoric and political psychosis recklessly repeated ad nauseum from the mouths of their so-called leaders:

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.

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1. For an excellent and concise treatment of this poem, See Stephen Miller is right: Lazarus’ immigration poem is not US Law at https://www.aei.org/articles/stephen-miller-is-right-lazarus-immigration-poem-is-not-us-law/

2. Biden set to accept more refugees after years of Trump Restrictions, Reuters, Ted Hesson and Steve Holland, February 4, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-biden-refugees-order/biden-set-to-accept-more-refugees-after-years-of-trump-restrictions-idUSKBN2A50C6.

3. Trashing America as racist won't help Democrats beat Trump, NY Post, John Podhoretz, February 7, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/trashing-america-as-racist-wont-help-democrats-beat-trump/