It’s not just the writers and readers of Ringside who understand that the racial reckoning faces a reckoning of its own. The leftists and race-hustlers who incited the racial reckoning realize it, too.
Two of them, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, express this realization in a front-page piece, in dialogue form, in today’s Washington Post. The title of the article is “Four years later, has the racial-justice movement lost the fight?” Their answer is “yes,” at least for the time being.
Samuels and Olorunnipa are the authors of a book called “His Name Is George Floyd.” Samuels modestly cites the fact that this book is no longer being “taught” in some school districts as evidence that things have gone terribly wrong
He writes:
So many times in the two years since publishing our book, “His Name Is George Floyd,” people have asked whether there is any hope for the country.
But four years after Floyd’s murder and the so-called great racial reckoning, we were set to speak in a city whose school system had decided our book was too controversial to be taught.
Samuels isn’t the first author to exaggerate the importance of his book. But to cite the fact that his book is no longer being used to indoctrinate school kids as evidence that there is no hope for our country? That’s carrying the joke too far.
To be fair, Samuels’ case for hopelessness doesn’t rest entirely on the fate of his book. He also points to the “stymying” in schools of discussion about systemic racism, businesses questioning their diversity programs, affirmative action being deemed illegal in college admissions, and some police reforms being undone.
Samuels doesn’t explain what’s wrong with any of these developments. Instead, he assumes that the vast majority of his readers will wring their hands over them.
They shouldn’t. Encouraging school children to view their country as racist is a terrible idea. The DEI programs of many businesses are over-the-top and clearly illegal. They should be questioned, at a minimum.
“Affirmative action” has not been deemed illegal in college admissions, but blatant racial preferences have been. To a greater extent than before (how much so remains to be seen), applicants for college admission will be judged as individuals based on their merit, not as members of a group based on the color of their skin.
This development should be celebrated. Samuels doesn’t try to show otherwise.
What about the “undoing” of some police reforms? The article to which Samuels links cites an effort in Tennessee to repeal a law barring officers from conducting certain traffic stops for low-level violations. Why shouldn’t police officers conduct stops for any and all violations of the law? Because blacks commit a disproportionate number of “low-level violations.” That’s not a good reason.
The same article points to the restoration in cities like Portland, Ore., and Los Angeles of police funding that was cut after Floyd was killed. This development, too, should be celebrated. Defunding the police wasn’t a “reform.” It was a moment of madness. (More on this below.)
The title of the article to which Samuels and his partner link is “Killings by police brought reforms. Fear of crime is unraveling them.” I don’t love this title, but it’s certainly true that crime has played a part in the racial reckoning’s reckoning.
Yet, the Samuels-Olorunnipa article never mentions crime. Not once, even though their article purports to be a serious attempt to explain why the “racial justice movement” is losing the fight.
It’s losing the fight due in large part to this kind of cluelessness, which impels the movement to fight for that which is unpopular and, in many cases, absurd.
Defunding the police is an absurd idea. Everyone needs the police, and blacks need the police more than whites do because they represent a hugely disproportionate number of the victims of crime.
That’s why, during the height of the George Floyd insanity (and the pandemic), the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department flew to Minneapolis (home of George Floyd) to hear black residents plead for more policing in their neighborhoods. That’s why, while black activists used a church to hold a meeting to denounce the police to Obama DOJ officials, elderly blacks in a different room at the same church were pleading for more policing.
As to the question of whether those who pushed for the racial reckoning have lost the fight, the authors say the fight is not over. They are probably right.
Those who want America to drown in the false and destructive narrative that “systemic racism” is what’s stopping blacks from prospering and causing them to die aren’t going to give up. And if the death of one career criminal can spark mass hysteria in 2020, who is to say that it can’t spark mass hysteria again?
Still, the author’s case that the racial reckoning will reemerge is not compelling. Samuel cites the persistence of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He notes that “nine years passed between Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.”
But it’s delusional to equate the massive and, yes, systemic injustices that the civil rights movement fought back then with the alleged injustices targeted by the racial reckoning — the “injustice” of police officers stopping offenders whose violations of the law are only “low-level;” of not granting massive preferences to underqualified applicants for college admission; of companies not barring whites altogether from various employment opportunities; etc. With this as its struggle, the movement isn’t likely to regain much momentum.
In the end, the authors’ real struggle is against their own pessimism. In this connection, Samuels writes:
Over the course of our reporting, I came to believe this: Pessimism is the ultimate American privilege. It is the feeling held most easily by those whose lives would still be functional, and maybe even satisfactory, if nothing changed.
This passage is absurd on its face. People with satisfactory lives are bound to be less pessimistic than people with terrible lives.
I suppose that Samuels is talking here about blacks. He seems to be saying that blacks whose lives are functional or satisfactory are using pessimism about the prospects for major change as an easy excuse for not getting behind the radical agenda of the racial reckoning.
If so, Samuels is employing an easy excuse for the failure of that reckoning. He’s denying that the reckoning’s agenda is manifestly bad for blacks (as in the case of policing), irrelevant to their daily lives (as in teaching from the Samuels-Olorunnipa book about George Floyd), or of debatable value (as in race-based preferences).
Samuels seems to be imploring black Americans to wake up. In my view, they are starting to.
Of course they will be back. Because they are at heart Marxist revolutionaries. And revolutionaries have boundless energy. They never really go away. They hibernate when conditions aren't ripe for them. Like in the 80s and 90s. Then they come back to poison a whole new generation. We, their opponents, are not revolutionaries we are small l liberals. We believe in process. And the rule of law. And by and large we lack their energy. It's what they are counting on. And eventually they believe the entire edifice of Western Civilization is going to crumble from within. And honestly seeing what is happening on campuses here and in Western Europe generally who's to say they are wrong.
Three observations here:
1- If 'low-level' violations are not to be enforced, why have them? Repeal them and don't worry about it. We'd soon discover why we have them when everybody ignores stop signs.
2- Back in the 80s & 90s two other absurd causes arose: The recovered memory phenomenon in which young women were encouraged to 'remember' sexual predation visited upon them as children, usually by close family members; and the 'Satanic abuse' that allegedly happened at child care centers. In due course, these issues were made so toxic that few will admit to believing them now or even to having believed them then.
3- In the meantime, many innocent people were imprisoned or had their lives destroyed by the true believers in both cases. The entire McMartin family in CA found themselves destroyed financially and emotionally even though not one was found guilty at trial.
I would like to think that the day may not be far off when the police officers - including those involved with the Floyd fiasco - will see themselves restored to society. When that happens I hope they sue just as some of the guys inaccurately caught up in me-too have, Until there is a cost for making false charges, false charges will be made.