AMAC Exclusive by Joshua Charles
With the radical left rapidly redefining the commonly understood meaning of words from “infrastructure” to “citizen,” it can be hard to keep up with the dizzying array of lingo, jargon, and dogma that is needed to understand what the heck Democrats are talking about these days.
It is getting to the point where conservatives need a new dictionary to translate the left’s “woke” talkback into plain English.
To help AMAC readers navigate this brave new world with confidence, we will be bringing you occasional updates on what common words now mean when used by leftists.
The first three entries in the “woke” dictionary? “Racist,” “Racism,” and “Equity.” These words are everywhere in our modern political discourse. But they don’t mean what they used to–at least not to those on the left. Understanding what these terms mean to the “woke” is key to understanding their rhetoric and ideas. `
Racist:
Ibram X. Kendi is an often-interviewed professor who is widely considered to be one of the “scholarly” voices behind “Woke” ideas about race, “systemic racism,” and “Critical Race Theory.” His bestselling 2019 book, How to be an Antiracist, reveals a great deal about modern leftism.
At the beginning of that book, he provides the following definition of “racist”:
One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.
At first glance, it may seem that even some conservatives could sign up for most of this definition. But one detail to notice is that one can now be deemed a “racist” for inaction as well as action. It’s not just about how you view others and what you believe in your heart–it’s about what you do, and even what you don’t do–a radical redefinition of how Americans have traditionally defined “racists”. This suggests that one can be “racist” without having any bigoted thoughts or ideas whatsoever—and sure enough, that’s what people like Kendi assert. Anyone who does not actively espouse their radical political agenda can now be termed a racist.
Racism:
From this definition of “racist,” Kendi goes on to provide this definition of “racism”:
Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities. [Emphasis added]
The first thing to notice about this definition is that, just as in the case above, “racism” is no longer the internal bigotry of an individual but is itself connected to certain policies, which Kendi claims are behind what he calls “racial inequities.” We’ll get to his concept of inequity in a moment because it is the central concept of the entire “Antiracist” movement. Kendi himself sheds a great deal of light on what he means by “racism” in this remarkable statement:
The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a “race-neutral” one. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-White Americans toward equity is “reverse discrimination.”
In other words, Kendi believes that being “race-neutral” is itself an example of “racism.” This shows that the word “racism” no longer means what it did in the past. It doesn’t just mean the racial bigotry, animus, and discrimination that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe to be truly awful and indeed sinful. It’s a new definition of “racism” that is fundamentally linked to a concept Kendi and others call “equity.”
So what exactly do they mean by the word “equity”?
Equity:
“Woke” ideology depends on this all-important idea of “equity,” so it is important to understand what they mean by it.
Kendi provides the following definition of “racial inequity”—with examples—in How to Be an Antiracist:
Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of White families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to 45 percent of Latinx families and 41 percent of Black families. Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing. An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner-occupied homes in the forties, seventies, or, better, nineties. [Emphasis added]
In other words, “equity” is not equality understood in the traditional sense of equality of opportunity–it now means equality of result. Kendi claims any result in which racial groups are not “relatively equal” statistically speaking is by nature an example of racist “inequity.” His and every “antiracist’s” task is to ensure that all racial groups are perfectly equal in every statistical measure. Anything less is “racial inequity.”
This idea of “equity” as essential equality of result or outcome was confirmed by no less than then-Senator Kamala Harris just days before the 2020 election when, in a video, she said the following:
So, there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, “Oh, everyone should get the same amount.” The problem with that: Not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So, if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there, and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and the support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place. [Emphasis added]
While Vice President Harris pays lip service to equality of opportunity, by the end, she shows us what she really means: “we all end up at the same place.”
Thus the true nature of this ideology is revealed: so long as they control the levers of power, they will not stop until “we all end up at the same place.”
It’s no coincidence that the left’s redefinition of such commonly understood words always ends up requiring more power for them. Indeed, that’s the whole point. If these ideas sound a lot like communism to you, well, you wouldn’t be wrong.