AMAC Exclusive – By David P. Deavel
It’s the day after Super Bowl weekend, and America is dodging a bullet. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes are both black. Mahomes is actually biracial, but according to both Confederate and Woke values, one single drop of black blood determines your black identity unless you are a Republican. Whatever. In any case, we will not be subjected to the absurd suggestion that a white quarterback should have lost the game.
Think that’s crazy? Well, two years ago, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs faced Tom Brady. Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the contest… and social media was filled with the claim that Brady’s defeat of Mahomes during Black History Month was racist. Were some of those making the claim joking? People who’ve been alive in the last decade may hope so but will fear that all too many were serious. The cry of “racism” and even “white supremacy” in America has become the equivalent of the cry of “wolf” for the little boy in Aesop’s tale.
But what did Aesop know? Though the seventh-century B.C. storyteller was a slave, no one is calling for reparations for him because he is one of the dreaded and no doubt racist Dead White Males.
Over the last few years, the number of things labeled racist in America has probably come to outnumber those things that are not racist. In addition to Tom Brady’s team defeating Patrick Mahomes’s team in 2021, the professional race mongers have told us that farmers markets, Dr. Seuss books, fireworks (the disparate impact of smoke, you know), dieting, France’s food, recommending the Mediterranean diet, bicycling, automatic soap dispensers, calling sweet potatoes “yams,” mispronouncing an Asian person’s name, specific fonts people type in, classics, professional wrestlers saying race does not matter, software monitoring students’ honesty taking tests, Princeton University’s honor code, the Thin Blue Line flag, roads and bridges, gas stoves, tough-on-China rhetoric, Johnny Mathis’s Christmas song, not postponing a football game sooner after a player is injured, casting black actors as bullies, the word “field,” English grammar, math, science, statistics, and technology are all racist.
Though the answer is no doubt obvious, a Norwegian study will determine if white paint is racist.
This list is clearly not complete. But since, as professionals such as Ibram X. Kendi have told us, there are only two categories: “racist” and “antiracist,” we will eventually have to admit that all aspects of life that are “not racist” are really “racist.” That doesn’t leave very much of life.
It is tempting to laugh at such absurdities simply. After all, such claims are clearly nuts. What is even more nuts is the application of “white supremacy” to acronyms, urgency, eye-rolling, eating meat, the scientific term “quantum supremacy,” astrophysics as a whole (it’s also racist), bungling snow removal in New York, white people quoting MLK, working while sick (even if it’s Joe Biden doing it), being a white fan at a basketball game the day after black people were murdered, the viciousness of the Chinese Communist Party, 2+2=4, and Bernie Sanders’ mittens.
But while we should laugh in derision, we must firmly reject such ridiculous labels every step of the way. Simply observing that if racism and white supremacy mean everything, they mean nothing is accurate logically, but that’s part of the problem. This isn’t about logic. Labeling everything racist or white supremacist softens people up to more severe charges and follows from the larger message.
The L. A. Times, which published an opinion piece calling black talk show host Larry Elder the “black face of white supremacy,” recently published another essay co-authored by the first’s author, Erika D. Smith. In the second, she explains that white supremacy comes in all colors, not because non-white people can accept that whites are superior. No, it’s the old “systemic” business: “White supremacy is an ideology, a hierarchy of racial power that has been an integral part of this country since its founding, whether Americans want to acknowledge it or not.”
In other words, America, in both its founding and all its history, has always been a white supremacist. While she would probably deny the explicit statement, the logic of all these positions is clear: if you don’t want to be a white supremacist, you have to hate everything about America, for America is an irredeemably racist and white supremacist.
And it’s not just soap dispensers and Bernie’s mittens. It’s declaring war with Japan after Pearl Harbor; it’s the open carry of firearms; it’s black and Hispanic voters pulling the lever for the GOP; and much, much more. A few years ago, a leaked document from a teacher training in Iowa revealed that teachers were being instructed to treat “Make America Great Again,” colorblind approaches to race, and the denial of white privilege—among many other things—as “white supremacy.”
All of these are attempts at labeling not only conservative Americans but all things distinctively American as racist. Think this is too much? Last week, an Indian immigrant appointed to Virginia’s Board of Education by Governor Glenn Youngkin was voted out of her position for “white supremacy.” Her crime? She defended the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence while speaking out against socialism.
The Virginia vote was hot on the heels of the Disney Corporation’s release of a cartoon that claims that America was built on slavery, that Lincoln did not free the slaves, and that the country has not “atoned” for its racial sins. It also repeats the debunked “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative regarding Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri.
And given that it’s not just America that’s a problem but every aspect of western civilization, we can see why French food, math, academic honor codes, fonts, math, and science must all be demonized and abolished.
Americans are tired of this racial obsession for good reason. It’s divisive, disheartening, and self-destructive. Kids of all colors need to know 2+2=4 and learn English grammar. Scientists need to learn that scientific principles are not white supremacy. And Americans need to be able to see not only the dark sides of our past but also its glories. No nation can survive if its citizens are taught to see her as irredeemable and racist. And she certainly cannot thrive when her citizens of all colors and nationalities are constantly called names that represent natural evils simply for being human and American.
We will most likely not be subjected to foolish accusations of racism because of this Super Bowl’s quarterbacks. All the same, we need to work toward a society in which such absurd and destructive folly is unthinkable.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative.
