What a Millennial Biden Voter Thinks About Race

Written by Laurie Higgins

If you haven’t spoken to a Millennial Harris/Biden supporter, continue reading for a better understanding of the ignorance that “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) results in, which in turn should make it clear how critically important it is for President Trump to be re-elected.

Following Monday’s article about President Trump’s outstanding decision to prohibit federal agencies from funding CRT, I had a Facebook discussion with a Millennial who has swallowed the destructive ideology hook, line, and lethal sinker. Our discussion exposed the ignorance of those who have been trained by exposure to only one set of beliefs on race—beliefs that have been promulgated by federal agencies, government schools, the arts, and even corporate America. CRT is embedded in re-education programs euphemistically called “diversity training,” or “sensitivity training,” or “anti-bias training.”

Like a cancer, CRT has metastasized throughout America. CRT divides society into two groups—oppressors and oppressed—based on their race or skin color. Those who are white (lowercase “w”) are racist oppressors, even if they harbor no racist impulses. Those who are Black or “Latinx” are the intrinsically non-racist oppressed, even if they detest whites or Jews and say so openly, as does Jacob Blake Sr.—the father of the Kenosha man who was shot while resisting police.

CRT encourages blacks, Hispanics, and “indigenous peoples” to see themselves as perpetual victims in a system rigged by whites to victimize them. It teaches that the lots in life of “persons of color”—or rather, persons of certain colors—cannot improve unless colorless people spend a few hundred years self-flagellating for their icky colorlessness. Most diabolical, CRT robs colorful persons of a sense of agency in their own lives.

In addition, CRT promotes a wildly imbalanced view of American history that overemphasizes America’s flaws while ignoring the magnificent successes American principles and people have had in eradicating racial injustice and integrating diverse people groups from all over the world.

Here is my debate with the ill-informed Millennial, which began with this sarcastic comment from him:

Millennial: Yes, teaching the history of our racist past is such a tragedy. Continue being racist.

Higgins: How specifically have you been “complicit in” advancing racism? What specific racist words have you uttered and racist acts have you committed.

Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, said the idea of collective guilt is the very idea on which Hitler’s regime depended, and you seem to be advancing it. Here’s what Viktor Frankl said:

There is no such thing as collective guilt. … [A]nyone who assigns collective guilt to every Austrian [or German] citizen between the ages of zero and fifty is committing a reprehensible and insane act. … and it would be a relapse into the Nazi ideology of collective family guilt [the difficult German word Sippenhaftung here refers to the dangerous Nazi dogma of kin liability, tainted blood(line), or genetic guilt by association]. …

[T]here are only two ‘races’ of people: those who are decent people, and those who are not. That distinction goes right through every nation, and within nations right through every political party and every other group.

Millennial: Simply by living in this country we participate in racism. We have never come to terms with the millions of lives ruined so that our country could be the prosperous one it is. Teaching that history is a step towards making it right.

Higgins: Ah, I see, one becomes a racist by simply being born in America. Being racist—in your bizarre view—has nothing to do with holding racist views, harboring racist feelings, speaking racist words, or engaging in racist acts. Well, that wasn’t Frederick Douglass’ view of racism or Dr. King’s. I’ll stand with them.

What is your evidence that “we”—whoever that is–“have never come to terms” with the suffering caused by slavery and Jim Crow laws? What does coming to terms entail?

Which schools don’t teach about America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow laws? Schools have been teaching about racism for 50 years.

And what about the millions of lives being ruined by fatherlessness, out-of-wedlock births, divorce, and the Democratic policies that incentivize all of those conditions and result in urban crime?

Millennial: Dr King fought for reparations. Racism isn’t just using a racial slur.

“We” as in our country, our government, our people. We sweep slavery and its horrors under the rug as something that happened and ended 170 years ago. Except it didn’t and its effects continue to this day.

Schools teach a myth of slavery—that after the civil war everything was great for everyone. The lasting effects of jim crow are not taught. The 1619 project addresses this. But you’re arguing it needs not be used because it hurts the stoic fable of american exceptionalism.

Higgins: I never argued that racism is just “using a racial slur.” I specifically referred to thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. You apparently believe that racism is not constituted by thoughts, feelings, beliefs, words, or deeds. And that’s how you justify calling people who are not racist “racists.” But, you see, you don’t get to redefine “racism” for everyone else. I realize leftists have no problem using Newspeak, but the rest of us have no ethical obligation to submit to your Big Brother-esque tactic of redefining language to advance a political cause.

What is your evidence that “our country, our government, and our people” sweep slavery and its horrors under the rug”? That is not at all what I have seen during my life.

One could argue that all the affirmative action policies implemented in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement constitute reparations. Now, over 150 years after the abolition of slavery, cash payments made by people who have never owned slaves to blacks who were never enslaved would be manifestly unjust.

Moreover, would blacks who are not descendants of slaves or who are not descendants of anyone who endured Jim Crow laws receive cash payments? What about descendants of black slave owners? Do they receive or pay reparations? What about descendants of black Africans who sold their fellow blacks into slavery? Do they receive or pay reparations? What about descendants of abolitionists? Should they have to pay reparations? Should descendants of Democrats who opposed abolition and descendants of Democrats who implemented policies that destroyed the black family, destroyed urban schools, and created the murderous urban blight we see in every Democrat-controlled city have to pay more than other whites?

What is your conclusive evidence that schools teach that “after the civil war everything was great for everyone”? Show me the documentation for that claim. Show me a textbook that makes that claim. Since every school teaches about the Civil Rights Movement—which came 100 years after the Civil War—how could schools teach that “after the Civil War everything was great for everyone”?

Nikole Hannah-Jones, author of the awful 1619 Project, has been forced to admit—by liberal historians—that there are many historical inaccuracies in her 1619 Project. Further, she has recently said the 1619 Project is not history, so why should it be taught in history classes? Jones is a bigoted polemicist.

I don’t oppose the 1619 Project because it “hurts the stoic fable of American exceptionalism.” I oppose it because it is foundationally flawed. America was not founded in 1619, and it was not founded to perpetuate slavery. And America is exceptional, which is why people from all over the world continue to seek the freedom and opportunity America offers.

What isn’t taught in public schools is the lasting effect or effects of Democrat policies that are used to exploit blacks for their votes and then destroy their communities.

How about immersing yourself in the writing of conservative scholars Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and John McWhorter—all black men who have experienced actual racism, as distinct from imaginary “systemic racism.” And maybe wander around the website 1776 Unites where you will read this from Dr. Harold A. Black, Emeritus Professor of Finance at the University of Tennessee and a black man raised in the South:

Those who insist on according blacks victim status are guilty of perpetuating the caricatures of black people made famous by Stepin Fetchit, “Little Black Sambo,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Mandingo.” Given that caricatures are parodies, victimhood is little more than an excuse. Convincing some that they cannot achieve because they are black flies in the face of this paradox:  how can a high-achieving black person truthfully tell another black person that their lack of achievement is because of their race?

I grew up with parents who, because of their upbringing, neither tolerated excuses nor believed in victimhood. We lived in southwest Atlanta’s all-black enclave. As a result, I never had a conversation with a white person until I became the first black male freshman at the University of Georgia in 1966. …

Through the news, we saw images of white women cursing and spitting on black children trying to go to school in Clinton, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas; and the horrifying images of Emmett Till’s beaten body and, later, those of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. These events and others reinforced the feeling among my peers that most whites were violent, uneducated, and best avoided.

My first day on campus, these feelings quickly dissipated when I met white students, who became my friends despite some name-calling and ostracizing from their peers. …

As a result, I never dreamed of telling my parents about any of the incidents that occurred during my freshman year as the first — and only — black male living in a dorm. I knew that I could not come into the house with “C” marks saying the average grades were because someone would break my windows most nights and I could not study. My father would have said, “Then find a place to study.” So I did. No excuses. No whining. No victims.

Nevertheless, growing up in the segregated South prompted me to ask my parents why they didn’t leave. Until my college years, though largely left alone if they “knew their place,” blacks in the South endured a reign of terror. A black person could be killed by a white who was not likely to be prosecuted. Indeed, two of my mother’s cousins were lynched in 1913 and their killers were never arrested. …

Throughout my family’s history we have been guided by choice and responsibility, not by victimhood. Therefore, the notion of reparations for slavery puzzles me. The answer, of course, lies in the cult of victimhood that seeks to trivialize the stunning accomplishments of our people from the day they set foot in America to their proud descendants. …

There actually have been reparations aplenty. The War on Poverty has spent over $23 trillion in reparations since 1965. …

So even though slavery was evil, cruel, and harsh, we are a proud people who have prospered despite the odds. We are only hampered when we listen to people who demean us by insisting that racism prevents us from being full participants in society, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Read John Sibley Butler’s account of black entrepreneurship and then consider that it was the War on Poverty’s resultant destruction of the black family that derailed our progress. …

Blacks have a proud history of strength and self-reliance. That continues today, despite the caricatures painted by those demanding reparations. I am reminded of a student of mine who was wearing a tee shirt depicting a black person in chains with the words: “I was not asked to be brought here.” I asked her, “Aren’t you glad you were?” Her answer was, “Oh, my goodness, yes!”

If you know any Millennials who plan on voting for the Harris/Biden ticket, ask them if they think resources from 1776 Unites should be taught in all government schools. If they say no, ask them why not.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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