George Rebane
Systemic racism is alive and well in America, and it has been in a fine fettle for most of the last fifty years. We have our progressive and Marxist neighbors to thank for bringing it to our attention, only not in the way that they have massaged the national message. All of our divers ethnic groups are aware of what the euphemistically labeled ‘Section 8’ promotions, admissions, awards, distributions, recognitions, … have been all about. (I believe the origin of this label generalized from ‘Section 8 set asides’ in a HUD regulation that would assure minorities and low income applicants would get their share in certain kinds of contracting and allocations.) Black intellectuals like Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, and the late Walter Williams deplored Section 8 advancements, not only for their racism, but for the explicit message that our African-Americans are somehow intellectually inferior and need special favorable dispensations to enable them to approach par with the other racial groups that participate in our public forums.
In our land over the years Section 8 advancements have been brought to bear to a fare-thee-well. We all have seen it, and now witness its application in steroids. (Un/fortunately, my professional experiences also abound in this realm. And these have obviously shaped my socio-political beliefs.) Today even the simplest of statistical tests will confirm that the public face of our society is racially composed and biased. The histrionics of the current ‘woke culture’ daily exposes a bevy of new insane interpretations of our language, America’s traditional culture, along with lunatic efforts to amplify systemic racism to bring about ‘equity’, the new scourge of progressive social engineering.
The resulting intellectual rot our Left is rapidly inducing into all of our institutions has, of course, already swept through academe, wreaked havoc in transforming capitalism into corporatism, seeped into the very fiber of our military, and today is finally broaching the formerly secure intellectual ramparts of our technical disciplines. As we now see, equity is Section 8’s bastard issue.
A specific example that clearly illustrates the above is found in today’s academe – specifically, in math education. Powerline presents the evidence in ‘Math is hard – hardest of all for the Left’. From there we learn “that certain Virginia public school districts (and others elsewhere in the country) will discontinue advanced math classes, because (of) ‘equity’, and the University of California will permanently discontinue using the SAT for admission purposes.” The graphic below explains the Left’s concern. (Click on image for a larger presentation.)
The article by Steven Hayward goes on to explain, “If there’s one thing the left can’t abide at the moment, it is unequal racial results in achievement tests—tests that, let us recall, were largely invented by the liberal establishment decades ago as a means of making meritocracy count for more than family connections, private school pedigree, and so forth. It is not surprising that the left is turning on meritocracy right now.”
To further emphasize the extent of African-American and Hispanic academic deficits, which must be hidden/ignored, take a look at the graphic below that contains a SAT performance data matrix from the DoJ’s recent investigation of Yale’s admission practices. Note the obvious bias in the admission of blacks and Latinos. Only 20.18% of whites in the 10th decile (the top 10% of students’ SAT scores) were admitted, whereas 60% of similarly scoring blacks were admitted. The admission rate for blacks did not sink to the level of the top admission rate for whites until the black students’ scores were in the 5th decile (in the lower half of test scores) where their admission rate was still 20.85%, higher than that of the highest scoring whites.
Here then we see one of the actual faces of existential systemic racism that has been resurrected in America. This is the decades-long fruit of Democrat public policies, especially those promoted by their virulent Marxist anti-American wing under the new cynical rubric of ‘equity’. To continue in power and our country on the road to autocratic socialist mediocrity, the Democrats cannot afford to have America’s blacks and Hispanics understand what has been done to them since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. With the Left’s control of our educational institutions and the media, there is little chance for them to enjoy any ethnic and/or racial epiphanies anytime soon. Thus, America’s systemic racism is not only sustained, but also assured growth.
rebanesruminations.com 