Bruce Fleming, an English professor who has taught at the Naval Academy for 22 years, recently published an article in which he revealed how the United States Navel Academy attempts to achieve ‘diversity.’ The matter came down to this: a white student must have scores of at least 600 on each section of the SAT and high school grades of As and Bs, while ‘minority’ students need only SAT scores in the 500s and may have C grades on their transcripts. This English professor, who had been on the admissions committee at the Academy, said he was told not to write anything down regarding the system to help foil Freedom of Information Act suits!
Our race-crazed society is full of examples of this sort of thing. There is, of course, only one name for it: racism.
On the one hand, we are often told that racism is a bad thing. It was to be eradicated everywhere and for all time. But on the other hand it appears that a little unspoken caveat comes with the deal. Racism is bad unless it is benevolent racism. That is, if it is thought that racism might help someone, then racism becomes a good thing, a necessary practice – especially when practiced by the government and the various institutions connected to government.
At least the purveyors of government-sponsored racism are consistent. You can see that consistency in other areas.
For example, stealing is a bad thing. But if the government steals to help someone (benevolent stealing), then in that case it is good. We call that the welfare state.
Also, murder is bad, very bad. Some states will still, after enough appeals, put you to death for some versions of murder. But if the person being murdered is not yet born, or perhaps only partly born, then murder can be a good thing. That is benevolent murder. We call that abortion.
Our society will not long endure this moral schizophrenia. In the end we will either stop tolerating all racism, theft, murder and their kin, or we will stop trying to pretend that they are bad practices some of the time. It will be an unlivable world if that second possibility ever occurs.
2 comments:
What you describe is not benevolent racism at all. Benevolent racism is claiming to not be racist and yet attempting to curtail policies that would reduce or eliminate racial inequality by claiming a defense of "individual rights".
In fact, it is your post that is benevolently racist. You seek to reposition the debate by avoiding the group-based distinctions that are cause inequality in our country by claiming that any acknowledgment of these distinctions are "racist" and violate individual rights. Your position subtly perpetuates racial inequality by ignoring its very existence.
'Equality' means treating everyone the same in some area. The law treats people the same by ignoring race, sex, etc. As long as you want to base people's position in regard to the law on group status, we will never have equality. But it appears that many do not want it.
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