Ironically, professional sports seem to be the last bastion of merit-based equality. Athletes work hard to reach their goals and have to work to maintain their positions based solely on their own performance. In the NFL, a backup quarterback has to maintain his sharpness both to be ready in the event the starter is injured and to stay ahead of the third-string quarterback. Every year, starting quarterbacks are benched and replaced with their backups because their performance waned.
Surprisingly, the fans are in full support of this process. Even SJWs who spend their days demanding preference will plead with the coach of their favorite team to bench a failing quarterback, regardless of his race. In fact, it seems that all of the issues they protest for go out of the window in the goal of winning a championship.
There are no women in any of the major professional team sports. In addition, racial inequality is pervasive, income inequality is rampant and players walk around openly thanking God and praying in the end zone. Now some will point to Tim Tebow and the uproar his praying caused but that was more an attack on white Evangelicals as black players have been thanking God during games and in post-game interviews for years with not so much as a glance. Finally, count the number of openly gay or transgender players in the four major professional team sports. I would venture to say you can count them all on one hand and still be able to grip a baseball.
Professional sports even go against the ‘everyone is a winner’ mentality. In 2008, the NFL’s Detroit Lions lost all 16 of their regular season games. It had to be tremendously embarrassing for them. It had been nearly 30 years since any team went winless and no team had lost 16 games before. Not one team eased up on them and none of the fans of the other teams supported letting them win. If the Lion players had been on the youth teams that protected their feelings, we can only imagine how they would have reacted to their record-setting season.
Focusing on merit seems to have worked quite well in sports. You would think the SJWs would be open to at least trying a merit-based approach in other arenas, but why replicate a proven method? Instead, diversity is paramount and nowhere is this contrast more drastic than in Hollywood. Hollywood is the biggest manipulator of culture. In television and movies, they use their platform to influence people on many hot button issues. This is deliberate and a major factor in the country’s dramatic move to the left.
Wanting characters on TV to be more diverse feels like a good thing and having characters you identify with may be helpful. But trying to represent everyone is neither accurate nor a display of equality. Also, race and gender are not the only ways a person can identify with a character.
Take a cursory look at the casts of the most popular TV shows and you will find something that resembles a United Colors of Benetton ad more than a snapshot of society at-large. It seems like everyone has a minority friend, a gay neighbor or knows an immigrant fighting to stay in the country. Every family is interracial and they all have to deal with an evil capitalist.
The same goes for people in charge. Many on the left say we need more women and people of color in power. Turn on the TV and, viola, minorities have gotten instant promotions. I primarily watch procedural crime dramas or political shows. Take a look at the people in charge on these shows and you will notice an interesting trend:
Blacklist – Black FBI Director (one white male on a team of five)
Blindspot – Black FBI Director (one white male on a team of seven)
The Brave – Woman Deputy Director of the DIA (three white men on a team of eight)
Chicago Fire – Black Fire Chief
Chicago Med – Black woman Chief of Services in charge of the emergency room
Code Black – The head of the ER is a woman; the head nurse is a Hispanic male; the head of surgery is a black man
Criminal Minds – Woman in charge of BAU; boss is a woman (two white males on a team of seven)
Designated Survivor – Entire senior staff is minority; as are the head FBI and secret service agents
Law & Order SVU – Woman lieutenant (one white male on a team of five)
MacGyver – Female dwarf head of team (two white men on a team of six)
Madam Secretary – Female Secretary of State
SWAT – Black man in charge of team; Hispanic woman his boss
Taken – Black woman in charge of special extraction unit
Timeless – Hispanic, Lesbian woman in charge of team (one white male on a team of six)
Every one of these shows has a diverse team and a minority in charge. This cannot be an accident. Blue Bloods and Chicago PD each have a white man but look closer. In the case of Blue Bloods, it is about a multi-generational family so it’s pretty hard to create diversity in an Irish-Catholic, Boston family. However, the mayor, for most of the run, was a black man. He was replaced by a woman. On Chicago PD, all of the brass is black.
Don’t get me wrong, I like seeing diversity on TV and think it’s good to have minorities playing all types of roles. I was even one of those who nodded my head gleefully when I first saw minorities in roles rarely portrayed by blacks. But, one has to ask, what is the point of the diversity overkill? They argue equality. They say they simply want these roles to represent the actual makeup of the country. That is not what is represented above. This type of casting serves two purposes. Not only does it portray these positions from a utopian point of view; it also works as a way to diminish roles for white actors.
This is not a plea to assist white actors. It’s only evidence that the arguments for equality on the left are disingenuous. No one believes that the next time a senior position at the FBI becomes vacant management is going to say, “I saw that black guy on Blindspot play the FBI director, maybe we should consider Tyrone for the role!”
The argument most often presented is not that it will influence the hiring manager in these situations, but that it will give minority children hope to believe they can reach these positions. This assumes the child is watching the TV in a vacuum. This ‘hope’ people are often talking about should come from the parents and others in their circle of influence. For instance, if a minority child wants to be a police chief after watching a TV show but the character is white, it is the parents’ job to tell them there’s nothing stopping them. Additionally, they can do an Internet search and find many minorities and women in these roles. The child is not limited to the actor hired to play the role.
Hollywood creates these situations in abundance to normalize them. If we see it enough, we are no longer shocked by it. Then when people argue against it, they seem extreme. This may be harmless when the issue is minority roles but it’s far different when the situation is gay marriage, illegal immigration, violent crime, or religion. They portray gays in the best light, put illegals in the most compassionate of circumstances and create excuses for violent criminals. If done properly, it cannot help but influence the viewers’ beliefs. It’s pure propaganda.
This culture manipulation, done through a combination of entertainment and media coverage, is what shifted the public’s view on same-sex marriage, drug enforcement, Christianity, and single parenthood. The change occurred virtually overnight. This is how Obama, Clinton, and others could say marriage was between a man and a woman yet, just a couple of years later, if you say it you’re homophobic.
With the country collectively moving left, those with an agenda saw the perfect opportunity to increase their demands. In 1996, Jesse Jackson led a boycott of the Academy Awards due to the lack of black nominees. In 2009 Kanye West interrupted the MTV Video Music Awards to say that Beyoncé deserved an award won by Taylor Swift and in 2017 Adele won the Grammy for album of the year. In her speech, she said, “… I can’t possibly accept this award …” and gave her award to Beyoncé.111
These are telling because they are subjective awards. Unless they make the parameters ticket or album sales, you could never definitively say one person deserves an award over another. As for Jackson’s protest, there are thousands
of movies made every year and only five people are nominated in each acting category. If whites make the lion share of movies, it would seem the goal should be to focus on production not the academy. Another opportunity to address a root cause wasted.
These acts are now seeping into sports, where everything had been solely based on merit. In 2003, the NFL implemented the Rooney Rule, a policy that mandated minority candidates be interviewed for every head coaching and general manager vacancy. This seems like window dressing as the rule only stated that you interview them; there was nothing forcing you to hire anyone.
The biggest problem with the equality goals is that they focus on feelings and thoughts rather than actions. When you hear people call someone racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, or xenophobic, they are usually talking about something the person said or is perceived to believe. Even if they’re right, we will never be able to regulate a person’s thoughts; nor should we. Some will say this is important because it could determine the policies of a politician or the hiring practices of a manager. That is possible, but the evidence doesn’t support it.
Lyndon Johnson was known for making racist remarks, but championed and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.112 President Truman is hailed for saving Israel though he made anti-Semitic comments.113 Conversely, there are many politicians who say what people want to hear but implement policies that are as harmful as the comments the others expressed. They impose regressive taxes that disproportionately affect the poor and create situations that increase racial segregation.
In Chicago, for example, the politicians the SJWs voted for moved funds from predominately black neighborhoods to wealthier communities, upgraded train stations in more affluent neighborhoods before repairing stations or extending services to blighted areas in black communities, and they famously suppressed video of a questionable police shooting until after the election. These actions may be worse because they are done by the politicians who said what we wanted to hear. The politicians we perceived to be racist couldn’t hurt us because we would never vote for them.
We have more laws, victim groups, and diversity programs than ever before. As a society, we are wildly diverse; multi-culturalism is the word of the day. There is plenty of diversity in pop culture and business. There are myriad black politicians as well as sheriffs and police chiefs, many of whom work in the south. All of this progress has been made yet we continue to have the same conversations about race.
Blacks are still segregated in many places in the country, have greater levels of poverty and health issues, and are incarcerated at greater percentages than any other group in America. There seems to be a problem with race that has continued in spite of civil rights legislation and affirmative action programs. Is the way to improve these conditions to continue the equality fight of the civil rights movement, or is there a better approach? We will now address the issue of racial equality.
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Racial Inequality
Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or Ghanaian, America doesn’t care.
– Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The goal of racial equality is flawed on its face and if your goal is flawed, achieving it is impossible. Blacks raise their children to look out for ‘their own.’ Black intellectuals and celebrities say things like, “I’m rooting for everybody black.”114 We are quick to acknowledge that people are tribal by nature, even self-segregating in many urban centers. Yet, we expect whites to be different. The essence of the SJWs definition of racial equality is: blacks should focus on blacks and whites should focus on blacks.
The chances that you can coerce whites to do this are nil. But even if you could create this dream world where whites decide to make everything equal, you’d still run into two problems: (1) the multi-culturalism of America, and (2) the true desires of those demanding equality.
In addressing the first problem, there are simply too many groups. While blacks actually mean black people when they say equality, most people are talking about inclusion and multi-culturalism. That means, equal representation of all groups: Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Muslims, et cetera, regardless of percentage of population. There’s simply no way to achieve this and, even if there was a way, it would do nothing in addressing the concerns blacks are trying to remedy.
They demand more blacks on corporate boards, for example. If Starbucks has a 20-member board and we have equality based on population, there would be no more blacks on the board than there are now. You’d simply have a greater number from other minority groups. If the leadership board consisted of five members, they’d be in trouble.
The second and more troubling problem of racial equality is what the true demands are. Most who protest for greater equality don’t want their words taken literally. They want more for the group they are representing. More blacks, for instance, doesn’t mean equal to the percentage of the population. It means more than there are now and as many as we can get. You don’t see them demanding fewer black players in the NBA and NFL even though that would be the necessary move to achieve equality. It’s because if the inequality is in your favor, it’s fine. This will never get us to the equality promised land.
Many on the left will bring up the obvious racism and subjugation of the past as a reason for the need to give deference to blacks in certain situations. While the history is clear; it also proves my point. The demand is to right wrongs, not to treat everyone the same. If that’s your argument, own it. You must understand that what you are demanding is the opposite of equality. It’s justifiable inequality. This, however, doesn’t sound like something you could get the majority of people to sign up for.
It would be hard enough to convince whites to endorse equality of blacks to their own detriment, now you want them to voluntarily treat themselves less than others to equal out the past; a past, many will argue, they played no part in. This is not a game. You can’t just give someone an uncontested layup. The same goes for preferences and set asides. Unless the outcome changes, there’s no lasting effect. And you cannot force the outcomes, most realize that’s a bridge too far.
The challenge with race relations, besides the fact that no one wants true equality, is that the way racism is expressed in society has changed, but those fighting it have not. During the civil rights movement, racism was easy to spot. There were laws barring specific groups from specific actions. There were signs everywhere. Today things are far different from that, yet racism is still alive.
While many believe there are still racist laws, these laws don’t mention any specific group. This means that any racism perceived in the law is subjective. The wording is never racist, so one would have to look to the intent of the law. This is something that is nearly impossible to do. If they can’t prove that the intent was racist, they should prove that the law does more harm than good, or propose a better one. Instead they just resort to marching and screaming, “Racist!”
They are shouting at ghosts. In the past, the racism was obvious, so all we had to do was bring attention to it. When whites hear racism now, they look around and they don’t see anything. Blacks, in turn, constantly tell them that since they’re white they’ll never be able to see it; as if this is a good defense. They can’t get the buy-in by saying, ‘trust me, it’s there.’ Far too often, we use examples that aren’t as clear cut as we believe them to be. We say the reason something happened is obviously racism when the reality is far less obvious. Let’s look as some of these areas perceived to be racist, starting with the most obvious: the police.
POLICE
No other issue brings about a bigger debate on racism and its effects than policing. Whether it be the constitutionality of stop-and-frisk, or the national coverage of police shootings, the police have become the poster child, fairly or unfairly, of racism in America. We constantly hear from the Left that most of the police shootings are motivated by race. A more e
xtreme version of this is the common refrain that the police are ‘hunting down our young black men.’ In order to deal with this complex problem and make a positive impact, one has to look at it objectively and use logic rather than emotion to determine causes and possible solutions.
Police obviously profile. We don’t need a study to determine this. Even the most ardent police supporter cannot deny the alarming arrest and incarceration rates of blacks. This says nothing about whether they are guilty or not, but the police could not get that level or arrests without showing some heightened focus on a certain criminal profile or selected area.
The only thing we need to determine is whether or not the profiling is due to the officers’ racist beliefs or something less nefarious. Police officers are trained to use their judgement to assess situations; accounting for environment, conditions, previous experience, and other factors to determine if they are potentially dangerous. Some profile solely based on their personal prejudices. The first is fine, the second is not. The challenge we face is how to know, in a given situation, if an officer’s actions are due to operational expertise or racial bias.
People on the right often suggest that black on black crime is a far greater threat to the black community and accuse those who protest the police of ignoring it. When this accusation is leveled, the accusers are immediately rebuked for being insensitive and told that the situations are different and it’s possible to address both issues. This argument is true, but to be fair, we don’t address both, and saying that the situations are different is meaningless as it relates to improving either problem.
Here’s an example that illustrates my point. Let’s say you own a house and you have a door that is improperly sealed. Air is coming in and heat escapes. You also discover that your roof is leaking. Water is getting into the walls and you need buckets to capture the water on multiple floors. Both problems need to be fixed and have nothing to do with one another. This does not negate the fact that each will cost you money and you can’t afford to fix both immediately. If you were to prioritize these repairs, not one person would choose the door. This is the real argument of black on black crime as it relates to police shootings.
We Want Equality Page 6