If You Want Racial Reconciliation, Stop Blaming Everything on Racism

One of the things that continues to perpetuate racial strife in our country is when people blame every problem on racism.  

Chicago's Mayor Lightfoot has recently claimed that the reason for the unprecedented violence in Chicago is structural racism.  Are white people somehow forcing black people kill each other?  When she was blamed for being ineffective at reducing the violence, she accused her critics of being racist against her.  

Just this week EPSN's Jalen Rose said the only reason Kevin Love was selected to play for the US Olympic basketball team was because of racism -- they didn't want to have an all-black team.  I guess Rose forgot about the all-black Olympic team in 2016 that won a gold medal.  ESPN's Jay Williams also chimed in on the "everything is racist" narrative when he congratulated the Boston Celtics for finally hiring its first ever black head coach.  The only problem is that he isn't the first -- he's the sixth black head coach for the Celtics.  Rose and Williams are only following the example of ESPN's most famous sports analyst, Stephen A. Smith, who has blamed the Brooklyn Nets for racism when they hired head coach Steve Nash, and the Boston Celtics for racism when they promoted head coach Brad Stevens to the position of general manager.  I guess it doesn't matter that Steve Nash is one of the greatest players of all time, and that Brad Stevens was an outstanding college and NBA coach for many years before being promoted.

One of the more bizarre examples of the "everything is racist" narrative is the claim that COVID-19 is racist.  Well, the coronavirus itself is not racist, but the fact that blacks have disproportionate higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths due to COVID-19 is proof of structural racism.  This supposedly points to a system rigged against blacks.  One of the most basic principles of statistics is "correlation is not causation."  The fact that blacks have been hit harder by the epidemic than whites is not in itself proof of racism.  It is just a statistic, and statistics do not tell the whole story.  They do not answer the most important question -- Why?  For example, a study just came out this week that men are more likely to die from COVID-19 than women.  Is this proof of structural sexism against men?  Haven't we been told the opposite?  Or take the fact that there are far more men incarcerated than women.  Is this also proof of systemic sexism against men?  Or could it be that the crime rate among men is much higher than women?  

This is a non-stop narrative pushed by the political Left.  Any time something negative happens to a black person, racism.  Any time something good happens to a white person, racism.  Any time there is a disparity against blacks (such as a higher incarceration rate), racism.  And any time a black person does something evil or irresponsible, it's not his fault, racism made him do it.  If you deny any of this, then that's proof that you are racist.

This kind of irrational blame-game is incendiary.  It does not help anyone.  It divides.  It causes conflict.  It causes blacks and whites to resent one another.  (Newsflash: Just as blacks don't like being called "n***er," white people don't like being called "racist.")  It also prevents problem-solving.  As Ben Shapiro once said, you don't have to solve problems if everything is racist.  If everything is racist, then we don't have to investigate into the real causes of disparities in the black community, such as culture, and character, and fatherlessness.  If everything is racist, then black people don't need to look inward and take responsibility for their lives; instead they just need to elect more Democrats to public office who will take care of them and protect them from evil white people.

As long as we keep blaming everything on racism, racial reconciliation is not possible, and problems in the black community will persist.