Liberal activists say they want a “conversation about a race” — they’ve been saying that for decades — but they rarely ever get around to explicitly stating what the point of that conversation is.
Washington Post liberal writer Christine Emba got sort of close, though. She wrote Wednesday that conservatives oppose critical race theory being taught in public schools, not because there’s anything wrong with it academically (though of course there is) but because it “might result in a real rethinking of the order of things, which might result in culpability, which might result in recognition that recompense is needed.”
There it is. Compensation. She also suggests “racial accountability.”
And by that, Emba says it would mean for white people “to defer to black voices, to change policies that harm black people, to truly adjust one’s way of existing in the world in response to a critique of American virtue, and of one’s own innocence.”
Unfortunately, that’s where it ends. Emba gives no further specifics, such as on what it would mean to “defer to black voices” or to “adjust one’s way of existing in the world” in a way that would benefit black Americans. What would this “racial accountability” look like? We have already been given a hint. There would have to be race quotas in the public and private sector, and new ideas and policies could only be considered valid if some anointed (and well-paid!) authority on race (say, Al Sharpton or Benjamin Crump) deemed it so.
The main upshot is that there would be collective punishment or diminution of all white people for a sin that many or most of them did not personally commit (even as other white people once did) and a corresponding collective reward or promotion for all black people as compensation for something they may not have suffered (even as other black people once did). The reduction of all humanity to race, typical of critical race theory, is the precise attitude that produces stereotypes about blacks being criminals or hooked on welfare, etc., solely because they make up a disproportionate share of those categories. Blacks, for example, account for 13% of the U.S. population but make up 44% of those on federal housing assistance.
It’s the exact opposite of real justice, which metes out to individuals what they deserve as a consequence of their own strive. It’s also the opposite of real accountability, which holds individuals responsible for what they themselves have done, not for what others who might look like them have done.
Are we ready for “racial accountability”? Are we ready for race quotas and, as Emba said, “to defer to black voices”?
If that’s the point, then Emba is right about why conservatives are uncomfortable seeing critical race theory taught in schools. And they are right to oppose it.
