Meaningless gestures in politics are nothing new, but they’re especially irksome when they’re disguised as something productive. And that’s exactly what a new resolution passed this week by the Minnesota House Rules Committee is.
The resolution, which is scheduled for a full floor vote next week, will declare racism a “public health crisis” and, according to Minnesota Public Radio, will commit the House “to actively participate in the dismantling of racism in areas of government, including health, public safety, and education.”
In other words, it will do nothing.
That’s not entirely true. What it probably will do is lead Democrats in the House to identify a bunch of disparities that have nothing to do with racism but for which there will be one proposed solution, and that’s to dump yet more money into more lost causes.
It’s like how the United States spends almost $14,000 per student in public grade school, and yet on average, they underperform on basically every measure compared to students in Japan, which dedicates almost half the amount of tax dollars per pupil. But what’s always the solution to closing that gap? More money!
We already devote an ungodly amount of money in an attempt to lift not just black people but everyone out of poverty. It hasn’t worked in the decades and decades that we’ve tried.
Otherwise, when you ask race equality activists what they want, if it’s not money, the answer is never clear.
Elie Mystal, a Harvard-educated black writer at the liberal Nation magazine, recently spelled out what he wants. “If white people want to help, they can do what I do, and go fight the racists,” he wrote. “Fight them in public, where everybody can see you. Fight them in private, where nobody can see you. Fight them at parties where I ain’t invited. Fight them every day, at all times, everywhere.”
Hey, white people reading this right now: After getting that tip, do you feel any more equipped to make America less racist? I didn’t think so.
Detroit-based political commentator Karen Dumas wrote on June 1 that whites should “own up to a legacy of discrimination sustained by a structure that continues to disproportionately benefit them” and should “respect black people enough to recognize that regardless of their level of sympathy, promoted compassion and cultural appropriation, they will never know what it is like to be black in America.”
Okay, done. Is racism over now?
We’re not getting anywhere with this, and the Minnesota resolution declaring racism a “public health crisis” is yet one more clue to that fact.
