We can all agree that the events in Charlottesville, Virginia were unacceptable from every possible perspective. White supremacists and racists must always be condemned for their actions. So, too, should alt-left extremists who participate in violence. However, the events in Charlottesville bring to light a much darker problem we face in the U.S that nearly every single media outlet got wrong.
There isn’t a “sudden rise in racism.” The real problem our nation faces is simple: the rise of identity politics.
Many people wish to blame President Trump for the rise of the alt-right, but the reality is that this has been coming for a long time and the American Left holds most of the blame.
For generations, the left has taught racial and ethnic minorities that they must live, act, and vote a certain way on the basis of their race and ethnicity. If an individual refused to behave this way, they were attacked, isolated, and had their racial identity called into question with terms like Uncle Tom, Oreo, or Uncle Juan.
It starts off simple enough. You’ve probably heard of these ideas:
“We should support affirmative action because we don’t have enough (x) in (y) institution.”
“We should offer business loans to (x) group because there aren’t enough (x) owned businesses.”
“We should vote for (y) policies because it’s good for our (x) people.”
“We need to create the (x) chamber of commerce” or “We should make a (y) student union.”
The problem with these ideas is that it’s a zero sum game.
The moment you pass a policy to provide an institutional advantage or preference for one group, you immediately isolate others. For every policy that we pass designed to benefit one group, such as providing black preference loans, we isolate and remove an opportunity for those not of that group to benefit from such a policy. This is a dangerous game to play, and the left plays it well.
Liberals push this dream of racial or ethnic diversity for no other outcome than the sake of diversity alone. In pushing diversity, they destroy the individual. In every corner of modern life, we are labeled as African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, or (X) American. And with that, we are expected to act and vote on the basis of such labels.
Have we somehow forgotten about the largest racial group in the country, white Americans? Have we somehow lost an understanding of the past 200 years when one group passed laws that favored their race alone?
White Americans seem to be the only group in the country today that don’t vote on the basis of racial identity. They will even go as far as to vote for policies that provide clear advantages to non-whites and even disadvantages to whites.
How long do we think this benevolent attitude in the form of white guilt will last before white Americans begin to realize that such policies make it harder for them to get loans, get into school, or get jobs?
This realization is now happening and whites aren’t engaging in anything different from what other racial groups in the U.S. are already doing.
The real danger to this nation isn’t a rise in white nationalism, the KKK, or Neo-Nazis — they’ve always been around. The real danger, found in the alt-right and alt-left, is collectivist groupthink in the form of racial identity politics.
The rise of the alt-right is simple: disenfranchised white Americans, who for the first time in a long time, want to advocate for policies that help promote their own identity.
Can we blame them for feeling this way when every day they are constantly blamed as the source of problems by minorities? Charlottesville is just the beginning, and things will get worse as more people fall victim to the cancer of identity politics.
If we as a nation want to get beyond the conversation of race and move past racism as a whole, we need to get to the heart of the issue and call it for what it is. We need to rid ourselves of identity politics.
You are not defined by your race or your ethnicity. You do not need to vote, act, or live a certain way of life simply because of the color of your skin or the heritage of your ancestors. We are each unique individuals defined by our life experiences that shape who we are. If we want our nation to heal, then it’s time we return to good ol’ fashioned American individualism. We must remember that we are Americans first, united by common ideas, not divided by different races.
