“Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.”
This is part of the concurring opinion made by Justice Clarence Thomas in reference to the case Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. vs. President and Fellows of Harvard. This came about because of a lawsuit filed by a group of Asian students against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. They sued because the universities’ admissions process permitted or denied entry based on race.
After conducting research on its 2027 graduating class, Harvard noted that 29.9% of its admitted applicants were Asian American. In an effort to “make it more equal,” they began to alter who they admitted, to even out the racial representation. This is not fair and equal, but biased.
“If an applicant has less financial means (because of generational inheritance or otherwise), then surely a university may take that into account. If an applicant has medical struggles or a family member with medical concerns, a university may consider that too. What it cannot do is use the applicant’s skin color as a heuristic, assuming that because the applicant checks the box for “black” he therefore conforms to the university’s monolithic and reductionist view of an abstract, average black person.”
As Justice Thomas explained, admissions should not be based on how you look, and the pity we may have for that, but who you are as an individual. So how did we get back here as a society? Have we progressed so far that we have inadvertently regressed to archaic habits?
In California, lawmakers plan to introduce a bill into legislation to consider a convict’s race in regard to their sentencings. Meaning that if a white man and a black man commit the same crime, under the same circumstances, with the same record, they will not end up with the same sentence all because of the color of their skin. Plainly, sentencing wouldn’t be based on the facts of the case but the facts of the face.
This is the product of woke ideology and is the exact definition of racism. I would go so far as to argue that this is precisely what the Left complains about so adamantly. Institutionalized racism. The institution of justice would be corrupted, no longer being blind and fair but instead pointed and preferential. How does this reflect MLK’s dream of being judged by the content of one’s character? Simple. It doesn’t.
This is regression. A reversion to a time when justice was biased. A time when coexistence was non-existent. A time when education was a luxury. A time when brothers and sisters in Christ who may have had a different pigmentation could not dine, reside, or recline in the same space. Over the past fifty years, each one of these issues has almost entirely been eliminated. And yet we have voluntarily moved backward so far that we have begun to celebrate segregation. We are celebrating division, not diversity. When embracing diversity, you will notice what makes each person unique, working together using our strengths to bolster our weaknesses.
However, on college campuses all over the U.S., division is not only acceptable but celebrated. Graduations are being held separately based on race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and more. The Department of Equity and Inclusion as well as other organizations advertise them as “affinity groups,” created to provide a safe space for the marginalized. A university should be an institution that champions not only a marketplace of ideas but also the diversity of those who contribute to it. Graduations are celebrations of everyone’s achievements together, not hidden away for a select group to appreciate.
Georgetown University, UCLA, and Grand Valley State University have held ceremonies for Middle Eastern, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Southeast Asian as well as other ethnic minorities all in the name of appreciation and diversity. However, this is not reserved to the liberal coasts. It is infiltrating schools within the Bible Belt. Both the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas have held separate ceremonies for Native American, Asian American, Pacific Islander, African American, and LGBTQ students.
While this may seem harmless, it is not true equality. They do not host white only ceremonies. On the contrary, they are actually exclusionary towards their white students in class and celebration. Equality would host separate events for each ethnicity, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and Caucasian. However, that is not the case. There is a concerted effort to ostracize an entire group of people with lighter pigmentation, all because of a history that none of them are individually responsible for.
It has become perfectly acceptable to openly criticize, reject, and blame white people for most problems in the world.
When confronted with the bigotry of their own actions, the universal scripted response you receive is “You can’t be racist to a white person.” Or “It’s reverse racism...not real racism.” These statements imply two things:
1) That racism in and of itself is inherent only to white people, and that it is synonymous with “white culture.”
2) Anyone who acts “racist” towards them is immediately absolved, because they are not of Caucasian descent. Simply put, because racism is supposedly synonymous with those who may have a lighter complexion than our own, I can say what I want, because I’m only doing to them what they’ve done to me.
But by definition, racism is attributing character, personality, and judgments to a person based on the color of their skin. This is not exclusive to only one ethnic group. If anything, this definition can be attributed to every single person in the world, because every day, every minute, every time we encounter a new person, we make judgments based on their hair, clothes, skin, and make decisions on how to treat them based on that initial assessment. Mind you, I’m not saying that every individual is a racist. However, I am saying that every individual in some capacity pre-judges someone else. This issue of racial bias is not exclusive to one group but is the responsibility of every person. Ultimately, the goal should be to not make pre-determined judgments, based on the superficial. Once we have interacted with that person, we can then come to educated conclusions.
So how did we get here? I propose three main reasons. Firstly, in an originally well-intended attempt to have true equality, we have overcorrected. Justice has been skewed. We have collectively believed that justice must always mean punishment, but sometimes justice purely means positive action in the right direction, representation. We have over-corrected and punished innocent parties. If God took that same approach to justice with us, in regard to, our sins, where would we be?
Secondly, we have allowed our physical differences to be weaponized for political gain. Within recent years, headlining issues for political candidates have been how they will handle the racial division in this nation. Racial grievances have been consistently highlighted in the news and media. Even though there have been good attempts made, a lot of these solutions, memorials, etc. are really the actions of virtue signaling. For example, Georgia representative Mesha Mainor was originally elected as a Democrat and recently switched parties. Her reasoning was simply that the Democrat party advertises itself as the champion of minorities, and yet has deliberately failed to make improvements to schools and education. She called out the hypocrisy that the Left will campaign on improving conditions for minorities, and protection against racism. “You should vote for us because you are a minority, and we ‘care.’”
Lastly, race is a heart issue. The Bible states in Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Man’s heart has a propensity to hate before love.
The Bible states in Romans 3:23 that, “All men have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” If that is the case, then who are we as individuals to be divisive and place ourselves above others? And if we are created in the image of God as Genesis 1:27 says, who are we to tear down our fellow image bearers? This regression has drawn lines in the sand that should have been left behind a long time ago, and yet here we are enabling victimhood and calling it justice.
My charge to all of us is that we acknowledge the sinfulness of man while at the same time being made in the image of God. We must also acknowledge that, because we are made in the image of God, we have the capacity, through the Holy Spirit, to see individuals as just that, individuals. We don’t have to prejudge others. So, yes, this is a heart condition, but Christ can heal the heart.
At the conclusion of George Orwell’s book Animal Farm, a very poignant statement is made:
“All animals are equal, but some Animals are more equal than others.”
Have we as a society regressed past the point of the merit of one’s character and back to the merit of one’s skin color? If so, we are saying that all men (all women, all students, all convicts, all individuals) are equal, some are more equal than others. But the truth is none are more equal than others.
