Reversing Racism

MERELY BY TURNING ON conservative or Christian conservative (they are essentially the same) talk radio for a few minutes, one can obtain adequate material for a brief but interesting essay. Even a few seconds will do. Evidently thinking himself quite clever, the man with the stentorian preacher qualified voice was saying something to the effect: "the radical left (anyone left of center is by definition a member of "the radical left") is always accusing conservatives and Trump supprters of racism. But, remember not so long ago when Joe Biden promised to nominate for the Supreme Court a person of color, and of the female gender?".. The not so subtle implication is that it is Biden and the "radical left" who are the true racists.That, as we like to say, is a lot to unpack. First, yes indeed, I and many on the progressive end of the political spectrum do in fact often accuse conservatives of being racist. I take it a step further: I assert, without equivocation, that not only is racism a core American value, but that it is, always has been, and remains a core conservative value. Conservatives, especially of the christian kind, are folks who prefer European-American WASPs, who tend to be opposed to immigration, but, on balance, prefer immigrants from places like, say, Norway, as Trump put it, to immigrants from "shit hole" countries,as Trump put it, in Africa. As Trump puts it, so American Christian conservatives put it. The racist accusation against Biden, who indeed succeeded in putting his female African-American on SCOTUS, is remindful of the argument used against affirmative action, that well intentioned and generally helpful program recently gutted by our current extremist far right wing radical Supreme court. The argument stated that affirmative action, by establishing racial quotas in an attempt to give all races proportionate access to higher education among other beneifts of society, benefts traditionally reserved for the wealthy and the white, is in itself a form of racism, since it it is a policy based on race. Obviously, conservatives still think that argument quite clever. That it isn't can be easily proven. Suppose you have a country in which half the population is "black", and half of it is "white". Suppose further that in this theoretical but easy to imagine country, all government positions, all high offices, all well paying jobs, are occpupied by members of the "white" demographic, and that all low paying jobs are held by members of the "black" demographic? All privileges and benefits of all kinds; the sole possession of the whites, the blacks denied access, completely. That would be a racist country, correct? Suppose that suddenly God decreed that henceforth all good jobs, all political offices, all of society's benefits must be available to both types of people? Would God's decree be racist, or would it be a remedy for racism? Affirmative action was not racism. It was a rememdy for exsting racism, a means of eliminating it. By choosing an African-American woman for a position on the U.S. Supreme Court, Biden was not practicing racism, he was using the only method of addressing the traditional racism inherent in placing all white male justices on the Surpreme Court. If women have been excluded from the high court, or from anthing else, the remedy is to change course, and to include women. The exclusion of women was sexist. The newly implemented inclusion of women is not sexist, it is the remedy for sexism. Reversing policy by including African- Americans because they are African-Americans is not racist, it is the only means by which racism can be reversed. Nothing could be more obvious, except to a conservative.