The Outstater
Racism: The Rawest of Politics
NO AMERICAN should be denied employment or property because of the color of his skin, the modern dictum reads, unless he is white.
The exception was explained recently by Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago. The mayor, as a matter of official policy, says he favors blacks over whites for municipal positions and for contractural awards. His reasoning is threefold: 1) because blacks are “more generous” in protecting the rights of all others; 2) because blacks are owed for what has been “stolen” from them; and 3) to “shore up” the position of blacks in city government far into the future.
Mayor Johnson is both absurd and dangerous. Such a policy if applied generally by any race or ethnic group would negate the U.S. Constitution and set our civilization back a thousand years. Mere democratic election here does not bestow moral authority to wield regal powers over livelihood and property.
In fact, the Assistant U.S. Attorney General believes that the mayor violated the Civil Rights Act. She cites examples of alleged discriminatory hiring practices taken from the mayor’s recent speeches: “You ‘highlight the number of black officials in your administration,’” she wrote, quoting Johnson. “You then went on to list each of these individuals, emphasizing their race. … You then said that you were ‘laying’ these positions ‘out’ to ‘ensure that our people get a chance to grow their business.’”
What is bothersome is not that Johnson favors people from his own background (we all do that to a degree). What is bothersome is that skin color is his onlycriteria and that it is imposed partly as punishment on others.
Such vindictiveness, even to the point of criminality, is too often excused in polite company, both white and black, in the context of past slavery and discrimination. Ignored is that there is no ethnic or racial group in world history that has not been similarly victimized. How far back does a reparation mentality go anyway? How many people know, for instance, that more whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks to the United States?
Look, it boils down to the rawest of politics, the basest of politics, that is, If you are a dominate group you can use your power to advance “your people” however you see fit.
But thus reduced, such policy repels rather than attracts. It is a reason Europeans fled to the New World. It is a reason the middle class now flees to the suburbs, or South African farmers flee to wherever. It is a reason urban centers become hell holes.
All of which causes me to worry that similar thinking is ruling not just Chicago but my city. We have a new mayor. She is black, so are such concerns racist?
De facto, perhaps. For it is black mayors suggesting such policies (some only obliquely). Among the larger cities there is Johnson in Chicago, Eric Adams in New York, Brandon Scott in Baltimore, Justin Bibb in Cleveland, Tishaura Jones in St. Louis and Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C. Among the mid-sized cities, there is Sheldon Neeley of Flint, Mich., and Chokwe Antar Lumumba of Jackson, Miss. Bad examples all.
Whatever, it is fair to ask our mayor, a thoughtful and capable woman, if she disagrees with Mayor Johnson. It is an opportunity to make clear that our city is a place where all people are welcome, where it is safe to invest, to live and to work under Common Law. She can open the books to show that hiring and contracting here are awarded on merit alone.
We shall see. — tcl
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