South African writer and journalist Rian Malan scorches the “toxic and demented racial politics,” which has caused his country to explode last week, in a New York Post op-ed.
South Africa witnessed riots and looting. People demolished private businesses as cargo vessels stayed away “because it’s too dangerous to unload them.” People are hungry and left without jobs, especially young back men. The riots have left 63% of them jobless.
Malan, who traced the origin of the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” sees those politics entering American society through critical race theory (CRT) and race-baiter Ibram X. Kendi.
The politics sprout from what Malan calls the Beautiful Idea, which we hear from “the sermons of critical race theorists trying to force you to take the knee and atone for your supposed sins.” This idea “pushed South Africa to the brink.”
Kendi “blames all racial disparities on racist policies.” But Kendi cannot find a specific policy:
But what policies is he talking about? Kendi is reluctant to be drawn on this score, and with good reason: He can’t name the policies, because they don’t exist anymore. In your country, all discriminatory laws have been repealed, all forms of overt racism outlawed and replaced by laws that enforce preferential black access to jobs, housing and college admissions.So Kendi must insist that an invisible miasma of “systemic racism” infects white people and propels them to act in ways so subtly racist that most of them aren’t even aware they’re sick until it is pointed out to them by diversity consultants.
The same equity Kendi pushes caused South Africa to break out into chaos and more inequality.
President Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008) implemented the Beautiful Idea in sports. He did not like the rugby team because it did not have adequate racial representation. He preferred racial representation over team success.
Then Mbeki pushed it into the economy:
At least initially, Mbeki’s scheme worked fairly well. Some blacks became billionaires. Many others joined the white suburban elite and sent their kids to private schools. Transformation of the civil service spurred the growth of a new black middle class, generally commanding salaries far higher than in the private economy.But in the longer term, the economic consequences were devastating. In addition to paying taxes at Scandinavian levels, South African corporations were required to cede large ownership stakes to black partners, whether or not they brought anything to the table besides black skin and connections in high placesFirms were also required to meet racial quotas in hiring and ensure that management was racially representative, meaning roughly 88 percent black. Tendering for government business became increasingly pointless, because contracts were invariably awarded to black-owned firms, even if their prices were double, triple or tenfold.Investment dried up. Brains drained. The economy stagnated, causing unemployment to surge to 11.4 million today, from 3.3 million in l994. The upshot: utter misery for the underclass, doomed to sit in tin shacks, half-starved, watching the black elite grow fat on the pickings of equity laws and rampant corruption.
In other words, putting one race above another will not solve anything. White people think it must be done, but black South Africans differ (emphasis mine):
Most black South Africans recognize this. By 2021, only 3 percent of them cited racism as a serious problem, according to a survey by the Institute of Race Relations. The same survey found that 83 percent of black South Africans were in full or partial agreement with the following statement: “Politicians are talking about racism to excuse their own failures.”Which brings us to the slender silver lining in this dark story. Many black South Africans who oppose this lawlessness were out in force last week, manning roadblocks to keep the mobs away from their homes and businesses.
We see similar actions in America. White farmers sued President Joe Biden over a USDA loan forgiveness program only for minor farmers. A federal judge temporarily blocked the program. Two federal courts ruled it unconstitutional.
The farmers filed a lawsuit earlier this month in the federal District of Minnesota.
Support fell for the Black Lives Matter movement a year after George Floyd’s death. The New York Times made it sound like only whites stopped supporting it, but it also dropped among blacks, Hispanics, and Asians.
Let’s go back to schools and CRT. Professor Jacobson argued we need to fight CRT to stop society from turning on each other. He said:
What we are witnessing in real time is the wholesale turning of society against itself. The implementation of Critical Race Theory in various forms is a part of it, turning society against itself through manufactured racial conflict. This racial self-flaggelation is epitomized by Ibram X. Kendi’s misleadingly titled “antiracism” formula, in which the world is divided into “antiracists” (engaged in a never-ending struggle to unravel ‘systemic’ racism by destroying norms) and “racists” (everyone else who does not agree with them or just wants to be left alone or advocates treating people without regard to skin color). CRT and its offshoots are societal dead ends of perpetual conflict and repression.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY