OPINION:
In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now-famous “I Have a Dream” speech imagining a time when his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Then, as now, the words ring powerful. But with Democrats at the helm, that dream will never come.
How can it when the entire imaginations of leftist politicians courting black votes are tied tight to the concept of the giveaway — not the self-sufficiency?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to dole out $7 billion in tax dollars to help minorities launch their own businesses. Beto O’Rourke wants to create a commission to study up on reparations and to find ways to “repair this country from its very founding, kidnapping peoples from West Africa, bringing them here in bondage to literally build the wealth of the United States,” he said, during a recent trip to Beaufort, South Carolina, The Associated Press reported. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who first scorned reparations in favor of targeted financial aid to black communities, later turned coat and said he’d sign a reparations bill if he were president — and then went even further and signed on to Sen. Cory Booker’s reparations bill.
But the king of all kingly giveaways has to be Pete Buttigieg’s “Douglass Plan for Black America,” a little 18-page policy project he described as a means of addressing, in his words, America’s “systemic racism.”
What systemic racism, you ask?
That’s the phrase Democrats use when they want to justify their attempts to completely thwart America’s capitalistic economy, completely undercut America’s concept of limited government, completely gut America’s system of law and order and democratic-republican rule. Their line of logic is this: Founders were slaveowners, which means they were racist, which means the governing documents they created were inherently racist — which means these documents must be tossed to the side, along with the systems they support, and then a newer, non-racist form of government implemented in place. Like socialism.
It’s all lie and deception, of course. America’s flooded borders alone will attest to the nation’s ongoing exceptionalism. But this is today’s politics. The race goes to the one with the flashiest prize, with the sparkliest freebie.
So really, kudos to Buttigieg — who’s polled zero with blacks in some instances — for bypassing the nickel-and-dime approach to winning the minority vote, the one seemingly favored by his colleagues on the Democratic presidential campaign trail, and instead, coming up with a sort of one-stop-shopping plan to scoop up whole masses of ballots from these special interest communities. This “Douglass Plan” has it all.
It calls for $25 billion for historically black universities. It calls for more black school teachers. It vows to dismantle racial disparities in health care. It cuts the number of black inmates at state and federal institutions. It increases aid for certain social services. It abolishes the death penalty. It grants government contracting favor to black business owners. It transfers abandoned properties into the hands of minority caretakers. It even hikes the minimum wage and abolishes the Electoral College.
It doesn’t bring back to life Eric Logan, the 54-year-old black man who was shot by South Bend police and who then became political coal in Buttigieg’s stocking. But flash, glitz, sparkle — it does help with voter registration issues in minority communities.
And then some.
And all that to say — this has become such a problem for our government.
The politics of race has become in itself a bit of systemic racism in our political world.
The more politicians reach out to individual races to rectify supposed wrongs, the greater the race divide in our nation grows.
No longer are policies simply American. No more are legislative proposals simply for the melting pot. They’re all targeted, they’re all special interest, they’re all cleverly pitched as beneficial to one specific party or group or consortium over another. As if to say — and this is really the racist part — hey, special interest, you’re not capable on your own, you need special assistance.
Democrats do this regularly. But the “Douglass Plan” is the worst of the worst. Its rhetoric is divisive; its content divides; its intent, even, whether wittingly or not, patronizing and demeaning and dehumanizing.
It’s hardly the dream.
And from the lips of the same man who spoke of that most noble dream some five-plus decades ago, comes this other bit of wisdom: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
Democrats could learn a thing or two from King’s point on that. Politicking on platforms of bitterness and hatred, disguised as they are as soothing salves of racial wounds, only keep America’s course straight on the path of race-based divides.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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