OPINION:
Not that you’d know it by watching CNN or scrolling through Twitter, but we’ve worked hard to end the practice of separate but equal in this country. Now President Joe Biden and the left are institutionalizing it again, declaring all-out war on equality.
Mr. Biden’s empty “unity presidency” has morphed into the “equity administration,” hellbent on denying bedrock American principles in favor of preferences based solely on group identity. In Joe Biden’s America, some are more “equal” than others.
Saving America from this assault on equality means fighting to protect free speech and intellectual diversity in all our institutions.
Equity is pitched by Mr. Biden’s handlers as an inoffensive equality 2.0, but the movement’s radical aims are far more divisive and destructive to individual liberty than they will admit.
For those unfamiliar, “equity” is an academic concept straight out of 1960s critical race theory and ethnic studies. It is now influencing how the Biden White House addresses everything from social policy, censorship and economic matters to school curricula and spending.
Equity treats individuals differently based on their affiliation with an ever-growing number of historically marginalized groups in a new hierarchy of victimization defined not by law or fact but by a cabal of leftists in media, academia, Big Tech and the Democratic Party. It focuses relentlessly on “systemic racism” and “White supremacy” without evidence that such conditions exist to a degree that would warrant government-enforced preferences.
That’s bad news, particularly if you’re a White male heterosexual who was born here, hasn’t been to prison, holds a job and earns a decent living because you worked hard, went to school and don’t need welfare.
Equal opportunity is impossible in a society that creates conditions where certain groups are considered more equal than others. Equity goes beyond a “hand up” or ensuring equal administration of laws. It encourages discrimination and redistribution of wealth, property and rights.
When asked about the president’s stated support for consideration of trillions of dollars in reparations for Black Americans, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Mr. Biden “continues to demonstrate his commitment to take comprehensive action to address the systemic racism that persists today.”
In his Inaugural Address, Mr. Biden identified “a cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making,” a reference to the controversial 1619 Project, an ahistorical polemic that casts the country’s history as irredeemably racist.
Mr. Biden used his executive power to cancel former President Trump’s 1776 Commission. The Biden-Sanders $1.9 trillion spend-a-thon would deliver $4 billion in relief for Black and minority farmers while denying struggling White farms the same assistance. The Transportation Department under Mr. Biden is, for the first time, using race as a criterion for nearly $900 million in infrastructure discretionary funds.
Mr. Biden is so wedded to this divisive course he even nodded to Black Lives Matter and the defund-the-police movements when memorializing two slain FBI agents. This month, Mr. Biden’s Department of Justice ended a lawsuit against Yale which alleged discrimination in its admissions policies.
In this moment we need to build a determined movement to stand up for our constitutional heritage of equality under the law and realize Martin Luther King Jr.’s goal of a truly colorblind society.
Combating this will come both through political as well as legal means, including intellectual diversity laws in higher education, employment lawsuits under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to combat critical race theory, fighting anti-conservative discrimination in employment and contracts, and calling out violations of Titles VI and IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
It will mean running conservative candidates for local school boards and filing defamation lawsuits to protect conservatives maliciously accused of racism for their political opinions. It also means corporate boycotts and ending protections for companies that stifle free speech.
Equity weaponized by the Biden administration is a divisive power grab with no basis in our constitutional history and contrary to individual rights. This war on equality should be called what it is. Racism is racism, Mr. President.
• Tom Basile, host of Newsmax Television’s “America Right Now,” is an author and adjunct professor at Fordham University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences where he teaches earned media strategy.
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