OPINION:
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More than 150 years after they were forced to give up their slaves, Democrats today remain fully committed to ginning up race hatred in America.
For years, the Democratic Party has openly embraced “identity politics” as its primary strategy for winning elections. Democrats talk about it publicly and without apology. President Biden proclaimed that he picked his vice president because of the color of her skin.
Stop and think about that. Repeat that aloud. Say it slowly.
Mr. Biden picked his vice president because of the color of her skin.
There is a word for this. It’s called racism. And it is the calling card of the Democratic Party today.
It is also Kryptonite to America.
All the vision, hope and justice promised by the American dream vanishes when We the People are viewed through the toxic lens of racialism. The eternal words chiseled in the West Pediment of the Supreme Court — equal justice under law — are muted when Lady Justice removes her blindfold and sees race first.
Democrats have taken their “identity politics” to such extremes that they are no longer satisfied to divide Americans simply by race, religion and gender. Like a dope fiend who needs more and more heroin to keep the high going, Democrats now divide people by an ever-expanding alphabet soup of “gender identities.”
Once they have divided all Americans into racial ghettos, Democrats craft legislation and tailor political messaging — pitting each group against the others. They turn white against brown, Black against Asian, Palestinian against Jew, state against state, neighbor against neighbor. American against American.
And then they light the match.
Just last year, Mr. Biden signed into law “anti-lynching” legislation. In 2022. Democrats in Congress actually conducted a debate on whether lynching was hateful or not. (No one disagreed.)
As if that pointless posturing were not incendiary enough, Mr. Biden elaborated from the White House: “Racial hate isn’t an old problem — it’s a persistent problem. Hate never goes away. It only hides.”
Indeed. Mr. Biden was speaking from his heart — where racial hatred hides even today.
Remember, this is the same racist who told Black voters in 2012 that Republicans would “put y’all back in chains” if they won the next election.
These are the same racists who spent two years fanning the flames of racism in violent, deadly riots around the country — all in the name of winning the next election. In Virginia, they were so committed to their race war that Democrats actually hired actors to pose as racists with tiki torches at a Glenn Youngkin political rally.
Why, you ask, would politicians living in a modern, privileged, civilized society resort to such barbaric practices?
Simple. Because it is so damned effective.
And when you are a political party bankrupt of any new ideas, your resume in cities across the country is in flames and your voters have been destroyed by generations of your false promises, your only option left is fear itself.
And nothing stokes fear like racial hatred.
So, you turn on your TV today after the worst terrorist attack since 9/11, and American students are rioting in the street, chanting racist slogans, stalking Jews and defending terrorists.
You ask: How is this possible? In America?
The answer is simple: 20 years of racist “identity politics” shamelessly deployed by gutless, racist Democrats who will do anything to win the next election.
What you see on the streets and on campuses in America today is the racist dystopia that Democratic politicians in Washington have dreamed of for a long time.
It is a shocking reminder of what an utter lie the presidency of Barack Obama — and the vice presidency of Joe Biden — was. Billed as “hope and change,” it was actually race hate and retribution.
Perhaps we should have listened to Mr. Obama’s longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, when he sermonized to his congregation on the first Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001.
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards,” he said. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost!”
Or, as he said: “God bless America? No, no, no. God damn America!”
When people tell you who they are, you should listen.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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