There has been a continuous push from the left to have more minorities’ voices heard in recent years. This can be seen in anything from the Grammy’s and Oscar’s to the advertisements on tv. All of these things have been under the blanket-statement narrative that certain interest groups are underprivileged and that they must be catered to in order to fix this. In reality, all this noise does is stir up racism and dissatisfaction in people.
Obama-era
I do not remember much talk of racism before Obama. I do not remember the separation of black and white or red and yellow or whatever from a vague perspective that white people were well-off and no one else was. I do remember, though, as a kid, the mentality of treating everyone equally. I remember the ideal of allowing everyone an equal chance of success or at least trying to. People weren’t so separated into categories of race, ethnicity, or gender. Anyone could succeed if they had the talent and worked hard.
I still remember being so upset at the speech Obama made where he arrogantly claimed that kids should not dream of becoming president, because it would be unlikely. Of course it was different under Trump when he actually took the kid who said he wanted to be president into the Oval Office. Neither example is about race, but it shows the difference in more of a discouraging mentality where you can’t do this stuff on your own and a mentality of optimism where anything could happen. This translates into victimization versus hope for the future.
Why does the left do this? It all boils down to the ballot box.
Identity Politics
Basically, the left attempts to appeal to certain groups, like minorities, gays, and women to gain votes, though creating these groups gives a sense of hostility toward other groups. They are isolated. These groups are told that they are marginalized, and that belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. It is hard for a person to have much hope when he or she is consistently told that our society will not allow him or her to succeed. On a broad scale, it is an example of a famous experiment. Women and African Americans scored worse on tests when they were reminded of their identities in areas where women and African Americans were believed to perform poorly.
These policies also cause a significant amount of division. There have been many Black Lives Matter protests where cities were burned, there was destruction of property, and violence occurred. Certain groups are created in the college and professional world, such as “black engineers” or “women in law”. These groups, for the most part, do not allow outsiders. They break up people of similar professions and areas of interest, giving less diverse viewpoints. Those groups can be used to create smaller friend groups, but the costs outweigh the benefits. Without them, for example, all kinds of law students might get together and learn from each other, not just women, or oftentimes an even smaller group of students.
Fairness: Equality of Opportunity vs Results
America is (or should be) a country of equality of opportunity, not results. People should be judged by merit, not what category they fall into. It should not be mandated-or really even promoted- to have 50/50 male/female engineers. College admissions should not place such an emphasis on “diversity” over test scores, GPA, and extracurriculars. It is not fair to reward and punish certain groups based on which group as a whole is doing supposedly better or worse. The inferior feeling from being told your group does not do as well in a certain thing is upsetting. I have felt this myself as a woman in co-ed sports and as a woman who does well in the sciences.
Ben Carson gave many examples in a speech of why equality of results (or equity) is not as good as equality of opportunity. He claimed that true equity is “impossible to attain”. It would be impossible for every ethnic group and both (27) genders to be represented equally in every private business or government office. He showed how programs that emphasize certain groups can even backfire. He gave the example of the government investing billions of dollars into black home ownership only to have current black homeownership rates “at the lowest level since the 1960s”.
In Summary: What Happened To Equality
Trying to force equality of results only makes a society as strong as its weakest link and those policies may even backfire. It is better to treat everyone the same and free from degradation. People from any race or either gender should be able to shine through their own talent and virtue.
Written by: Miranda Smith
