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| Winkler |
Mike Winkler, a progressive – very progressive -- state representative from Vernon, Connecticut, tumbled into a postmodern mare’s nest when he attempted, poorly, to discriminate between different kinds of discrimination.
During a public hearing on bills before the Planning and
Development Committee, Winkler said that Greenwich Housing Authority member Sam
Romeo had counted Asian Americans among minorities presently suffering from
invidious discrimination. Winkler had just suggested that Greenwich officials had deployed zoning regulations to deny access to African Americans, and here was a Housing
authority member claiming that 37% of the population of Greenwich were
minorities.
Well yes, Winkler grudgingly conceded. However, “You count
Asians and other minorities that have never been discriminated against,” Winkler
said during the hearing, at which point the frigid waters of Critical Race Theory closed over Winkler’s
head. Critical Race Theory holds that the law and legal institutions are
inherently racist, and that race itself, instead of being biologically grounded,
is a social construct used by white people to advance their own political and
economic interests at the expense of people of color.
As a matter of history and common sense, one must admit that
Winkler may have had a point: there are different kinds and degrees of
discrimination. But, flourishing the
wrong end of the point, he ended up stabbing himself.
Surely all participants in the conference shown on YouTube would
agree there are differences in degrees and kinds of discrimination. The discrimination Martin Luther King Jr. bravely faced during three protest
marches from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery surely was different
in kind and ferocity than that faced by some black and white Americans
attempting to move into Greenwich. In the matter of discrimination, things have
improved remarkably since dogs were set on Selma protestors in 1965.
If Greenwich had ever relied on redlining to maintain what Critical
Race Theorists may regard as the purity of the towns’ racial stock, those
provisions have long since been swept from zoning regulations throughout all of
Connecticut’s municipalities. Times change, sometimes for the better.
No, no, nearly everyone from butcher to baker to candlestick
maker cried, more or less in unison. The price of admission to Greenwich is
dollar related. Not everyone can afford to live in Greenwich. If President Pro
Tem of the State Senate Martin Looney has his way, soon progressive Democrats
may impose a tax on Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” mansions, which will have the
unfortunate effect of making access to wealthy towns throughout the state even
less attractive to people of color who might be able to afford the price of the
mansions. Zoning provisions in Greenwich do not exclude potential admission to
the town for reasons of race, religion or color -- provided the potential
applicants have sufficient greenbacks in their bank accounts.
Howitzers were fired at Winkler from every direction.
Minority Republican State Senator Tony Hwang, an Asian American, stepped
forward to turn against Winkler a point often advanced by Critical Race Theory
soddened Democrats. According to an account in a Hartford paper, “Winkler, a white
man, simply cannot grasp the pervasiveness of Asian American bias, Hwang said.
‘You believe they have been discriminated less. You have never been in their
shoes.''' Democrat Attorney General William Tong, the state’s
highest ranking Asian American elected official, joined in. Tong “recalled
being asked during a debate in the House whether Asian Americans count as
people of color. ‘Let me assure you that Asian-Americans count and the hate and
discrimination against us is real,’’ Tong said Tuesday.”
The public scourging followed its usual course, and the sinner eventually showed repentance, apologizing for his ill-considered statement. “My comments are inexcusable, especially with the recent rise in violence against Asian-Americans,” Winkler said, according to a piece in CTMirror. “There is a long, painful history of Asian-Americans experiencing racism in this country, and I sincerely regret that I ignored that history and those experiences in my comments.”
No one knows at this point whether Winkler will receive an
absolution from the new priests of Critical Race Theory. And no Republican office
holder has yet emerged to claim that Republicans generally were not willing to
surrender to Democrats pride of place in the matter of resisting aggressions against blacks. In past times, the Democrat Party had supported slavery, Jim
Crow, the Klu Klux Klan, and the loosing of dogs on courageous freedom fighting
protesters such as Martin Luther King.
So it goes. No one seems willing to close on the chief point
– that, while traces of both racism and discrimination may still exist somewhere
in America’s dark cultural backwaters, the beast has largely been caged. Times really
have changed. King actually WON his battle for freedom and liberty, one of the
reasons the nation celebrates Martin Luther King Day.
If we are determined to proceed along lines indicated by
Critical Race Theory, Democrats, historically associated with the raw racism of
the post-Civil War period – Woodrow Wilson, an early progressive, approvingly
showed in the White House in 1915 the film “Birth of a Nation,” a celebration
of KluKluxery – should change the name of their party, so warmly have Democrats
in the past embraced racism and discrimination. This is worse than nonsense. It is reckless
and silly nonsense.
The view that the sins of the father should fall like an
executioner’s axe on the necks of their distant grandsons and granddaughters
is, combined with cancel culture, a petard that may be used to destroy the
foundational principles King referred to in his “I have a dream Speech.”
Zoning regulations in Greenwich are not “inherently racist”
because they are not racist at all. The Greenwich zoning board is not motivated
by racism. And Critical Race Theory is intellectual tripe. You cannot denounce
a racist past by bleaching it out of history books, and racial McCarthyism --
according to which any member of a present day political party is deemed
racist because the political party with which they associate had in the past
promoted racism – is every bit as destructive as political McCarthyism, when
the imputations are wrong and unjust.
It’s long past time for everyone to grow up.
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