The Hidden Racism Of America's Woke Left: A Closer Examination

America's woke Left lectures the rest of the population almost daily that racism is evil, and that they are the ones fighting it. Yet, their ugly and racist reactions to Senator Tim Scott's (R-SC) speech demonstrate that the woke Left is no different from the very racists they condemn. The woke Left judges people and treats others differently based on the color of their skin, with particular hatred reserved for minorities who don't embrace the woke ideology. The only difference between the skinheads and the woke Left is that the woke Left hides its racism under cover of nice-sounding words such as "fact-finding," "equity," "social justice," and, of course, "anti-racism."

The woke Left's racism is not a phenomenon that exists only on social media. It has permeated throughout our society, from the government to health care to large corporations and schools. It is becoming a systemic problem in America.

Woke racism has influenced how governments at both the federal and the state/local levels have structured COVID-19 aid programs to Americans. For instance, as soon as Joe Biden became the U.S. president, he announced that his administration would restructure the COVID-related small business loan program by prioritizing businesses owned by minority and female Americans. A month later, Democrats in Congress wrote a special clause in the "American Rescue Plan," a federal COVID-19 relief package, instructing the secretary of agriculture to provide debt relief to farmers based not on concrete needs but on the color of recipients' skin.

At the local level, Democratic Oakland, California Mayor Libby Schaaf announced that the city would hand out a monthly guaranteed payment to its Black and Indigenous families and other people of color (BIPOC, as it is commonly referred to). However, poor whites who live below the poverty line are not eligible. Mayor Schaaf is a member of the National Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and hopes to eventually export her city's race-based basic income program throughout the nation. Oakland is hardly a model of success in poverty reduction: The city has seen its poverty rate and homeless population increase after spending millions on various anti-poverty programs for decades.

Woke racism has also influenced essential health care decisions. Some woke "health experts" argued that "social justice concern," alongside "science," should help drive the CDC's decisions about how to prioritize COVID-19 vaccine distribution. The CDC created a "social vulnerability index" to help guide distribution, which de-emphasized the elderly even though they are the most vulnerable segment and have suffered the highest fatality rate throughout the pandemic. According to The New York Times, woke "experts" openly spoke about how letting the older populations who are also whiter die helps "level the playing field." An infectious disease expert at Harvard even argued that teachers weren't essential workers because "they are often very white." This normalization of racism among woke experts should send chills down the spine.

Given the growing wokeness of America's big corporations, one should not be surprised to learn that American workers are indoctrinated with woke racism disguised as mandatory diversity training. For example, employees at Coca-Cola were required to take a diversity training course that suggested they be "less white" and "less oppressive." The company pulled the training after an internal whistleblower exposed it, but there’s no doubt many American workers are still subject to similar training throughout corporate America.

Woke racism even now affects adoptions by discouraging white families from adopting black children. Naomi Schaefer Riley, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, concludes that this approach "meant that a lot of Black children languished in foster care rather than finding permanent homes" because "there are many more Black children in foster care than there are Black families volunteering to take them in."

Education: A Ground Zero for Woke Racism

Of course, woke racism is most evident in our education system. Some colleges have racially segregated dorms and organize separate graduation ceremonies for students of different races and identities. However, the most harmful effects of woke racism come in the form of teaching.

Children as young as the third grade are indoctrinated with critical race theory (CRT), which claims a person's skin color will determine his/her future. CRT designates all white people as oppressors who "hold power and stay in power," while all people of color are viewed as oppressed. The only exception is Asians, as CRT treats them as "white-adjacent" due to their overall economic success and educational attainment. This crude and divisive teaching instills "guilt" and shame among white students while engendering hopelessness among minority students, leading them to believe little can be done to improve their lives based on their own merit (because merit is also considered "white privilege"). Despite the harm CRT presents, the Biden administration's Department of Education has signaled its intent to push CRT on all public schools in America.

While actively promoting CRT in classrooms, woke educators and administrators also willfully dumb down education in the name of fighting racism and achieving equity. Math, science, and proper English grammar are regarded as racist. For instance, the Oregon Department of Education encourages teachers to teach "ethnomathematics" (learning how different cultures use math) because "white supremacy manifests itself in a focus on finding the right answer and demanding students to show their work." For the woke Left, anyone who insists that "2+2=4" is viewed as a white supremacist. This ridiculous notion that objective math is racist is gaining traction in some of the largest school districts in the nation.

The Virginia Department of Education planned to eliminate all accelerated math options before 11th grade, but they only retracted the plan after public backlash. Meanwhile, the California Department of Education is moving full-speed ahead to eliminate calculus from high school curricula and cancel all gifted programs for high-achieving students. This movement is driven by the belief that Asian students are over-represented in those programs, based on statistics showing that "In California from 2004 to 2014, 32 percent of Asian American students were in gifted programs, compared to 8 percent of White students, 4 percent of Black students, and 3 percent of Latinx students." Canceling gifted programs to prevent Asian children's dominance represents a form of anti-Asian bigotry the woke Left is reluctant to admit.

Keep in mind that such eliminations won't affect affluent families, as they can afford to hire after-school tutors to ensure their children learn the knowledge necessary for future success. However, poor minority children will suffer as they are denied the opportunity to acquire the knowledge needed to pursue promising careers and upward economic mobility. Rather than achieving equity in education, the woke Left's policies will perpetuate racial disparities in educational attainment and financial outcomes in our society.

The Systemic Problem of Woke Racism

The Cambridge Dictionary defines racism as policies and practices that "result in and support an unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race." By this definition, what the woke Left practices is racism. It appears that everything the woke Left does will result in unfair advantages for some and harm for others based solely on race. Since the woke Left controls our government, big corporations, mainstream media, health care, and education, woke racism has become a systemic problem that keeps America racially divided and unequal.

For America to achieve genuine racial healing and equality of opportunity for all, we must confront woke racism just as we confront old-school racism. It is essential to recognize the detrimental effects of these ideologies and to work towards a more balanced and equitable society.

Helen Raleigh, CFA, is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. Helen is the author of Backlash: How China's Aggression Has Backfired and Confucius Never Said. Follow her on Twitter: @HRaleighspeaks and visit her website: www.helenraleighspeaks.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.