12 Steps to Becoming an Anti-Racist

Editorial note: I shouldn’t be permitted to write this article since looking back on my family pictures with my sister and parents, it turns out I’m a dirty white boy (abject apologies to Foreigner).

These days Martin Luther King is rolling over in his grave because we Americans are no longer judged by the content of our character, but by the color of our skin. As William Shakespeare once wrote in Hamlet, “”Me thinks thou dost protest too much.” Way too much!

Now that Joe Biden is firmly ensconced in the White House and the mean-tweeting Orange Man is back in Mar-Lago watching America headed for a dumpster fire, I suspect many of you are dying to know how you can become anti-racist.

A note of caution before beginning. The term anti-racism contains certain linguistic and logical enigmas that bear a moment’s consideration. First, logically how can something be not something and what would it mean if it could? Second, linguistically, anti-racist is poor use of language when there are several better, un-hyphenated words that bear the same but more parsimonious meaning. My unabridged Random House dictionary lists unprejudiced, impartial, nonracial as better alternative representations. I can guess that unprejudiced and impartial don’t carry enough hyperbole for the inventors’ tastes. Nonracial can be ruled out as an alternative word since the people using anti-racist are in fact, very racial. Could it be just the left’s penchant for virtue-signaling?

I have researched anti-racist, paying close attention to the New Yawk Times Magazine’s “1619 Project,” and the other writings of Nickle Hannah-Jones, Rockin’ Robin Di Angelo’s White Fragility, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, and Jim Wallis’ America’s Original Sin. Despite their literary infirmities, these are must-reads for those of you who want a two-fer, to be anti-racist and woke.

I know you passionately wish to become anti-racist and so I’ve given you some hopefully helpful propositions that allow you determine whether or not you are really a genuine anti-racist or simply an anti-racist wannabe.

1. If you supported, even marched, joining in the public demonstrations, arson and looting of stores and businesses in protest of George Floyd’s, Ahmaud Arbery’s and Breonna Taylor’s unjust, not just unfortunate deaths, you have taken a step toward being an anti-racist.
    
2. If you are a young person of color, by definition you are an anti-racist, unless you voted for Donald Trump in 2020 or Larry Elder in California’s recall election of Newsome this year.
    
3. If you believe there is no doubt that Justice Clarence Thomas actually sexually harassed Anita Hill and should not be a Supreme Court justice, you have taken another step toward being an anti-racist.
    
4. If you think Thomas Sowell is an Uncle Tom instead of a great economist and social critic, you have taken another step toward being anti-racist.
    
5. If you think James McWhorter is a young Uncle Tom who wrote that horrible book, Losing the Race, you have taken another step toward being an anti-racist.
    
6. If you agree that Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy as declared by a L.A. Times journalist, an Oreo—black on the outside but white on the inside, you have taken yet another step toward being anti-racist.
    
7. If you have voluntarily taken courses or seminars in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and now believe it is gospel, you have taken another anti-racist step.
    
8. If you believe that the disproportionate suspension of black children from schools is because of institutional racism since they don’t do anything wrong, you have taken yet another step toward being an anti-racist.
    
9. If you support doing away with ACT and SAT testing for college admission that abjectly penalizes many black children just for being black and not because of unionized teachers’  pedagogical deficiencies, you have taken another step toward being an anti-racist.
    
10. If you read the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or most mainstream newspapers and believe what you read in their news and editorial pages is the God’s truth, you have taken another step toward being an anti-racist.
     
11. If you believe highly paid professional athletes taking a knee during the playing of our national anthem is justified, despite the fact that most professional teams are at least 60% Black. you have taken another step toward being an anti-racist.
     
12. If you support and believe being woke is no joke but the new and necessary content of our character, then you have taken a final step toward being an anti-racist.

If you ticked off at five of these “qualities” on this anti-racist test, you are probably a pretender to the throne of anti-racism and simply a progressive Democrat who thinks the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Clinton and that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly and is now doing a fine job in the White House. To be a true anti-racist you must be able to tick all twelve items off this list. Proof that you are an anti-racist who is hell-bent on destroying America.

If you believe that being an anti-racist is little more that toxic victimhood, there is simply no hope for you. As John Stossel quotes John McWhorter’s wisdom, “If the ‘systemic racism’ cult wins, we all lose.”

Forgive this conservative white boy for telling you how it really is. Trying to be “not racist” is like trying to prove a negative, which for centuries has been a fool’s errand.

Elliot Steil” is the nome de plume for this essayist, for obvious reasons.