The problem with anti-racism

As promoted by the political Left today is that it is fighting old racism using new racism.  That's it.  The whole mantra of white privilege, systemic racism, white supremacy has come to mean anyone not Leftist with white skin in the way Jim Crow would have meant blacks.  

To that end it is encouraging kids and students today to embrace a racism I've not found in any American history textbook I've collected.  And I collect history textbooks.  My oldest is a copy of an American history textbook published in 1933.  

Would I call that textbook the most racially sensitive book in history?  No.  But we must remember that if its attitude toward slavery was 'America is awesome because we used to own slaves but we don't now', it was in the context of a world where slavery - including the African salve trade - was still running strong. 

Nonetheless, despite its approach to issues like segregation, Jim Crow laws (non-existent apparently), American Indians and other minorities, there is nothing in it suggesting white American students should spit on blacks (negroes in that textbook), or 'Red' Indians or anyone.  It gives a vague impression that America is doing a great job trying to work things out for people on the fringes and leaves it at that.

Compare that to our textbooks today where students of all stripes - including, but not limited to, white students - are told to all but trounce whiteness, white people, or anything white as the racist Nazi scum they are.  They are literally being told, as my wife was in her company's diversity training, that all whites are ethnically guilty of the sin of all whites ever, should immediately repent and hang their heads in shame, and help invoke the banning and eradication of anything offensive by way of its white origins. 

I thought of this as I saw several references to this story pop up over the Internet.   For me, it is what it is.  Those students are merely being racist because they're taught to be. To punish them comes off as disingenuous at best. 

Sure there was certainly racism in schools when I was in school.  Though students often pushed racist ideas and speech because it was part of the all important rebellion against the establishment.  And if the establishment said it's wrong to call blacks ethnic slurs, the students were happy to rebel.  Just as they were crapping on Christianity, or flipping the bird to America in general.  Rebellion was, after all, the highest virtue. 

By rebelling in that way against blacks and other minorities, however, they got in trouble for their efforts.  The difference here is that this school is going to punish these students for taking to its logical conclusion what the schools and school systems are teaching them. If kids still acted racist in my day, it came with punishment because it was against what the schools by then were teaching. Today, these kids are getting the hammer dropped on them for doing what the schools are doing themselves. 

And I have a problem with that, beyond the clear and naked racism behind it all.  If you are going to say it's wrong to spit on white people, whiteness, white heritage and culture, then by all means punish students when they do so.  But if that's all they hear from one coast to another, including in our fine institutions of secondary education, then take a long look at where they came up with these ideas and perhaps punish the ones who really deserve it.