There are those who believe that racialism can be scientifically validated. I believe it can. However no matter how much how accurate that validation it becomes it should never cross the threshold of legal standing.
It is a fundamental premise of Enlightenment thought that societies must recognize the basic equality of individuals. Which is to say that simply by the virtue of being human, of having a soul, that there is a plateau of respect below which no man should be placed. In saying so, we are also saying that there is a ceiling of respect above which no non-human should attain. These are the basics of human rights upon which Western society is built and towards which all of our civilizations aim.
A society of law seeks to place all humans as equals before the law and grants them standing as citizens to by protected by it and bound to it. In this way it establishes all of the expectations of all powers and freedoms, etc. It makes that plateau and ceiling. To be granted citizenship is to be placed on that plateau and acknowledged by that society as an equal in the eyes of the law. And to make that clear, here in America we establish that equality before the law WITHOUT REGARD to race, and a host of other distinctions.
So I repeat what I said about the racialists in the context of Skip Gates:
Many Americans strongly believe that positive discrimination works, and that it is, always and everywhere the best policy. And therefore when you boil it down there are two camps.
Ideological Tribe A
We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained without regard to race, creed, color.Ideological Tribe B
We believe that America is at its best when its mainstream is maintained with special regard to race, creed, color.[..]
But giant populations of people, especially Professor Gates himself and those of his current staunch defenders take it as axiomatic that special regard is the way to go. For example, white people should be sensitive to black people, because they are black. To them, race relations is a purpose and an end to itself. Whenever you hear the tell-tale words 'we still have a long way to go' it is an expression of their ethics. Their purpose is not to destroy race, but to create a fixed and permanent indemnification whose implications are stamped into law but whose weights and measures are under ideological control. That is why every year and after every significant racial excressence they desire and demand to have yet another national debate on the subject of race. Just so they get their words and priorities into the court of public opinion where they have had the upper hand since the passage of Brown.
There are those like commenter RR, they are a special case of Ideological Tribe B, which is to say they are convinced that race goes far beyond something that should be stamped into law and whose weights and measures are under ideological control, but that race is the proper way to interpret human biology and genetics.
It is not illegal to be racist in this country. Socially, freedom of association is just that. There is plenty of racial discrimination that can, does and will always take place which is legitimately outside of the spirit and the letter of the law, and plenty that goes on otherwise as well. We are as racist as we want to be and it can be said that our society is at racial equilibrium. There are no pressing legislative ideas, nothing in the top 20 agendas of the past several congresses. To state the obvious, some communities are a great deal more racist than others. People are living in American society where the racial tone is appropriate for them. Otherwise they move.
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So there is one thing to prove for these genetic racialists, and that is that for society's benefit there should be gradations in human and civil rights and the law should be changed.
That is to say that not to recognize that people are biologically and genetically inferior and superior forces people to live in a state of compromise that threatens society. Anything less than that, meaning a change in the law, is just a social freedom of the sort that allowed for White Citizens Councils and all sorts of other racialist and racist pressure groups. It's all a kind of big 'so what' if it doesn't involve the law, so far as I'm concerned. You're just another racist or racialist fragment of American society that's disenchanted with the way things are.
So where is your majority?
To question the premise of Enlightenment thinking, of the equality of man before the law, of modernism and the premise that any man can, no matter his blood, be taught any idea or speak any language, is a course whose options are thankfully small. But horrible ideas have long pedigrees as well. To violate the legal plateau is to ask to recalibrate the value of the individual and there is no doubt in my mind that the inevitable consequence will be a fascist atrocity with scientific precision.
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