The left-wing charge that America is a racist country is the greatest national libel since the Blood Libel against the Jews. America is, in fact, the least racist, multiracial, multiethnic country in world history.
Neither the claim that America is a racist society nor the claim that it is the least racist country can be empirically proven. Both are assessments. But honest people do need to provide arguments for their position. I have found every argument that America is racist, let alone "systemically" racist, wanting. For example, the police almost never kill unarmed blacks, and on the rare occasions they do (about 15 times a year), there is almost always a valid reason (as in the infamous 2014 case in Ferguson, Missouri); police kill more unarmed whites than blacks; the reason there are proportionately so many more blacks in prison is that blacks disproportionately commit violent crimes; and so on.
There are very powerful arguments against the charge that America is a racist society.
I offered one in my column last week:
No. 1: If there is so much racism in America, why are there so many false claims of racism and outright race hoaxes?
I offered 15 recent examples. Moreover, there were probably no racist hoaxes when America really was racist, just as there were no anti-Semitic hoaxes in 1930s Germany, when there was rampant anti-Semitism. You need hoaxes when the real thing is hard to find.
No. 2: The constant references to slavery.
If there were a great deal of racism in America today, there would be no reason to constantly invoke slavery and the Confederacy. The very fact that The New York Times, the leader in racist dishonesty, felt it necessary to issue its "1619 Project," which seeks to replace 1776 as the founding of America with 1619, when the first African slaves arrived in America, is a perfect illustration of the point. The fact that "The 1619 Project" was labeled false by the leading American historians of that era (all of whom are liberals and at least one of whom led a campaign to impeach President Donald Trump) adds fuel to the argument. Even regarding the past, the promoters of the "America is racist" libel need to lie to paint America as bad as possible.
No. 3: The reliance on lies.
"The 1619 Project," which will now be taught in thousands of American schools, is based on lies. All Americans who care about America and/or truth should inquire if their children's school will teach this and, if so, place their child in a school that does not.
Two of the biggest lies are that preserving slavery was the real cause of the American Revolution and that slavery is what made America rich.
Even the charge of endemic racist police brutality is a lie. There are undoubtedly racist police, but racism does not characterize police interactions with blacks.
No. 4: The large African immigration to the United States.
Nearly 2 million black Africans and more than 1 million blacks from the Caribbean have emigrated to the United States in just the last 20 years. Why would so many blacks voluntarily move to a country that is "systemically racist," a country, according to the promoters of the "America is racist" libel, in which every single white is a racist? Are all these blacks dumb? Are they ignorant? And what about the millions more who would move here if they were allowed to? How does one explain the fact that Nigerians, for example, are among the most successful immigrant communities?
No. 5: The preoccupation with "microaggressions."
According to the University of California's list of racist "microaggressions," saying, "There is only one race, the human race," is a "racist microaggression." This is, of course, Orwellian doublespeak. Anyone who believes there is only one race is not, by definition, a racist. If everyone in the past had believed there was one race, the human race, there would never have been racism, let alone a slave trade based on racism.
The very fact that the left came up with the intellectual farce known as "microaggressions," like the race hoaxes, proves how little racism there is in America -- because the entire thesis is based on the fact that there are so few real, or "macro," aggressions.
The race riots, the ruining of people's careers and lives over something said or done at any time in their lives, the ruining of professional sports (especially basketball and football), the tearing down of America and its history, the smearing of moral giants like Abraham Lincoln -- all of this is being done because of a lie.
As I wrote in a column three years ago: "The Jews survived the Blood Libel. But America may not survive the American Libel. While the first Libel led to the death of many Jews, the present Libel may lead to the death of a civilization. Indeed, the least oppressive ever created."
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is "The Rational Bible," a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, "No Safe Spaces," came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.