The Unraveling ‘Equity’ Racket - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The Unraveling ‘Equity’ Racket
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The 19th-century black educator Booker T. Washington feared that opposition to racism would turn into a financial racket. His fears have been realized. Many of today’s self-appointed scourges of racism conform perfectly to Washington’s words of warning: “I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”

The organization Black Lives Matter is such an obvious scam that even liberals in California are losing patience with it. California’s attorney general has told the organization to stop online fundraising and turn over outstanding tax documents. “BLM was given 60 days to file tax and charity documents for 2020 — the year it previously confirmed collecting a staggering $90 million, with at least $60 million left over after expenses and grants,” reports the New York Post.

According to the Washington Examiner, BLM “has had no known leader in charge of its bankroll since its co-founder Patrisse Cullors resigned in May amid scrutiny of her personal finances. The group also provided the wrong address on previous tax forms submitted to the IRS, and one of BLM’s board members recently took steps to conceal his role with the charity on his social media profiles.”

The unraveling of BLM is another embarrassment for the Biden administration. While it was placing BLM flags atop U.S. embassies, the organization was collapsing. Biden’s promotion of this sham organization is a permanent blot on his legacy and a measure of his willingness to serve as a puppet of the far-left.

Democrats will, of course, try to disentangle the ideology of BLM from its organizational troubles. But the two are tied together: BLM’s combination of Marxism and “racial equity” reduces “justice” to glorified theft. The step from theories rationalizing theft to actual theft is a small one. Many of the first Bolsheviks were bank robbers.

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” said the philosopher Eric Hoffer. But this progression is even worse if the cause isn’t great. “Equity” has always been a bogus cause, aiming not at goodness but at power. It seeks not the end of injustice but the creation of new ones. In ordinary usage, equity means treating everyone impartially. In the left’s usage, it means partiality toward some at the expense of others, according to whatever societal reengineering liberals favor at any given moment. This leads to the most absurd and unjust policies, such as Biden’s recently reported crack pipe distribution program for “underserved” communities. He can’t rest until everyone has equal access to high-quality crack pipes.

Kamala Harris famously defined “equity” as everyone ending up “in the same place” — an unrealizable goal that would entitle the government to commit endless violations of freedom and equality before the law. Following this bankrupt definition of equity to its logical conclusion, Harris called for rioters to be released from jail while cheering for the prosecution of the innocent Kyle Rittenhouse.

From San Francisco to Chicago to New York City, Americans can see the consequences of her rancid theory. It prompts prosecutors to treat the guilty as innocent and the innocent as guilty, all according to an “equity” calculus of who is and who is not “historically advantaged.” It shouldn’t surprise anyone that prosecutors who subscribe to this lawless and entitled culture, in which decisions turn not on evidence but on ruling-class ideology, would feel themselves immune from the law. Former Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, who peddled BLM ideology to the detriment of police officers, has been indicted for crimes involving the purchase of two homes.

Spouting Marxism from their mansions, the BLM activists are no different than members of the Soviet nomenklatura, who would retreat into their dachas after a day of show trials. They, too, defined equity as lowest-common-denominator misery — forcing everyone down to the same level — while making sure to exempt themselves from that fate. They even affected a posture of racial enlightenment, criticizing the United States during the Cold War for its racial strife. But they eventually lost their power, undone by their own hypocrisies and lies.

The disintegration of BLM is following the same pattern. It has been consumed by the corruption that inevitably follows Marxist lies and temptations disguised as justice. The ethos that BLM fosters, as evident in such slogans as “looting is reparation” and give rioters “space to destroy,” sanctifies stealing. Why would its officers refrain from the very counsel they urged upon the mob?

What makes all of this even more disgraceful is that the U.S. government under Joe Biden clothed this corruption in the garb of “equity” and turned U.S. embassies into extensions of BLM’s rot.

George Neumayr
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George Neumayr, a senior editor at The American Spectator, is author most recently of The Biden Deception: Moderate, Opportunist, or the Democrats' Crypto-Socialist?
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