Chris Hayes: Tennessee GOP Wants To Ban Lessons On Systematic Racism

What is systematic racism?

It can’t be slavery which hasn’t existed as an institution in the United States since 1865. No one alive today has ever been a slave. No one alive today has great-grandparents that were slaves.

It can’t be Jim Crow segregation which hasn’t existed as an institution in the United States since 1965. The vast majority of Americans have never lived under segregation.

It can’t be White racism or prejudice. The polls show this has diminished to record lows and that the overwhelming majority of White Americans desperately want blacks to succeed.

It can’t be racists who control American institutions and who are conspiring to oppress blacks. If that were the case, it would be easy enough to identify the racists. Instead, American institutions are antiracist and discriminate against Whites and in favor of blacks and have done so for decades.

My best answer is that systematic racism is the stubborn persistence of racial inequality in our times in spite of the demise of slavery and segregation, the diminishing of White racism and prejudice, forced integration, decades of affirmative action and diversity ideology, trillions of dollars in social spending, a black president, the cult of White guilt and the stigmatization and marginalization of “racists” in all American institutions. Woke progressives have been flummoxed by reality itself and systematic racism is the mysterious, insidious force that has defeated them and kept blacks in their place in spite of their best efforts. It is an invisible conspiracy that permeates our system like translucent aether.

Progressives aren’t mature enough to accept reality and acknowledge that racial differences and differences between the sexes are hereditary and there is nothing that can be done about it. It is no one’s fault. This would demolish the foundation of their own ideology which is that human beings are equal and interchangeable units and that reality should conform to our will rather than accepting that our will should conform to reality. If racial inequality is natural, then there is no reason to believe it is a problem.