Commentary: Racism in America is the symptom, identity politics is the disease

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Blaze

While the events on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, represent a new height in the increasing racial tensions in America, the racism exhibited by people in this country is nothing new.

While I could easily point to our history of slavery, and the blatant racism seen during the civil rights era as perfect examples of America’s history with racism, it’s the recent past that fascinates me. It, unlike the racism this country has previously conquered, has a different flavor to it.

While I never expect it to fully go away, the racism we’ve experienced in the past was supposed to stay in the past with the activism and death of Martin Luther King Jr. From then on, America was to live by the creed of not judging each other by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

To be sure, many jumped on board with this idea of a non-racist America across the racial spectrum, and still live with those principles today. But in America’s acceptance of being a country that rejects racism, people began to appoint themselves as social judges, juries, and executioners.

Figures such as Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson found out that they could use the concept of racism as a cudgel with which to beat society for slights both real and imagined. Being a victim, they found, was lucrative. Furthermore, the media was only all too ready to platform people like Sharpton and Jackson, and shine sensationalistic spotlights on anything that remotely resembled racism.

Racism became a successful business for both activists and the news organizations, and at its center was the concept of “identity politics."

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The real bigotry of the left.