LITMIR.BIZ

      June 23, 1997, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=24401; http://www.salon.com/1997/06/23/horowitz970623/.

       7

       Progressives Support Racial Divisions

      A Clinton task force has unanimously recommended against adding the category “multiracial” to the government census forms which now list four official race categories: white, black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Asian/Pacific Islander. According to news reports on this development, “The recommendation marks a victory for traditional civil rights and ethnic advocacy groups, including the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza, which were pitted against the newer multiracial advocacy groups.” Welcome to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of America’s racial politics.

      Begin anywhere: Asians (to pick only one of those official categories) are not a race. The National Council of La Raza (The Race) is an ethnic advocacy group, but neither the Hispanic nor the Latino ethnic constituency it claims to represent is really an ethnicity. They are language groups. Moreover, the terms Latino and Hispanic cover not only different but polarized ethnicities, nationalities and races (e.g., the Mexican Indians of Chiapas and their European-descended Hispanic oppressors). Finally, neither the NAACP nor La Raza can be said to be much concerned for civil rights these days, judging by their advocacy of racial and ethnic preferences and the zeal they have shown in opposing the civil rights claims of multiracial Americans.

      The multiracial latecomers to the debate have discovered that there is no room for them at the civil rights table. Despite creating their own advocacy institutions modeled on what’s become of the civil rights struggle, including a march on Washington to protest their “under-representation,” they have come up virtually empty in their quest for a census box. There is not going to be a Tiger Woods band in the American rainbow, at least not this year; no designation for the one-quarter white, one-eighth black, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter Chinese, one-eighth Indian American. Of course, the administration liberals didn’t fail to throw a crumb in the direction of the multiracials: namely, the ability to check off multiple boxes if they should so choose.

      A spokesperson for the multiracial coalition named Susan Graham, president of a group called Project Race, welcomed this “victory” but insisted that her troops would continue to pursue the multiracial category: “As it is, my children cannot be multiracial children. My children can be ‘check-all-that-apply’ children and I do not consider that fair.”

      It’s not really about fairness, Susan. It’s about a racial/ethnic spoils system, which is the sorry mess that civil rights advocacy has become in America since the death of Martin Luther King. The stakes here, of course, are not rights but entitlements: the set-asides, grants, voting district lines and other government (and now private) handouts that serve as payoffs to the racial/ethnic grievance-mongers. Otherwise, who could be against a multiracial census category, which if adopted would embody the celebrated American mosaic?

      Actually, I would be against it. I say this not only as a veteran of the once venerable civil rights struggle, but as the grandfather of three beautiful granddaughters who would qualify for the box that will not appear on your next national census and thus would not qualify for the affirmative action perks, the special even-if-you-don’t-really-need-them scholarships, and the minority even-if-you-have-to-subcontract-them-to-someone-who-is-actually-qualified-t o-do-the-job contracts.

      Of course, my granddaughters will be able to fill a preferred racial box anyway and qualify for all these perks if they just tick off the category which includes that part of their racial/ethnic chromosomes (in their case, black) that make the Clinton liberals and other social engineers of the new American apartheid feel good about themselves. I use the word “apartheid” advisedly, because apartheid in its origins was nothing more than an affirmative action program for the Boer minority, who were oppressed by the English.

      The current multiracial census fiasco ought to set off alarm bells to the nation, that we are headed down a terribly wrong path. We have already become a race-conscious society in a way that would have been unthinkable just a generation ago, when the phrase “without regard to race, color or creed” was still invoked whenever anyone wanted to describe American pluralism. Will the present path lead us down the road to deeper and more bitter racial divisions, ugly struggles over diminishing racial spoils, increasing civil conflict and eventually a South African future? Or perhaps just further into the realm of the ridiculous and the just plain stupid? I have no idea. But you can check one of the above.