Is Conservatism Racism?
The short answer is “No”. The long answer explains why:
If you define helping people without regard to their race as racism, then I suppose you could say the answer is yes. But then, how can you be racist if you don’t regard race? I am quite against any attempts by government to catalogue, measure, define, or otherwise monitor the race of citizens. Why? Well, why should ones race matter? Why should government care if someone working for them or another company has a different shade of skin than another person or that their ancestors came from one Continent or another? (Side note: I prefer the term heritage rather than race which can imply a biological rift since the differences between various groups of people are more cultural than simply genetic variations within mankind).
Once you begin to catalogue race you state that their race matters.
Once you begin to help people based on race you make a statement that it is their race that needs help.
In both cases the individual loses out as it no longer matters what the content of a man’s character is, but the color of their skin. This is wrong, morally. It also happens to go against the idea that “All Men are Created Equal”. Liberalism can be summed up as such: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than other.” In other words it is white supremacy. It is racism guised as caring, masquerading as equality. This form of equality is not rooted in the concept that “All Men are Created Equal” but that some are equal only when allowed by their “superiors”.
Where is freedom to be found in that?
Conservatism seeks equality of all men, not because they are or are not a particular race, but because they are men; mankind. The United States is here to protect Freedom. It cannot grant it as it already exists. This, in the end, is why the Civil War was fought: Maintaining the Union to protect Freedom rather than see the Union split with the continued denial of Freedom to a group whose only ‘crime’ was having darker skin. Today people are under the mistaken impression that Government grants freedom. No, Government takes it away – when we let it.
I view Conservatism as seeing mankind akin to a single human body. People make up various parts of that body but they are equal despite their heritage and all serve to make the whole function. However, Liberalism views mankind as separate bodies by matter of race. It does not view them as equal since they are a ‘different’ body so only the superior, more evolved race can then grant the inferior ones equality. Where is the opportunity, the freedom, in that?
Liberalism’s action in government appear, on the face, be good, noble. Conservatism’s inaction, appears the opposite. Yet these appearances are deceiving as the former views the role of government as needing to grant while the latter views it as needing to protect. One does not view freedom and equality as inherent while the other does.
This is something I have thought for decades and was prompted to write about it after seeing the title of Shelby Steele’s article in the WSJ.