The enabling tool of what we call “cancel culture” or “wokeness” is language.
People are put in categories to which names are assigned, and this supposedly captures who they are and what should be done with them politically.
Unfortunately, the whole business of racial identification and categorization is not about advancing the quality of the human condition and human dignity but about progressive politics.
The left puts people in racial categories as instruments toward their political agenda.
In 1977, the Federal Interagency Committee on Education produced a five-race classification for the American population: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, White and Hispanic.
These categories, over time, continued to undergo changes and refinements.
The Hispanic category emerged in the 1970s, and the legislation described this group as “Americans who identify themselves as being of Spanish-speaking background and trace their origin or descent from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Central and South America, and other Spanish-speaking countries.” So, an American with roots in Spain and an American with roots in Peru wind up in the same category because their country of origin was Spanish-speaking.
Hispanic is neither race nor ethnicity. It is a category of political design, including individuals from 20-plus countries, with no commonality other than the language their grandparents spoke.
In the 2020 census, there are 19 different possibilities for self-categorization.
In both the white and Black categories, filers are now asked to respond to additional questions regarding their country of origin.
The strangest part of the emergence of this movement as a political force is that it constitutes everything that supposedly is undesirable that we want to eliminate. Racism.
Is it any less racism if I conclude who a person is and what they are about based on whether they are white or Black?
Yet, here we are with a good part of our nation mobilized, adopting the disease that we all thought we were trying to eliminate as its cure.
Last weekend, I came across a beautiful short video of the great Nobel laureate in physics, Richard Feynman, talking about knowledge.
Feynman began his legendary career working on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb, and finished as a member of the commission that investigated the cause of the fatal explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.
The video starts with the headline “Names Don’t Constitute Knowledge.”
Feynman recalls walking through a park with his father and his father telling him the names of different birds in different languages. In the end, notes Feynman, you know what different people around the world call the same bird, but you know absolutely nothing about the bird.
Consider what Feynman tells us in his observation that “names don’t constitute knowledge.”
If we look in the Bible in the Book of Genesis, it says, “God had formed out of the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call each one; and whatever the man called each living creature, that remained its name. And the man assigned names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky.”
Man does not create reality. He just names it.
Politics is the opposite. Rather than naming a reality that precedes him, of which he is a part, the progressive political man pretends to create reality with his language and names.
America was founded to be a free nation under God. Our government was not designed to replace God, but to be subservient to God.
The so-called enlightened theory of wokeness will reduce America to a weak, balkanized country where everyone is at his neighbor’s throat, rather than unique individuals cooperating in unity to produce greatness.
Speech must be free — not politically canceled — and used in the pursuit of truth.
Star Parker is president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education and host of the weekly television show “Cure America with Star Parker.” To find out more about Star Parker and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
The Traitorous socialist Democrat Party has stated their objectives. 🙁 🙁 🙁
The “Socialist Democrat Party State” political officers, Gestapo, Woke and Cancel Culture are just getting started.
You will obey, be loyal and support the “Socialist Democrat Party State” or you will be classified as
“Enemies of the State”.
24 Aug. 2020 – Monday on MSNBC’s “Live,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
referred to President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters as
“domestic enemies” and “enemies of the State”.
Star Parker, beautifully said: “Speech must be free — not politically canceled — and used in the pursuit of truth”. The problem is the communist politicians, the communists in Big Tech and the communists in the media, will never pursue the truth, the above mentioned pursue a false truth called “Pravda”!
WHEN you cut out a man’s tongue, you tell him and everyone else, YOU FEAR WHAT HE IS GOING to say!
In 1977, the Federal Interagency Committee on Education produced a five-race classification for the American population: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, White and Hispanic.
First off I am not white, as I do not match the color of under wear or socks or snow. I am ultimate titanium (go to your art store to see this color). Second I am 6th generation born on these lands we call USA. So, that should make me a native American. Yet I am purgered against because I am deemed white and that is all that matters in the eyes of those that want something off my back.
I wonder, WAS THAT org, who first DID THAT CLASSIFICATION, filled with marxist traitors!
what do you mean will destroy?
it has destroyed.
So true. AS a ‘unified’ nation, we already are too SEGMENTED AND divided to ever reunite, i fear…. ALL BECAUSE THE LEFT HAS had 40+ years, of DIVIDING FOLKS…
Exactly why language and free speech are under relentless attack by the Left—particularly if it represents a Conservative message. Liberal-minded colleges and universities will censor those with a Conservative stance from speaking at their institution. Social Media just arbitrarily censors Conservative talk. It isn’t just Conservatism per se, but if someone holds a different point of view on a major social, cultural, or political issue, they will likewise be banned.
Conservative ideas are more and more being labeled as misinformation. The Left has to do that because they cannot advance their ideas and agenda within the context of original word meanings—they have to tilt the playing field in their favor.
Looking for that great gift idea for your Liberal friends on that special occasion? Give them a dictionary of the English language and tell them that all future conversations must adhere to the word meanings within—you are no longer recognizing nor speaking their “foreign” language.
Why bother. WITHHOW THEY HAVE slowly been RUINING those dictionaries, to CODIFY INTO lexicon, ALL THE LEFTIST Dogma words, that would just give them ideas for WHAT TO buck over next..