Aaron Sibarium: How The CDC Went Woke

 Just another brick in the wall of crazy...if that makes any sense....

IMO this is (in part) one consequence of letting the PC left sneak that "non-racism"/"anti-racism" bullshit by. What we want in cases like this is precisely non- (rather than anti-)racism. That's approximately equivalent to saying: we want our policies to be color-blind. (They also have bad arguments against color-blindness.) "Anti-racism" should not be a goal at all times, and with respect to all things. Race should simply be ignored in some (many, actually) cases. If, as the left now seems to say, we make "anti-racism" a pervasive goal, then we have to take race into account even in cases where it shouldn't be. I have no doubt that there are better counterexamples out there, but: if we're providing aid to battered women, we shouldn't also be thinking about irrelevant goals like reducing world hunger--even though we are, in some sense, "anti-hunger." Needless to say, if we're studying quasars, race shouldn't enter into our thinking in any way. If we're providing care to Mr. Smith, we should be not-racist about it...we should be not-racist about everything. We shouldn't care about Mr. Smith's race at all. But we should not, for example, force Mr. Smith to endure lectures about racism during his chemotherapy sessions... If you've got a broken water pipe, and water is spraying all across the second floor of your house, running down into the walls and across the floor...you're a damn fool if you ask "How can I use this incident to fight racism?" Race simply isn't relevant to most issues. And even in cases in which it is relevant, it isn't true that each of those cases should be used as an opportunity to strike a blow against racism. If I come across a white dude and a black dude beating each other up, and I have no other grounds for choice, I shouldn't think: I'll help the black dude because it will advance the cause of anti-racism! A judge adjudicating a boundary dispute between white Smith and black Jones shouldn't think: Ok...Smith's case is a tiny bit stronger...but I'll tilt it to Jones because...antiracism! And to jump back to the quasar case: don't think: yeah, but race isn't relevant to quasars. It's more important not to let race illicitly interfere with race is relevant. If, say, you're researching race and IQ, it's extremely important not to let irrelevant issues about race interfere. You're studying race--so race will be at issue in some ways. But it's crucially important not to distort the data or skew the analysis in order to strike a blow against racism. 

Look: there are interesting questions about race. But race is not the end-all and be-all of human issues. It's probably not in the top 50. And the obsessive idea that it everything must be seen through its lens...is just flat-out nuts. On the bright side, I have no doubt that there are a lot of people like me out there who are just fed up with it. And the dementia of the PC left about such issues becomes more and more impossible to deny by the day.