Nativist Ann Coulter recently reaffirmed her view that America “owes blacks” for the “legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.”
Black Lives Matter would be proud. Those who value truth cringe.
This is polar opposite of the position she took in 1997 when she (quite accurately) said:
“I don’t understand the principle under which I’m supposed to be responsible for what some white people may have done six generations back. I mean, on that theory we oughta be punishing the children of criminals. We don’t even hold one – the next generation – responsible for what that person’s precise father did, much less some white guy 200 years ago.”[1]
(Indeed, today we don’t even hold the culprit accountable for his own actions.)
Only Blacks Have Civil Rights?
Now, two decades later, Coulter contends that America will be forever in debt to blacks. Coulter’s revised paradigm first emerged in her book, Mugged.[2]
Coulter claimed “civil rights are for blacks” because “We owe black people something, we have the legacy of slavery.” Yes, Coulter has fallen for the cult of victimhood and entitlement which is devastating so much of America today.
Civil rights are not, as Coulter contends, a function of victimization, but rather the consequence of a compact between citizens within a nation. For instance, the Constitution provides the foundation for our civil rights, with equal protections to all under the law. One could say these civil rights complement our universal human rights.
Coulter frequently cites the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, none of which claim that civil rights are for blacks only. Rather, they apply to all citizens of the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not limit civil rights to blacks (it doesn’t even use the word “blacks”), but actually prohibits discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” a pretty all-encompassing cohort of the population.
The Amendments and Act Coulter refers to were designed to include blacks – and others – into the pool of individuals whose civil rights are guaranteed. Coulter seemed to understand this in 1997, when she commended California’s Proposition 209[3] “to prohibit racial discrimination, much like the equal protection clause under the Civil Rights Act.”[4]
Legacy of Slavery and Jim Crow?
Coulter is simply wrong.
Dysfunctional blacks communities in America today are not the result of the “legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.” Rather, they are the direct consequence of the legacy of identity politics[5] and the welfare state.[6]
For fifty years, every failed big city has been run by Democrats pursuing liberal policies. Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Washington, DC, spring to mind. Their liberal policies and perspectives have wreaked havoc on those communities, often erupting in violence, riots, and murder.
This is irrefutable,[7] yet Coulter continues her own version of racial demagoguery which acts as if the Union lost the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement failed.
Coulter tacitly supports Black Lives Matter ideology by promoting a fallacious set of root causes for contemporary cultural pathologies within the black community. In effect, Coulter contributes to the escalating racial divide among Americans.
Black Lives Matter seized upon a false racial narrative in Ferguson[8] which literally fueled fires as the city erupted in flames.[9] Truth succumbed to a racial hoax.[10] Coulter perpetuates the core foundation of that hoax.
Strangely, Coulter once accurately condemned the racial grievance industry[11] and outed white liberals for their complicity and collusion.[12] Nevertheless, Coulter continues to grossly distort racial reality[13] and claim that civil rights are only for blacks and that blacks, in effect, have special rights. Apparently she never heard of Rev. King’s vision of a colorblind society.[14]
Coulter’s Own Racial Grievance Industry
As it turns out, Coulter is actually in the vanguard of a white version of the racial grievance industry[15] which asserts that America’s changing racial demographics will destroy America[16] as we once knew it and that we must restore a pristine WASP (white) America.[17]
Coulter’s nativist and xenophobic[18] views – fully expressed in Adios, America! – demonize all immigrants,[19] particularly Third World immigrants, especially Hispanics,[20] and those views have permeated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Indeed, Coulter trumpets the advent of a New Trump Party[21] remarkably similar to the defunct Know-Nothing Party of antebellum America, one which is isolationist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic,[22] and anti-Catholic.[23]
Coulter has repeatedly likened Trump’s fight for freedom for American workers to Lincoln’s fight for liberty for enslaved blacks. Strikingly, Coulter recently confused the Confederate flag for the American flag,[24] raising the question of which side she would have supported in that war.
It is possible that Coulter is compensating for her xenophobic, nativist views[25] (anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic) by extoling her love for blacks.
Regardless of her motives, her views suffuse the Trump campaign and threaten American values of liberty for all irrespective of race, gender, and class. We are all “endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” because “all men are created equal.”
Let us all return to our roots – the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – and reject the nonsense of Black Lives Matter, the New Trump Party, and Ann Coulter.
Endnotes:
[1] Ann Coulter, MSNBC, 6/14/97.
[2] See Chapter 4: “Prejudice,” Vanity: Ann Coulter’s Quest for Glory, available as a free download at www.coulterwatch.com/vanity.pdf.
[3] Proposition 209 was modeled on, and mirrored, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
[4] Ann Coulter, MSNBC, 4/12/97.
[5] See “Identity Politics Is the Problem” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-1l.
[6] See “Baltimore ‘Purged’” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-8S.
[7] See “Race Myths Exposed!” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-8Z.
[8] See “Ferguson: Justice, Race, and Reason” at http://t.co/ksowFPCx62.
[9] See “Ferguson in Flames” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-5I.
[10] See “I’m Black: Truth Does Not Matter” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-5t.
[11] See “Ann Coulter Takes on the Racial Grievance Industry” at http://t.co/YgG2rpgZIc.
[12] See “Coulter Hates White Liberals” at http://t.co/NyvQ3KFhS9.
[13] See “Adios, Ann: Coulter’s Racial Confusion” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-7f.
[14] See “King’s Dream Realized (sort of)” at http://wp.me/p4scHf-76.
[15] See “Adios, Ann: Coulter’s Blood Politics” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-6H.
[16] See “Adios, Ann: Diversity = White” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-7j.
[17] See “Adios, Ann: Coulter’s WASP Fantasy” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-7H.
[18] See “Ann Coulter’s Xenophobic Anti-Gospel of Hate” at http://t.co/aQGhLuWwtD.
[19] See “Coulter: All Immigrants Are Bad” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-8w.
[20] See “Adios, Ann: Fear Mexicans, Not Jihadists” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-6A.
[21] See “Coulter’s Know-Nothing American Party” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-bP.
[22] See “Jews: Quality, not Quantity” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-al.
[23] See “First, Jews; Now, Catholics?” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-ah.
[24] See “Coulter Confuses Confederate and American Flags” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-fg.
[25] See “Ann Coulter’s ‘Racism Credit’” at http://wp.me/p4jHFp-7V.
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