José Manuel Suárez Mier*
Unlike Ibero-America, where the fusion of races and Christianization took place only when the first explorers arrived, the United States has had a conflictive history of extermination and discrimination, first of indigenous Indians and then of the black slaves essential to its economic system.
The Declaration of Independence affirms “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness(sic),” did not pretend that this was true but that it was a good wish of their authors.
Such rights did not go beyond being “aspirational” because the union of the 13 English colonies of America would not have happened if they had been conditioned to abolish slavery since the economy of the southern territories depended on plantations unviable without slaves.
It would take almost 100 years for the northern states to have the power to go to a civil war that finally allowed slavery to be abolished, but which cost lives and terrible destruction and left the southern states in shambles for a long time.
Obviously, the story does not end there because in the so-called Reconstruction, marked discrimination against blacks prevailed throughout the country, in a much more marked segregated coexistence in the southern states that, incidentally, rewrote a glorious history of their failed secession.
It took almost another century for the laws, the courts, and the federal government to force an end to the most offensive elements of racial discrimination in all areas: education, health, jobs, freedom of movement and residence, and access equal to public and private services.
The United States has made a remarkable effort. However, many believe that it was late and meager to eliminate racial discrimination, which over time has also extended to exclusion based on gender, age, sexual preference, and a long list of “heterodox” lifestyles.
Despite this, the Critical Race Theory (CRT) has long been forged in which Marxist scholars replace the dialectic of capitalists and workers with that of race and social class to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed.
There are some euphemisms deployed by CRT proponents, such as “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally sensitive teaching” that sidestep the neo-Marxism behind their theses and proposals for action, and that seems innocent.
“Equity,” for example, can easily be confused with “equality,” as defined in the founding documents of the United States and codified in law, constitutional amendments 14 and 15, and other ordinances aimed at avoiding discrimination. But “equality” is rejected by CRT scholars for offering “camouflage to oppressive patriarchal white supremacy.”
“Equity” for the CRT is the reformulation of Marxism that proposes “suspending the right to private property, expropriating the land and accumulated wealth to redistribute it according to racial criteria,” according to UCLA professor Cheryl Harris.
Next week we will continue with this interesting and terrifying topic.
*Consultant in economics and strategy in Washington DC and professor at universities in Mexico and the US. Email: aquelarre.economico@gmail.com
This column is also published in Spanish on July 1st, 2021, in the Excélsior newspaper, based in México City.