Vice President JD Vance responded forcefully against some big-name influencers who attacked him and his wife, Usha Vance, based on her Indian origins, reminding us all of the necessity of not letting go of the high goal of a colorblind society.
Vance was pushing back against an influencer who used an ethnic slur to describe Usha and who has referred to the Vice President as a “race traitor” for marrying her. Meanwhile, former Obama press secretary and now leftwing media personality Jen Psaki attacked JD and questioned if Usha was being held against her will.
Vance made pretty clear what he thinks of the race-baiting: “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.”
So that’s awesome. But the real issue is how we defeat the destructively divisive lies that undergird those attacks and continue to generate enormous strife in our nation. And Vance gets it.
“My attitude towards anybody, again, who is calling for judging people based on their ethnic heritage, whether they’re Jewish or white or anything else, it’s disgusting. We shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.
This latest spat over who can be the most wretchedly racist comes from a long line of race-based political worldviews long dominated by Democrats, such as slavery, Jim Crow, affirmative action, minority-owned businesses, race-based admissions, black history month, prioritizing minorities for Covid shots, corporate race-training (for whites), Obama's disparate outcomes in the justice system and so on.
This continuing race-based judgment flies in the face of the desire to have a colorblind society. This line of Americana has a cast of great human beings.
All the way back to the 1850s, Frederick Douglass and the Republican abolitionist movement made the case for a colorblind understanding of America’s founding documents, which became enshrined in the post-Civil War amendments.
The idea was that the clear, non-race-based language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution includes all Americans, regardless of race. Getting there was a desperate and bloody affair, but we arrived. For a minute.
Martin Luther King’s powerful “I Have a Dream” speech encapsulated colorblindness perfectly: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." And he hearkened back to the same vision of the Founding documents as Douglas: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’”
This was a beautiful vision, from Douglas to King, to see the Founding documents in their fulfillment. And it was a dream many Americans pursued individually and fought for politically.
But because the left’s view of everything has become a bizarro world of inverted truths, they now claim that “color-blindness is racism” as a means to support every awful, racist policy pursued by grifters and politicians. This has been so destructive because in my lifetime we were moving rapidly toward a far more unified, color-blind, equal society. But as is the way with human nature, people saw an opportunity for personal gain from division.
It has not been a fringe on the left of just Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Robin DiAngelo grifting their millions off it. But Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Chris Coons, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Barack Obama, former AG Eric Holder — way too many to list — have pursued the concept of more racism to end racism.
It is obvious that this has now become a mainstream view within the Democratic Party.
If good Americans really want a unified country, then we have to return to MLK’s vision, and really to that of most of the Founders that he drew on. Our destiny was always to be a color-blind society — or as color-blind as possible — but as is the case with destiny, it is not passive. It requires action.
Vance understands the moment clearly.
“For the past five to 10 years, I’ve watched one-half of our political leadership go all in on the idea that discriminating against whites in college admissions and jobs is not just OK, but affirmatively good. If you believe racism is bad, Fuentes should occupy one second of your focus, and the people with actual political power who worked so hard to discriminate against white men should occupy many hours of it.”
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
