Defining Racism “UP”

By Patrick Hall

It was the late social scientist and politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan who coined the phrase “defining deviancy down.” It described the tendency or comportment of societies, people, or individuals to respond to destructive behaviors or beliefs by lowering or changing the standard for what is permissible.

Nowhere is this slide into cultural-political relativism more apparent as it has manifested itself in a significant portion of the African American community.

 It has been especially damaging to a large segment of the community, who engage in abhorrent and/or criminal behavior that was not the norm in Pre-Civil Rights America. For example, Blacks who are only 13% of the United States population commit over 50% of all homicides. Other major criminal activities have witnessed a similar disproportionality in the rate of anti-social behavior.  The rate of violence and cultural anomie has increased sharply at the very time that blacks don’t live with blatant discrimination as in pre-Civil Rights America.   Yet far too many within the black polity, as well as the greater Democratic Party, have insisted that racism and other systemic discriminatory practices are still omnipresent. They’re just more hidden and apocryphal in 2025. The NAACP, National Action Network (NAN), and monies provided by the George Soros Foundation, Liberal Progressive NGOs, as well as the CCP and the Muslim Brotherhood, have all engaged in Post-Civil Rights America to keep racism alive at all costs, even if it means “defining racism up.” It is the hidden corollary, juxtaposed with Moynihan’s defining deviancy down.  

Race hustlers, Poverty entrepreneurs, as well as some amoral and just plain stupid individuals, who define many within the Congressional Black Caucus, the Democratic Party, and hundreds of colleges and universities, hone their racism fighting credentials by “not acknowledging” that America isn’t the country that my parents, born in 1908 and 1910, had to negotiate.

Even in my short 75 years on this earth, race is not what holds many within the African American community from taking full advantage of the opportunities, “not guarantees,” that are in plain sight.  It is the attitude, once again, to keep perceptions of racism and discriminatory behavior alive, while it’s basically on life support. To paraphrase the late economist Walter Williams, looking for signs and/or incidents of racism is like looking for your lost wallet under a street lamp, even though you lost it elsewhere, because the light is better there.

To reiterate, many within the Progressive polity that are the so-called representatives of Black people are constantly “Defining Racism UP”.   It makes their job or hustle, that is, keeping the specter of Jim Crow America or blatant racism alive, much easier, though it isn’t terribly relevant to the problems that we face as Americans.

In retrospect, Moynihan was right. But it is only half the story. Once again, the dodgy project is to define deviance, in the case of systemic racism, “up.”

Here is the nature of this insidious secular dogma. As part of the vast social project of moral leveling, it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized. The normal must be found to be deviant. The bar defining normality, for example, “what is and is not racism”, has been pushed upward.  And I mean bigtime!

Socio-Political Heresy of Disparate Impact

From its murky beginning as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, “ Disparate Impact, the law launched under Title VII, was from its inception “a heads we win, tails we win” for the guardians of the keep racism alive consortium.  Disparate impact under Title VII of the CRA refers to practices in employment, housing, education, and other areas that adversely affect one group of people with protected characteristics more than another, often due to deliberate or unintentional bias.  However, there is a fallacy or distortion in the Disparate Impact Heresy. An institution can still be sued or deemed discriminatory or racist, even though the rules applied by employers, landlords, or academic/school admissions are formally neutral. With such leeway, anyone or anything can be labeled racist.  To quote one actor in the film, Taps, as he is shooting indiscriminately at what he perceived as legitimate targets…”It's beautiful, man, it’s beautiful!”

The racism industrial complex now had all it needed to define Racism Up because of the open-ended and dangerous delusion of disparate impact.

To paraphrase Manhattan Institute public policy analyst Heather MacDonald, the largest falsehood or distortion in American public policy today is the idea or social construct that any disparity, racial or otherwise, in any institution is, by definition, discriminatory.  To quote Dr. Macdonald,” If a cancer research lab does not have 13% black oncologists, it is by definition a racist lab that discriminates against… black oncologists.  If airlines don’t have 13% of black pilots, they, according to the disparate impact dogma, are deemed intrinsically racist. Here is something even more stupid, if not dangerous.  If our prison population contains more than 13% black prisoners, our criminal justice system is racist, regardless of the statistical fact that blacks commit prison-worthy offences at a higher rate than most groups in the United States.  Consequently, in that case, the deficiency needs to be adjusted to fit the “cultural-political catechesis of relativism”, regardless of the consequences.

 In the case of black oncologists, it is endemic racist institutions or tests like the MCAT, and not the sad reality that many blacks don’t score very high on professional entrance tests like the MCAT or LSAT.  So, according to the Progressive Liberal mindset, we need to fix, alter, or eliminate the test, instead of addressing what is fouled up in black preparation in our nation's public high schools, K-12 education, and elsewhere. Racism is defined “up”, and standardized testing, from the SATs, GREs, LSATs, to the MCATs, became the problem.

African Americans' cultural-political leadership and their misguided, guilt-ridden Mea Culpa Progressive Democratic Liberals are at fault.  At the same time, they exacerbate and continue to divide us as Americans.  

All of us must proclaim that standards and positive cultural mores are not racist. They are not “acting white” as many calcified morons within the Black community continue to believe.  We all must strongly assert that categories like race, gender, or sexual preference are “never’ qualifications for employment.  Being an African American (and I prefer just American) is not an accomplishment!

 Nor shall one ever win the Nobel Peace Prize like former President Obama did, for basically being black.  I am equally certain that being gay, a woman, or even a non-binary transgender-two-spirited-female isn't an accomplishment. To quote Charlie Brown, “good grief!”

Patrick Hall is a retired University Library Director. He graduated from Canisius College and the University of Washington, where he earned Masters Degrees in Religious Studies Education, Urban Anthropology, and Library and Information Science.  Mr. Hall has also completed additional coursework at the University of Buffalo, Seattle University, and St. John Fishers College of Rochester, New York. He has been published in several national publications such as Commonweal, America, Conservative Review, Headway, National Catholic Reporter, Freedom's Journal Magazine, and American Libraries. He has published in peer-reviewed publications, the Journal of Academic Librarianship, and the Internet Reference Services Quarterly. From 1997 until his retirement in January 2014, he served on the Advisory Board of Urban Library Journal, a CUNY Publication.