By Steve Levy
The New York Times and CNN were apoplectic over a new community that’s being built in Arkansas called “Return to the Land” that would be reserved for straight, white people. Their outrage is well-founded. This is a horrible, racist idea.
But this is the natural extension of what one could expect when our society, culture and leaders stood back silently as gay advocates on Long Island promoted and got approval for a gay apartment complex. Let’s not forget that, during the Black Lives Matter movement, leftists, with the support of college administrators, were establishing black only dorms and allowing for graduation ceremonies that separated their black students from others.
Recently, we saw developers allegedly seeking to create Muslim housing communities in Texas. Was this a prelude to a ghetooization of the Muslim community as we’ve seen in Europe? Those isolated communities eventually led to the acceptance of Sharia Law within these enclaves and a message to local police that they were not welcome in these communities. In other words, these communities would create their own governments, their own laws and their own police forces.
Unfortunately, when these race-based decisions by developers, colleges and local officials were allowed to stand for Blacks, Muslims and gays, it was only a matter of time before White supremacists sought to latch onto this new phenomenon.
And, sure enough, we have arrived at that point much quicker than we realized. But now the leaders, the advocates and the courts are in a dilemma. How can they say that you can have a Blacks-only graduation and not a Whites-only graduation? How could they approve a Muslims-only community and not a Christians-only community? How can they approve a gay-themed community and not a straight-themed community?
The warnings we issued when these policies were being developed to segregate students by race on campus and sexual orientation in housing went unheeded. And now we’re seeing what the long-term consequences of these foolish policies bring about.
We have to stop saying that racism against one group is unacceptable, but perhaps tolerable against another
If we want to get to a color-blind society, we have to stop obsessing about color and our differences.
As Justice John Roberts said in the case that invalidated discrimination against White and Asian college applicants: “The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.”