Huffington Post Goes Mental and Equates Patriotism with White Supremacy and Ignorance

by Mark Angelides

HuffPo has run a headline saying: “White Athletes Still Standing For The Anthem Are Standing For White Supremacy.” The writer, Jesse Benn goes on to explain that those white athletes who don’t join their teammates in “taking a knee” are not only advocates for White Supremacy, but that they are also “ignorant.” But here’s the deal, this is part of a larger goal to make patriotism unpopular and to love your country a sign of bigotry.
Benn may not actually be aware that he is floating an agenda for the destruction of nation states, but then “useful idiots” are just that: idiots. In what universe does he suppose that a media and leftist sanctioned form of protest is the only acceptable form of protest? And, of course, how does he square the circle in deciding that something for which there is very little evidence (institutionalized racism) should be protested without being investigated?
He adds “evidence” for his point by linking to a series of web pages:
“This isn’t a matter of opinion. Statistics reveal disparities along racial lines regarding wealth, education, healthy food, employment, health care, housing, wages, criminal charges/sentences and practically every other imaginable measure of quality of life. This isn’t a mistake of history or attributable to individual or cultural traits of the oppressed. These are the results of centuries of systemic white supremacy, plain and simple.”
For the “wealth” argument, he cites an EPI article that states the difference in wealth between black and white families is large. And it is, but that in no way whatsoever explains why the disparity exists. Is it because employers pay less to black employees (good luck with that)? Is it because black youths are denied places in college because of their race? Neither of these is true. What is true, is that poverty breeds poverty…and this is a fact regardless of race. As studies have shown, if a person stays in school, doesn’t get married or have children until later in life, then they are almost guaranteed to make it into the middle classes.
For the “education” argument, he cites a Stanford study that actually shows the “achievement gap” gap has shrunk by almost 40% since the 1970s. That’s a massive improvement, and one which he ignores. The Stanford study in no way indicates that there is an “opportunity gap”…showing that it cannot be due to “institutionalized racism.” As the study states clearly:
“…the large white-Hispanic gap in California is largely due to the low average scores of California Hispanic students (who have among the lowest average scores in the country in math or reading), not the high performance of white students (who perform at roughly the average among white students nationally). Conversely, the large white-black gap in Minnesota is not due to black Minnesota students’ particularly low scores (they are near or slightly below the national average), but is due to the fact that white students in Minnesota have very high scores.”
So how does this in any way back up Benn’s argument? Doesn’t it, in fact, disprove it?
The other points he makes are equally arguable.
I am all for fairness of opportunity, and there do exist good arguments to show that in some places, there is a lack of access to opportunity, but he doesn’t make these points. He just goes right for the shock headline and fails to do the research.
It would be wonderful if people in the mainstream media actually looked at the real reasons for disparity in achievement instead of blaming “white supremacy.” If they did, it right actually do some good. But they are not interested in doing good, just promoting a narrative to fool people into following the agenda of destruction.