The Truth Will Make You Flee

By DONALD DeMARCO

“The truth will make you odd,” wrote Flannery O’Connor. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, God has given us a choice between truth and repose. We cannot have both. “Truth is incontrovertible,” stated Winston Churchill. “Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.” Truth is the first casualty of war. In contrast with these remarks, Christ reminds us that “the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).
With regard to solving the race problem, it appears that the truth, which is resented, derided, and distorted, makes people flee. Renowned surgeon Dr. Ben Carson has pointed out an unpalatable truth, namely, that the media are relentlessly promoting white guilt along with black victimization. Today’s whites are made to feel guilty about how their ancestors of hundreds of years ago treated black slaves. At the same time, blacks are made to feel that their victimization is ongoing. This is far from the truth of things and only delays the real work that must be done in order to expunge racism from American culture.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute. He is the author of a plethora of books on economics and social theory. He points out that as late as the 1950s, “only 18 percent of black households were single parent.” Today, he avers, the majority of black children (66 percent) are raised by a single parent. And among black families in poverty, 85 percent of children have no father.
This backslide, according to Sowell, is the result of a government welfare state that creates a mentality of dependence. This dependence is inimical to personal motivation. Why work when you can have something for nothing? Racism is not the cause.
It appears that in many instances, racism is detected where it does not exist and suppressed where it does exist. Speculating without truth can lead to strange conclusions. The notion that racism against blacks is “systemic” is a fabrication that further feeds white guilt and black victimhood. The notion that there could be prejudice against whites is politically incorrect to the point of being virtually unthinkable.
The CEO of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington has made an astonishing confession to the world. “I am a racist,” he stated last summer. “My Catholic Church, and my Catholic Charities organization, is racist. How could they not be? Our Catholic faith tradition is built on the premise that a baby, born in a manger in the Middle East, was a white baby.”
In so saying, he is identifying racism with skin color. Therefore, everyone with skin color is a racist. Yet people cannot change their color no more than a tiger can change its stripes. Racism is not genetic; it is an attitude. Does this even need to be stated? If all whites are racists, does that mean that all blacks are racists as well?
Jodi Shaw, an employee of Smith College in Northampton, Mass., has resigned her post, accusing the elite women’s college of creating a “racially hostile environment against white people.” She testified that because she was “white,” her discomfort “was framed as an act of aggression.” The college has adopted “critical race theory,” a quasi-Marxist ideology which has been spreading across American institutions. It sets “oppressors” and “oppressed” against each other on the basis of skin color — whites vs. other races.
“Under the guise of racial progress,” Shaw stated, “Smith College has created a racially hostile environment in which individual acts of discrimination and hostility flourish.”
An article in Epoch Times (February 25-March 3) carries an exposé about how Coca-Cola employees are required to take a training course on how to be “less white.” An online training program is titled, “Confronting Racism. Understanding what it means to be white. Challenging what it means to be racist.” Whites are encouraged to be less arrogant, more humble, and to “break with white solidarity.”
Attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon has stated that the slides appear to show “blatant racial discrimination” against white people. Political commentator Candace Owens urged employees to file lawsuits against the corporation. It is easy to imagine that society would implode if blacks were systematically urged to be “less black.” Like Smith College, Coca-Cola is taking a page from “critical race theory.”
Zeal without restraint can be counterproductive. The Oregon Department of Education has encouraged its teachers to enroll in a course entitled, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.” The 82-page guide warns teachers that identifying mathematical mistakes with “wrongness” and focusing on the right answer are practices that “perpetuate white supremacy culture.”
In order to promote “Equitable Math,” however, the Department of Education would need to suppress history. “Algebra” is a word of Arabic etymology. Arabic mathematicians are famous for their work in algebra, number theory, and number systems. They also made important contributions to geometry, trigonometry, and mathematical astronomy. It would be ludicrous to blame them for promoting white supremacy. In addition, courses in physics and engineering would need to be suppressed since the correct answers in those fields are absolutely necessary for safe technology.
No one is opposed to improving race relations. The start of this revolution that stands to benefit everyone, however, is not some hare-brained ideology or an obsession with finding racism everywhere, but with truth. And yet, truth is avoided. In fact, people are fleeing from the truth. There are many individuals of different skin color who are making a sincere attempt to call attention to the truth, but their voices are being drowned by the major media that prefer sensationalism and whatever happens to be the reigning ideology.
Christ’s words remain as both intellectually sound as well as practically efficient: “The truth shall set you free.”

• + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest five books are How To Navigate Through Life; Apostles of the Culture of Life; Reflections on the Covid-10 Pandemic: A Search for Understanding; The War Against Civility (all posted on amazon.com), and A Moral Compass for a World in Confusion.)