Defeating the Nation's Victimhood Consensus at the Supreme Court

Two recent Supreme Court cases challenge cultural elites’ determined effort to advance and enforce victimhood at selective universities. Selective universities have sheltered their racial and ethnic preferences by claiming that visual, as opposed to intellectual diversity, improves educational outcomes. The Court recently heard oral arguments in two critical and related cases brought by the Students for Fair Admissions Inc (SFFA). This organization is “dedicated to defending the right to racial equality in college admissions.” SFFA demonstrated that universities often engage in a sham admissions process that deliberately discriminates against Asian students.

Seeing black, Hispanic, and American Indian students as victims of racial injustice, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina consider the race of applicants with the schools at the expense of Asian American students. This approach is grounded in the presumption that race and other forms of identity or status are the chief cause of disparity in outcomes between ethnic groups, cultures, and countries. Equally true, as lonely, alienated elites clamor for meaning, they find purpose in fomenting political and ethnic conflict. Meanwhile, elites prefer to ignore facts showing that Asians and West Indian blacks often do better than white Americans in schooling, per capita income, and crime rates. 

While the Supreme Court now has an opportunity to end such admissions practices as violative of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, it is doubtful that ending discrimination at elite schools will be enough. This is so because we live in an era where virtually everything from calculus to physics, from food to Second Amendment rights, is all about identity and race as Critical Race Theory and social justice demands take over the nation’s discourse. This move follows a pathway blazed by Critical Theorists and Cultural Marxists who intentionally sought to ensure that we hate each other.

This approach took on added urgency ever since Michael Brown was shot in a St. Louis suburb in 2014 and attained warp speed in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in 2020. Among Critical Justice Theorists and Social Justice Warriors (SJW), the dogma of oppression lives deep within them. It extends from President Joe Biden’s first day in office when he signed Executive Order 13985, titled Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government, to the United Nations, which now demands an annual transfer of funds from rich to poor countries starting at $2 trillion per year for purposes of ensuring climate justice, to Critical Feminist Theory, Critical Gender Theory, and the demand for slavery reparations. Failure to halt this emerging victimhood consensus emphasizing eternal grievances would move the United States closer and closer to a world of “us” versus “them.” As I have shown elsewhere, Rwanda, with its mutual slaughter by Hutus and Tutsis, has set an unenviable example that disregards H. L. A. Hart’s claim that "if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free."

A cursory review of the nation’s headlines confirms that victimhood sells. Equally true, Cultural Elites profit from dividing us. Hence it is no surprise that during the first two years of Biden’s presidency, his Administration has minted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) advocates even faster than money. This determined policy effort has borne fruit. Hence it is no surprise that a survey of 8,600 State Department employees found that about 44 percent of respondents claimed they were victimized by discrimination, harassment, or bullying. The victimhood consensus now extends widely. Churches have not escaped this move either, as SJWs deploy rage to eclipse debate. Public theologian and progressive Christian Chanequa Walker-Barnes’ “Prayer of a Weary Black Woman” illustrates the poignant power of rage:

Lord, if it be your will, harden my heart. . . . Stop me from being hopeful that White people can do and be better. Let me imagine them instead as white-hooded robes standing in front of burning crosses. Let me see them as hopelessly unrepentant, reprobate bigots . . . who need to be handed over to the evil one.

While Walker-Barnes’ comment appears to exhibit deep-seated hate, while Kelisa Wing’s observations are inherently racist, and while it remains clear that a central pillar of the victimhood thesis is that justice demands that the nation becomes more divided: the just and the unjust, the compliant versus the non-compliant, and the oppressed and the oppressors. At the same time, our cultural elites ignore the obvious fact that they occupy the commanding heights of the nation at universities, media, social media, arts, and government. This occupation proceeds consistently with Pedro Gonzalez’s claim that what we are witnessing is not a revolution but a counterrevolution of elites who claim power in the name of the oppressed. This counterrevolution allows America’s decadent elites to become a plundering horde that leaves social and material destruction in its wake.

Given this fact, although the United States Supreme Court now has the opportunity to reassert the force of the 14th Amendment at Harvard and the University of North Carolina by ending racial preferences and striking a blow against America’s victimhood consensus, it is clear that much more work is required. What is now needed is a root-and-branch effort to remove America’s DEI elites from power in every institution, including churches, governments, universities, and the United Nations. The failure to do so would move us closer and closer to conflict, exemplified by the Hutu-led Rwandan government’s acceptance of the claim that Tutsis are “cockroaches” that need to be exterminated. Urgent measures are necessary to ensure failure is not an option as we challenge the nation’s victimhood consensus. Otherwise, our cultural elites and their Marxist ideas may have the final say, thus putting the country and our children's future at risk.

To that end, the ACLJ filed an amicus brief at the Supreme Court in these important cases.

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