I’ve long said that disparities by race or ethnicity in police stops and imprisonments are due solely to the fact that some demographic groups commit crimes more than others.
This is so obvious that you’d think everyone would agree. If Tom, Dick and Harry never commit crimes while Jane, Mary and Alice break the law all the time, the former trio will never be charged with a crime while the latter trio frequently will be. Therefore, no one can reasonably say that Jane, Mary and Alice are being picked on.
But that would be in a sane, reasonable world. Instead, we have the misfortune to live in Oakland and Alameda County, where racialized politicians demand “equality of outcomes.” They want Tom, Dick and Harry to be arrested as frequently as Jane, Mary and Alice are. If Tom, Dick and Harry can’t be arrested because they don’t break the law, then in order to achieve “equality of outcomes” you have to arrest Jane, Mary and Alice less frequently, if at all. And this is what “equity” means to people like Bas, Price, Fife and Thao. It means letting some people break the law and go free in the name of an abstract, meaningless concept they worship and are trying to impose on the rest of us.
We see this demand for “equity” everywhere. The latest example is criticism of Gov. Newsom by racialized woke groups who accuse him of not appointing enough “people of color” to jobs in his administration. According to one of these critics, “We’re missing out on hearing from the voices of communities that may be underserved” due to the disparities.
Have these people nothing better to do with their time than to track every single appointment to every mid-level bureau and catalogue them by race? And they get paid for this? Whenever I hear this complaint I want to scream. Look, all government employees, or public servants as we like to call them, are specialists who fix public services when they break down. Like plumbers or dentists, we call on our public servants to keep the trains running on time, so to speak. I don’t care if my Registrar of Voters is Black, White, Brown, Asian or polka-dotted, I just want her to be competent and hold honest elections.
But the racial equity crowd demands absolutely equal representation in everything by racial percentage of the total population. What’s next, selection by eye color? Screw that. If Gov. Newsom is appointing a lot of White people, it’s because his vetting process is coming up with the most talented pool of nominees. I want talented people working at the Public Utilities Commission, the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, the Board of Parole Hearings and so on. I don’t want incompetent people appointed who just happen to check off somebody’s box for eligibility by virtue of their skin color. Yet that’s exactly what these racial equity people demand. They’re not small-“d” democrats, they’re not Constitutionalists, they’re not serving the public interest, they’re not interested in your or my problems; they’re just ragtag radicals with too much power and nothing better to do than to stir up trouble. And, of course, they’re aided by the woke media, which is always there to publicize their trivia.
The only way we’re going to achieve a truly color-blind society is to truly be color-blind. Duh! As long as we shove racial equity to the forefront of every conversation and policy, we’re going to remain mired in the racialized quicksand that smothers Oakland and the Bay Area. At this point in history, anyone who harps on and on about racial equity deserves to be ridiculed and sidelined. They certainly can’t be trusted to hold any position of power. “Racial equity” is an anachronism. Its expiration date is long past, and the product itself is starting to stink.
Steve Heimoff