KTOP TV had a conversation with Darlene Flynn, the city’s Director of the Department of Race & Equity. Flynn has worked for years in the area of what she calls “racial disparity,” and now she’s running the only race and equity department of any city in California.
She’s in her element. She wants to “upset assumptions.” Oaklanders really want to “perform equably,” she says. “People are really ready, and that’s exciting.”
Flynn calls Oakland “a movement city,” by which she refers, of course, to Oakland’s long history of leftwing activism. What have been the main components of that activism? Racial equity, especially as concerns Black people, but also a pronounced disdain for the U.S. government, which activists have always claimed is flawed in many ways but especially in its support of capitalism and racism. The problem with capitalism, they allege, is that the system is biased in favor of White people, and deliberately victimizes Black people, which explains why they’re so often economically depressed. Flynn subscribes to this view.
I think the primary reasons why so many Americans have revolted against this racial equity movement are, first, because they resent the deprecation of America and the American system by these activists; and also they reject the allegation that “people of color and historically marginalized groups” do not “have the same opportunities as white [sic] people and other historically privileged groups,” as the Race & Equity Department’s mission statement puts it. Concerning the deprecation of our country and system, most reasonable Americans, I believe, do not think that America is evil. It was not founded upon evil principles. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution have inspired democracies all over the world for nearly 250 years. America has been a beacon for the governance of every country in the world except for the religious dictatorships of Islam and the tribalism of the African continent and the banana republics of Latin America. I do not think reasonable Americans want to live under those kinds of systems.
Reasonable people also object, I think, to the notion that people of color do not have the same opportunities as White people. One can claim, naturally, that the unequal life outcomes we see in the various races in America are due to structural imbalances or to deliberate discrimination. But one can also argue that this difference in outcomes is due to other factors, such as the inability or unwillingness of some to take advantage of the opportunities they possess at birth. There simply are too many success stories of people of color born into impoverished conditions who rose to great success, however you define it, to believe that.
Americans have common sense. They instinctively realize that success isn’t guaranteed to anyone. It has to be achieved. Americans look at their own struggles and they know, most of the time, that if they have failed in some respect, the reason is on them. Reasonable people don’t blame everyone else for their shortcomings. They accept the fact that they failed to grasp the opportunities that our American system gives to everyone, regardless of skin color.
Ms. Flynn will never accept this fact, which is why she got her job in Oakland. The people who hired her were looking for someone like her to further their ideology. They too believe that America hates people of color and that White (and Asian) Americans are always colluding to keep them down. It’s deeply troubling that we have this conspiracy theory that there’s a vast plot among White Americans to prevent people of color from achieving the success of their dreams. People like Ms. Flynn have cynically built their careers on this fiction. But there is no such conspiracy. Quite the opposite: White Americans would celebrate the true liberation of Black people from poverty and crime, if only it could happen. White Americans would thank their various gods if Black Americans were to turn away from their resentment and simply get on with the business of living, loving and contributing to society. But sadly, in Oakland, it’s not like that. Oakland is “a movement city,” as Ms. Flynn observes, but the movement is in the wrong direction.
Steve Heimoff