Oakland progressives love to accuse anyone who doesn’t agree with them of being “racists.” Carroll Fife calls her many opponents “racist.” Cat Brooks calls her critics “racist.” Pamela Price calls her political enemies “racists.”
If you’re a progressive person of color, it’s awfully easy to hurl an ad hominem smear against someone you disagree with. You can question their integrity without ever bothering to address the point of their argument. This is what people like Fife-Brooks-Price always do: impugn their opponents personally.
The problem is that Fife-Brooks-Price indulge in their own racist behavior all the time. A current example is Fife’s promotion of a Black Arts Movement, which would pump city resources into a corridor running along 14th Street from Lake Merritt all the way west to the 880 Freeway.
My problem with this is when government singles out individual communities for assistance based on what seem to be politically ideological motives. We all pay taxes to Oakland: Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asians. We all live, work and thrive here. All races and ethnicities have contributed to Oakland’s cultural complexity. So why favor one particular community over all others? If you examine Oakland’s “Cultural Funding Program Grantees,” you’ll find Black arts organizations getting thousands of dollars under the city’s “Cultural Funding Program.” This is a program that was approved by the Oakland City Council last December. It approved grants of $1.3 million “to Sixty (60) Oakland-Based Nonprofit Organizations Providing Arts And Cultural Services In Oakland,” the majority of which were minority-run arts organizations. Now, there’s nothing in principle wrong with this. The arts are a vital part of Oakland history and culture, and it’s good for the city to support them. The problem is that the Black Arts Movement’s own website claims that “inclusion” is among its top priorities, but there’s nothing inclusive about an organization that gives funding preference to groups that primarily consist of races other than White.
Indeed, the founder and director of the Black Arts Movement, Ayodele Nzinga, demanded that “art—particularly Black art--has sufficient places to thrive” in Oakland. But we have to ask, Why just “Black art”? Is Black art more special, more deserving of taxpayer funding, that the art of any other community or group? The fact is, when it comes to divvying up taxpayer dollars for funding, it’s legally as well as morally wrong to prefer one group over another.
Look, most of us have closely examined ourselves and determined we’ve never done anything racist in our lives. We’ve never refused to rent or sell a home to someone based on skin color. We’ve never refused to hire or promote someone based on skin color. We’ve never micro-aggressed against someone based on skin color. Indeed, we’ve loudly repudiated the actual racists of politics, who come almost exclusively from the MAGA crowd. And yet Black activists continue to insist we’re racist even when we know we’re not.
This has been a massive miscalculation on their part. It’s created a backlash of resentment that is clearly going against them, as evidenced by the popular support for the Thao and Price recalls. We’re kicking them out of office not because they’re bad, evil people, but because they’ve made “race” the primary objective of their political calculus. Most of us have moved on to a post-racial agenda and we do not believe that racial matters should be paramount in public policy.
The best thing that progressives could do, if they’re truly interested in social progress, would be to stop blathering about race and attend to the real problems Oakland faces.
Steve Heimoff