Presenters - Gonzaga University School Of Law: Fill & Download for Free

Identity politics is being used for political gain. The charge of racism is very casually thrown against any position that the mainstream media and our modern Democratic Party disagree with.Republican obstruction against many policies promoted by Obama were attributed to racism. This is despite the fact that at the time of his election in 2008, Obama’s approval rating was 70%. Then 2 years later after pushing through Obamacare and mired in a deep recession without a light at the end of the tunnel, Obama’s poll numbers dropped to the low 30s.Democrats said that opposition to Obama was due to racism, to him being a black man. But Obama was also black when his approval number was 70%.So Democrats and the mainstream media push the racist rhetoric against anyone they find disagreeable. The irony was when AOC accused Nancy Pelosi of being racist and then Kamala Harris pulled the race card against Biden in the first debate. Ouch.Charging someone with racism is an easy and lazy way to stop political opponents. It’s effectively prevented many conservative speakers on campuses and this success has encouraged progressives to move it off campus.Pelosi began the week throwing Molotov sound bites at President Donald Trump, including the allegation that what he really wants is “to make America white again.” It was only the latest example of Democrats ramping up racial rhetoric for the 2020 elections. By week’s end, it was Pelosi who was being labeled as a racist after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) accused her of “explicit singling out of newly elected women of color.”Worse yet for Pelosi, it was Trump who came to her defense, chastising Ocasio-Cortez for disrespecting Pelosi and insisting that the Speaker is not a http://racist.In the meantime, Ocasio-Cortez has continued to be supported by groups such as Our Revolution and has described herself as a new "American revolutionary" to forge a government truly based on the people.This is why French journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan famously observed during the French Revolution that “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” Many of Ocasio-Cortez’s supporters already have attacked former Vice President Joe Biden, the party’s presidential front-runner, on race-based issues, from his opposition to school busing as a U.S. senator to his work with segregationists in the Senate. Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) fueled such attacks in the last Democratic debate.The Democratic Party has long relied on identity politics to balkanize the voter base and appeal to each group to oppose Republicans. Race, however, has always been carefully handled to avoid inflaming public sentiment. That restraint has been lost in the “age of rage” known as the Trump administration. From the outset, Democrats have portrayed Trump as pandering to white nationalists and racists with his controversial Charlottesville comments and his immigration policies. Even Trump’s signature symbol — the MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat — has been denounced as racist and “triggering.” Numerous Trump supporters have been attacked for wearing the hats.Last week, Gonzaga University School of Law visiting law professor Jeffrey Omari wrote a column in the ABA Journal that offered an almost breathless account of his encounter with raw racism in his class: a student wearing a MAGA hat. Omari states matter of factly that the hats are meant to advance “racial antagonism” as “an undeniable symbol of white supremacy and hatred toward certain nonwhite groups.”He recounted the moment with the same sense of danger as if the student was wearing a live cougar on his head: “As my blood boiled inwardly, outwardly I remained calm.” Yet, he not only concluded that “this student was indeed trying to intimidate and/or racially antagonize me” but that “I understood that my lack of tenure, precarious status as a [visiting professor] and the hue of my skin meant that I would be fighting an uphill battle should I have asked the student to remove his distracting red hat during class.”Of course, it would have been an “uphill battle” to ask for the removal of just that hat unless he asked for the removal of all hats and clothing of all political viewpoints, from pro-antifa to pro-choice to pro-NRA.Omari assumed that his interpretation of the hat (which is not shared by many) was manifestly true.This is part of the trend on today’s campuses, where speech is being curtailed as racist or “microaggressive” based on how it is perceived by others rather than how it is intended. In this case, the hat has different meanings to different people. Yet it was deemed racist because Omari considered it to be racist.Omari survived his harrowing encounter, and Gonzaga University School of Law issued a meaningless, cowering statement that “this situation presents an opportunity for our community to listen to and learn from each other.” The faculty, however, failed to note what should be learned from “this situation,” particularly about free speech on campus. Instead, they avoided taking a stand on the right of political expression. If other campuses are any example, they will soon find themselves facing insatiable demands for greater and greater speech regulation.Such refusals to take responsibility on campus has resulted in schools yielding control to students who have shut down classes and speakers with impunity.Ocasio-Cortez's racism charge shows Pelosi at risk of being devoured by the revolutionOpinion | What Would We Do Without the Word ‘Racism’?