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Suffer the Children: The Regressives’ Totalitarian Imperative

If ever there was a textbook example of the Left’s totalitarian imperative, Noah Berlatsky provides it in his January 2 screed, “White kids, racism and the way privileged parenting props up an unjust system: White children are everywhere, but their whiteness is too often invisible and unspoken.”

Yes, there is Berlatsky’s stale theme that everyone but regressives are racist, though he is more expansive in asserting how some regressives aren’t aware they’re propping up a racist system: “[There are] important differences in the ways that parents talked to their children about race, and important differences in the ways that kids responded. But . . . white parents—even anti-racist white parents—actively reproduce inequality.”

Yes, there is the quintessential left-wing hubris, specifically Berlatsky’s smug, mistaken assumption that the moral perversity he deems a uniquely enlightened wisdom regarding human behavior must be conveyed to and—ultimately—coerced from his unconsciously racist neighbors:

But teaching people to be anti-racist doesn’t necessarily address the structure of racism itself. In fact, racist structures often determine who does and does not have access to these kinds of educational opportunities. One of our ongoing societal challenges will be figuring out ways to move beyond individual education and address the root issues of inequality—and our role in upholding them.

But unlike his fellow regressives, Berlatsky does not toil furtively to mask his totalitarian aims behind deceptively benign rhetoric. His special contribution to our understanding of regressivism stems from commending and advocating this ultimate solution to racism, one he gleaned from (shocker!) a regressive academic, Mississippi State University sociologist Margaret Hagerman, author of White Kids: Growing Up With Privilege In a Racially Divided America (written from a “critical race perspective,” we are assured).

So what is this visionary final answer to the problem of racism?

As for white adults, Hagerman says, if they really want a less racist world, they may need to rethink how they approach parenting. ‘Everyone is trying to do the best for their kid,’ she says. ‘But I actually think that there are times when maybe the best interest of your own kid isn’t actually the best choice. Ultimately, being a good citizen sometimes conflicts with being good parents. And sometimes maybe parents should decide to be good citizens over being good parents.’” [emphasis mine]

And there it is—every totalitarian’s despicable call to sever the sacred bonds between parents and their children for the attainment of “the greater good.” For, as every totalitarian demands, the state must protect children from their parents’ “antisocial” (i.e., anti-regime) beliefs.

So, according to the fascist Left, being a good “white adult” means deliberately cheating your child out of opportunities for success—or at least those opportunities the regressive Left arbitrarily deems “racist.”

As any normal parent of any color will tell you, there is no “but” when discussing securing the best possible future for one’s child. A colorblind society wherein people are judged solely by the content of their character is the future for which all Americans should strive.

Yet a consequence of the regressives’ bigotry—not against white people, but against people of color—is that, instead securing such a future by endeavoring to ensure all children succeed, they retard its realization by seeking a world where we are compelled to advocate the failure of one group of children to prop up the success of others. As if the failure of white kids is a necessary condition of the success for people of color?

Oblivious to his implied meaning, in his closing the unconsciously fascist Berlatsky leans on the rationale that every totalitarian regime has used to justify its crimes: “the glorious future!

Of course, as a parent, you want the best possible future for your child. But the best possible future should include a society that isn’t organized around racism. Hagerman’s book is a careful, painful and convincing argument that when white people give their children advantages, they are often disadvantaging others. Racism is so hard to overturn, in part, because white people prop it up when they work to make sure their children succeed. [emphasis mine]

Suffer the children, indeed, and their parents, too: for the collectivist Left, it takes a village to ruin a child; and a village idiot not to recognize the horrific (and historic) consequences of the Left’s totalitarian imperative.

And if you disagree and want your child to succeed, you’re an unconscious Klansman who must be separated from your spawn and reeducated and/or eradicated for the glorious future of the common good.

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Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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About Thaddeus G. McCotter

An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003 to 2012 and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars, and a Monday co-host of the "John Batchelor Show" among sundry media appearances.