by Dov Fischer
We all know the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It is not just a children’s story. Rather, it is an eternal story about human nature. If people are surrounded by a mass or a mob who speak nonsense as a Truth — with a capital “T” — then perfectly sensible people who internally know better will fall into line and babble the same “Truth.” For a reality check and sanity in the public arena, it ultimately often takes a little kid who simply has not been taught social conformity and political correctness to look and say, “But this ‘Truth’ simply is not true.”
In the fable, the Emperor actually was naked. In America circa mid-2020, corresponding to 5780 years since Adam and Eve, not only is the Left-dominated media naked but so is the mob of respected opinion-makers. The Emperor is naked. And as to those who now proclaim “America has systemic racism,” that is a lie, a damned lie. It is a lie about America, and it is a damned lie about Americans.
Racism is not “systemic” in America. It does not permeate the System. We Americans are a good people. We just are.
People of every imaginable minority — except for Orthodox Jews who wear yarmulkas — now are so woven into the American fabric that America’s social cloth without them would be like wool after a bunch of moths had lunch. Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Gays, and Lesbians, and all — all such communities are quite prevalent throughout the media, the entertainment industry, academia, doctors and nurses in hospital settings, law firms. Name it. This country simply is not systemically racist. It is such a damned lie.
I know this firsthand because I live here in America. I circulate among Americans. As my life unfolded, I ended up circulating in many different vocational circles. I am a rabbi and circulate among synagogue communities and Jewish educational programs. I practiced law at three of America’s most prestigious law firms — Jones Day, Akin Gump, and Baker & Hostetler — for more than 10 years. Over that decade, that brought me into contact with some 300 attorneys in those firms, maybe 300 clients, maybe 300 opposing clients, and maybe 300 of their attorneys. I ended up in courtrooms, encountered judges, juries, bailiffs, clerks. Then I became a law professor. I have taught over 2,000 students, many of whom remain remarkably close with me even after my 16 years in that field. I was in a business, sales, and marketing for a year, when fax machines first showed up; the industry was so new that people did not even know what to call the machines: long-distance copiers, facsimile machines that used a crazy, thin, shiny paper on which all the faxed text disappeared after a year. I met all sorts of people.
Yes, I have met a racist here and a racist there. Of course. I also have met Jew-haters. I have met people who will not hire a woman “to do a man’s job.” I worked for a female litigation partner who never ever would work with male associates, except for one unique situation when she needed me because I had unique expertise in a certain esoteric aspect of international law. So of course there is the occasional bigot. And of course we all notice when someone is Black. But what does that mean? That means nothing. People see my yarmulke and they notice I am Jewish. We see someone cross-eyed, and we notice they have strabismus. We notice a red-head, male or female, or someone with blue eyes. We notice. So what? When someone is not “typical” in appearance, we notice. Orthodox Jews with kippot are not typical. Blacks make up 12 percent of the population. Asian Americans have an appearance feature that differs from the Caucasians. So what?
As a law professor, in 16 years and 2,000 students, I encountered one racist student. I was about to write “only one racist student” in 16 years, but I deleted the word “only” because one is too many. The student made a comment in a lecture, and I could not believe what I had heard. The school is quite politically correct — on steroids — and I could not believe what I had heard. Again, the moment was very awkward for me, but I had to confront it. “You owe an apology for that comment,” I said. The dunderhead really did not grasp that he had used an offensive stereotype. I had to figure out a way to explain it to the schmendrick without making the matter worse. So I asked him to step outside into the hallway for a moment, I explained it to him, and we then reentered the classroom. And he sincerely publicly apologized for a bone-headed insensitivity.
After my decades-plus career at the Big Firms, I decided I wanted fewer billable hours and more time to be a rabbi and to teach law students. So I went to work for a billionaire in Los Angeles residential housing. The hours were great, the work easy, and he paid me a boatload of money to represent him. As I started working for him a few weeks, I came to see that he is an old dinosaur from another time — a racist and sexist like Joe Biden. He would make racist comments like those that Joe Biden makes, about how some Black person amazingly is not only presentable but also clean, about how Black mothers are so stupid that their kids only hear maybe 300 words through childhood, about how you have to be from India or Pakistan to walk into a donut shop. He was exactly the duplicate of Joe Biden racism, a cloned racist. He had every demographic group pigeon-holed in a stereotype. And, like Joe Biden, he could not keep his hands off women — smelling their hair, stroking their hair, putting his hands on and rubbing their shoulders. For a moment, I had a dream job, but I had to quit after a short time because he was such a rarefied bigot like Biden, and my soul felt polluted every time I walked in.
This is not “systemic.” It does not permeate our society or our culture. Indeed, the society spits out anyone who reveals as racist. It is one student out of 2,000. One client in 300. That is not “systemic.” It is not an indictment of America. It is an indictment of an occasional boor and nabob.
I have been a political conservative for half a century. In Orange County, I am involved in the Lincoln Club, a conservative Republican association. In New York, I was involved with Republicans. For three decades I have published in boldly conservative vehicles and have read Readers’ Comments. Conservatives, deeply conservative conservatives, do not bear racism. It is not part of the conservative Weltanschauung. Yes, there are outliers. So ban social media, and see what happens — or pass a law that requires everyone posting a comment on social media or any website to include his or her real name and city. See what happens.
Beyond my circles, I do not see racism anywhere in the system. That is because racism does not exist in the American system. It is outlier — just as hatred, bigotry, and prejudice exists everywhere that you find enough people.
It is a lie that Americans are racist. It is a Damned Lie to say that racism is systemic in America. It is not systemic. It is not in the system.
The Left now is using the adjective “systemic” as tied to the noun “racism” in the same way that we all tie the adjective “honorable” to the noun “judge” — the honorable judge, even if a judge is not honorable. Or the “learned professor” even if the professor is an ignoramus. Or the “good doctor” even when the doctor is bad. We just say it. And now they are tying “systemic” to “racism.” It is a lie.
News flash: This country elected a Black president in 2008, even though he was manifestly unqualified, had no discernible mastery except in leveraging a background in “community organizing” to cheat the system, conduct illegal investigations. He got rich off a sweetheart deal with a convicted felon. His wife told us that she hated the country. He ran against a guy who was very moderate, billed as a war hero, with experience in government. And yet this country elected the incompetent Black guy anyway. Then, four years later, after the Black guy proved his incompetence many times over, we elected him yet again over an extremely accomplished businessman who also had a moderate even-keeled temperament and personality and who had governed the liberal state of Massachusetts. But we elected the Black guy. That was the Black guy under whom ISIS grew from a JV to a caliphate, the Black guy who called an Arab terrorist’s massacre “workplace violence,” the Black guy who could not engender an economic boom after a serious recession. He was the Black guy whose pastor was the Right Reverend Jeremiah Wright. And yet we still elected the Black guy. He brought in one Black attorney general, then another. Where was the “systemic” racism?
Look all over the world. Who else among all the nations that criticize us ever has done what we do: elected a Black head of government? Britain? France? Spain? Denmark? Belgium? Russia? Yes, it is true that China does have among their leaders people who are, uh, Chinese — but no one else. Is Russia or China about to have a Black leader, a Black foreign minister, a Black anything? Kuwait? Saudi Arabia? Iran? Where are all their Condoleezza Rices, Colin Powells, Eric Holders, Loretta Lynches? Where are Blacks in those societies? The irony is that this country, which once blighted itself with racism, has evolved into something that is less institutionally and systemically racist than anywhere else on Earth. Stop listening to the Damned Lies. Look at the naked Emperor.
There have been some disgusting anti-Jewish attacks in this country. Ulysses Grant’s General Order No. 11. The Leo Frank lynching in Georgia in 1915. The 1922 Massena, New York, blood libel. More recently, the incidents at the Pittsburgh temple and at the Poway synagogue. But no Jew with any common sense ever would imagine to say that America is “systemically” anti-Semitic. And we have not even had a Jewish president. Big deal. Spare us the honor.
I have encountered my fair share of cops. Two of them were anti-Semitic. I am sure there are others. At each of two of the prominent law firms where I worked, there was respectively one Jew-hater among the law partners. That does not mean that the anti-Semitism was “systemic” at the law firms. It simply meant that each place had a dirtbag who was a partner, and I had to live with that. At one of the firms, he hated Jews so much that he never asked to work with me. At the other firm, the other one hated Jews so much that I refused ever to work with him. To hell with both of them.
We need to call Truth by its name: truth. And we cannot allow these Mass Liars to spread the Big Lie that racism is endemic or systemic. It is not even systemic in police departments. There are too many Black, Hispanic, and Asian police officers, too many Black municipal police chiefs, for racism to be systemic. In Minnesota, the chief law enforcement official, the state attorney general, is Black. So is the police chief of Minneapolis. If those police departments have a bad apple, what has the police chief been doing? There are bad cops, as there are bad people in every walk of life, and there are tons of good cops. In the same way, we have witnessed during this past week that there are good, passionate demonstrators on both sides of the political spectrum — and there are many, many vicious animals, thugs, goons, and vicious haters who pose as “protesters” when in fact they are animals and anarchists who aim to destroy our blessed country, our excellent values, our cherished way of life. Those anarchists are not “protesting.” They are not angry. Rather, they are having the time of their lives. It is Christmas in June for them — burning down stores, looting merchandise, beating up people, smashing windows.
How does it advance the cause of social justice for Blacks or Hispanics or anyone when a bunch of White anarchists, supported by their millionaire suburban White liberal parents’ bottomless largesse and attending exclusive liberal East Coast colleges, go into Macy’s and loot the store? Or steal television sets? Whose cause does that advance? It is a lie that the arsonists and vandals are expressing “outrage.” They are celebrating Christmas, getting their gifts now, and burning the fingerprints left behind. They want to destroy, and this is their excuse in an environment that has been soaked for three years with kerosene by Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, and further stoked with gasoline by CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the others.
The Truth is that the Pelosi Democrats and the Left media have been tearing at our social fabric for three years, aiming to destroy the present government in a grab for power. We saw it so blatantly during the Kavanaugh hearings. Blasey Ford was caught in perjury — about her flying, her extra front door. It never was about “You have to believe a woman” because, if it were, Biden would be out of political contention now on rape charges, as would be the attorney general of Virginia. It never was about Blackface, or Ralph Northam would be out of Virginia. Rather, it has been about throwing wrenches in the spikes of government and tearing down the social order to take power.
It no longer either is about George Floyd. It began as a legitimate opportunity to demand that police departments across the country look inside and reevaluate their recruitment, training, and retention policies, in order to extirpate the bad apples, the racists, the Jew-haters, the people with psychological pathologies who have no business walking around with handcuffs, guns, and badges. But that time now has passed. The anarchists don’t want the very minuscule number of bad apples thrown out. Rather, they want whole police forces closed down, just as they want Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) closed down. Because, when you defund the police and ICE, and you have no law enforcement, you have exactly the anarchy that this all is about.
They are sharks in the water, and thanks to the Left media and the Pelosi Democrats they smell blood. They never had it so good, and they have political backing from Democrats for their crimes. Never was it easier to become a national hero by being an arsonist and torching a pharmacy or a Black-owned clothing store. Never was it so easy to became a hero by stealing television sets from a Hispanic-owned appliance store. This is not protest, but Christmas in June.
Damn those who would destroy the greatest political experiment and society that ever has unfolded in post-Biblical history, and who would turn this country into another Venezuela or Cuba, Russia or China, or France or Spain. Damn them and damn their lies.
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Rabbi Dov Fischer, Esq., a high-stakes litigation attorney of more than twenty-five years and an adjunct professor of law of more than fifteen years, is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, California.
