No Race Connection to Lawlessness as Racial Justice.

Two Incidents, One Struggle: The Fight for Justice and the Weaponization of Race

Introduction

Recently, a mentally disturbed vagrant threatened commuters on a New York City subway, but a courageous man and his fellow passengers restrained him. In another incident, a pregnant hospital worker was falsely accused of stealing a Citi Bike and was physically harassed by a group of men who then smeared her name on social media. However, there is a concerted effort from powerful people in the media, on the internet, and in district attorney’s offices to paint both incidents as a racial struggle.

The Struggle Between the Helpless and the Lawless

These two events are not stories about race. A thoughtful person who hears the details of each case could see that, from the facts we know, each was a struggle between the helpless and the lawless. The subway incident was a conflict between law-abiding citizens and a drug-addled vagrant who was threatening innocent passersby. The Citi Bike incident was a struggle between a pregnant nurse who was trying to bike home after a long day’s work and a group of young men who tried to steal the bike from her and ruin her life with a libelous video.

The Fight for Justice

The fight is between decent Americans of every color and those in power who wink at rampant lawlessness and wield its messy results to pit neighbors against each other. It’s between two ideologies: one that says each individual should be responsible for his own actions, and another that says people should be treated differently based on their membership in an identity group.

The Weaponization of Race

A vocal minority of people who seek to weaponize unfortunate incidents like these to advance their own Marxist designs are construing these two events as the most recent face of the struggle for racial justice in America. And as they do, blue-collar workers and single moms and middle-class dads and the other millions of Americans who keep the country’s lights on will see a fight they do not recognize. They won’t sympathize with the taunting, harassing bullies being held up as heroes — they’ll imagine being victims of the same lawless behavior, and they will be afraid.

The Fight for Right and Wrong

Despite what activists within and beyond the media want you to believe, you’re not a racist if you think that ideology is wrong. On the contrary, that way of treating people is racist by definition. If you think that’s wrong, odds are you’re an American who works hard and believes that laws should defend the vulnerable, justice should be blind, and people should have ownership of their actions.

Conclusion

Although people who profit from enflaming hatred are doing everything they can to convince you otherwise, don’t be tricked into thinking the subway story or the Citi Bike incident are microcosms of a supposed fight between Americans with darker skin and Americans with lighter skin. They do, however, represent the tension between Americans who still believe in such a thing as right and wrong — in protecting innocents and holding evildoers accountable — and those who work to guilt, scare, and harass those convictions out of them.