Racism is everywhere.
At least, that's what progressives would have you believe. And since we're quickly running out of things to label "racist," social justice warriors are having to reach even deeper to find new things to slap the label of "bigotry" on, making for ridiculous new hurtles for the rest of society to try and jump - but also providing an abundance of hilarity for the otherwise sane-minded.
To that end, here are three new things the left has decided to deem "racist" - and be warned: they're as ridiculous as you'd expect.
1. Air.
You read that right. At this point, the very air you breathe is “racist” – at least according to liberals, who’re now pointing to a study that claims white people are privileged to breathe cleaner air than most Blacks in America.
From The Independent:
Non-white Americans breathe worse air than white ones, a new scientific study has found.
Ethnic minority communities in the US, including Black, Hispanic and Asian, suffer higher exposure from nearly all sources of air pollution including roads, building sites, factories and even restaurants, according to the journal Science Advances.
This isn’t exactly a new claim – in fact, its been around a few years or so. But now it’s being published in places like Scientific American, which breaks down how minorities are exposed to more air pollution due to emitters like vehicles, construction, businesses and general industry.
While it may be true that minorities tend to live in places where air pollution is heavier, claiming that the air itself exhibits “systemic racism” confuses the very definition of “racism,” which is defined by dictionary.com as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group,” or “the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.”
Air does not emote. Therefore, air cannot be “racist.” To say it is, or to say that America is systemically racist because minorities tend to populate more polluted places like cities, is to diminish the very idea of “racism” as willful and targeted malice.
2. Yoga.
This one’s a bit new – and yet, not at all surprising. According to People magazine, yoga may have been taken over by “white supremacy” because so many white people have joined the fad, even though they aren’t South Asian.
According to yoga instructor Jessamyn Stanley (no, you’ve never heard of her, and don’t worry about it), “white supremacy” has “polluted yoga” due to “wealthy white people wanting to learn and explore [yoga] in a very specific way.” Stanley, who is herself both black and obese, accuses white people of using yoga as a physical fitness tool rather than the spiritual Zen-centering one it was meant to be.
Stanley, who also is not Asian herself, also accuses white yoga-doers of “appropriation” that “comes from practitioners who are not South Asian looking at South Asian teachers and saying, 'I need to do exactly what they're doing. I need to practice yoga exactly how they're practicing it.'”
Then again, Stanley also admits to believing that “everything in our collective society is rooted in white supremacy,” adding, “I am sure there are many people who would disagree with that, and honestly I don't care because I believe that and I know it's the case.”
In that vein, I’m pretty sure everything Stanley believes is rooted in supreme egotism and ignorance.
3. Teaching law.
Per some perpetual victims, even teaching historical case law that was once rooted in racism might in and of itself be racist because simply mentioning decades-old, bigoted court rulings hurt people’s feelings.
The New Yorker published a piece written by one constitutional law professor in defense of continuing to teach cases like the infamous 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, in which an enslaved black man was denied his freedom by a U.S. Supreme Court that ruled, at the time, that Scott was not considered a “citizen” under the U.S. Constitution because he was black, and could therefore not even bring a legal case before the court for consideration, much less win his freedom through it.
But merely mentioning such an abominable court decision, other professors have argued, is “traumatizing” and “hurtful” to students of color, with one law professor claiming that teaching the historic case would “destroy the kind of community I want to foster in class.” Other famous race-based cases, including Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, have come under the same scrutiny for causing mental harm to Black and minority students who have to hear about them, despite their historical importance in U.S. history and in the story of America’s journey through slavery and racism.
But in 2021, even mentioning an abhorrent, more-than-100-year-old court decision with the express intent of pointing out the then-courts’ inherent racism is, in fact, racist by itself.