Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris announced that the Biden administration will be distributing hurricane Ian relief to the citizens of Florida based on skin color when she said, “We have to address this[hurricane relief] in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality but we also need to fight for equity.” Equity is the process of giving people social credit based on race, gender and lifestyle. Applying equity to hurricane relief means that those factors will weigh much more heavily than actual need. So, giving relief to those in need will not be based on their need. According to Kamala Harris’ equity agenda, hypothetically, a white male truck driver whose house was just destroyed by hurricane Ian would have to wait in line for government assistance behind a black female lawyer whose house has a little water damage in the front room.
It is easy to dismiss Kamala Harris for the racist that she is, but there’s something far more sinister going on. If she simply wanted to put certain people ahead of other people based solely on their race, that is bad enough, but it is far more nefarious because Kamala Harris does not actually care about minorities and people of color. Throughout her life, she has continually either ignored or worked against those groups to serve her political ambitions. In 2020, Harris helped create the Minneapolis bail fund which provided bail to the BLM rioters in Minneapolis because the riots benefitted her politically. She did not care that the people she was helping get out of jail were destroying major parts of that city, mainly businesses owned by minorities. Many of those businesses have yet to be reopened more than two years later, and Harris has never created a fund to rebuild Minneapolis’ minority-owned businesses.
Kamala Harris was an advocate for the defund the police movement which resulted in a 40% increase in violent crimes in minority communities over two years. Thousands of more blacks and minorities have been killed or victimized by violent crime as a result of defunding the police. If she really cared about disaffected communities and minorities, she would advocate for increased funding for the police so there would be a reduction of crime and violence in those communities which would give minorities a fighting chance in life. Kamala Harris has never used her position or power to address black-on-black crime which accounts for over 90% of the black murder victims in our country every year. And when she was Attorney General in California, she sent a disproportionate number of minorities to jail for extended sentences for minor drug crimes because it advanced her political career. She only cares about minorities when she can exploit their plight for her political ambitions.
So why is she now promoting giving aid to people based on their race? If we look at the political landscape over the last two years, we will find that minorities are leaving the Democrat party in droves. In the 2020 election, there were 30-point swings of Hispanic voters from Democrat to Republican in many counties in South Texas; there was a 14-point swing in South Florida; and even states like New York, Arizona, Massachusetts and California, showed a 6 to 9-point swing of Hispanic votes away from the Democrat party. It is not just Hispanics. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the Black vote by 58 points. But in 2020, Joe Biden won the Black vote by just 20 points, a 38-point drop.
So, Kamala Harris’ hurricane Ian relief fund equity agenda is not motivated by a desire to help disaffected people of color but a desire to reestablish the Democrat party’s stronghold on the minority vote. Ironically, the grounds she is using to buy back these minority voters is the very reason why many are leaving the party to begin with. The Democrats laser focus on equity, on putting race and gender and lifestyle ahead of merit is what is driving this country into the ground and what is driving minorities out of her party.
Asian-Americans are leaving the Democrat party because it has embraced critical race theory (CRT), which attributes disparities in group outcomes to systemic racism. Democrats have been dismantling our meritocracy-based education system, which Asians benefit the most from, to achieve equity in education outcomes. They are eliminating merit-based admissions to elite high schools, ending gifted and talented programs, and dropping SAT and ACT scores from the college admission process. Democrats believe that Asian students are over-represented in elite colleges, so their numbers should be reduced to make room for oppressed “people of color”.
Contrary to what Kamala Harris and the Democrats think, minorities are human beings, and most human beings have a keen sense of fairness. And the fairest process in human interactions is not equity, it is meritocracy. Getting what you earned, getting what you deserve based on your merit, not based on your race or gender or lifestyle. Most people understand and believe that. Most self-respecting people do not want things handed to them. They want to receive the sense of self that comes from earning something, deserving something. That is why the equity agenda will not only fail but it will work to destroy our country in the process.
We see the failings of the equity agenda on full display every day in the form of Kamala Harris, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. All three of these hirings or appointments were based solely on the race and the gender of the person. Joe Biden made it very clear that his Vice President and his first appointment to the Supreme Court had to be a woman of color, as he did when hiring his new press secretary. It is painfully obvious that Kamala Harris and Karine Jean-Pierre are unqualified for their jobs. Kamala Harris has failed at every major assignment she’s been given as Vice President. She routinely serves up nonsensical word salads and cackles incessantly when she doesn’t know an answer, which is most of the time. Her current disapproval rating is 12 points underwater.
Karine Jean-Pierre who is the White House press secretary is excruciating to watch do her job. She cannot give one extemporaneous answer to a question during the press briefings which is the number one qualification for the job. She must continually and painfully read from a thick binder filled with the talking points for each possible question. It is embarrassing how unqualified she appears every day. There are high school kids who would do a better job at the podium.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has officially been on the court for less than a week, is already showing her ineptitude. In the recent, Merrill v. Milligan case, she tried to defend an unconstitutional racist law by claiming that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments had codified equity into the Constitution because they helped black people. But she got it completely backwards. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments helped black people by outlawing racist laws in our country, not by promoting racist laws as equity does. That would be like arguing since Branch Rickey’s ending the color barrier in baseball helped black ball players, that an equity-based policy mandating over half the players on every baseball team had to be black is justified on the same grounds. Ketanji Brown Jackson, in her few days sitting on the bench, has already shown she is not qualified for her position due to her a complete misunderstanding of our Constitution as a result of viewing the world through the lens of equity.
The Merrill v. Milligan case should apply to the entire equity agenda. You help people in groups who are discriminated against by ending discrimination, not by creating new forms of discrimination. In the long run, equity base policies will end up hurting the very people they are designed to help. As we have seen with these three equity hirings, you don’t advance your individual group simply by attaining a certain position; you advance your group by excelling in the position, and so far, neither of these three are advancing the profile of women of color.
When Jackie Robinson became the first black player to play in the major leagues, he subsequently was named rookie of the year, and then MVP, seven time All-Star, won the batting title, the World Series, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame. Shortly thereafter, the floodgates opened, and many great black players entered Major League Baseball to become MVPs, World Champions, Home Run Kings, and Hall-of-Famer’s. And Major League Baseball is better for it. Robinson’s success was proof positive that the black players had been kept out of Major League Baseball, not due to lack of merit but because of the color of their skin.
On the contrary, Joe Biden’s equity hires of Kamala Harris, Karine Jean-Pierre and Ketanji Brown Jackson are proving the exact opposite of what Jackie Robinson proved, and that is why we should always make decisions based on merit and not equity. Equity based policies whether it is in hiring, college admissions or distribution of disaster relief will always make every situation worse, not better because they are decisions based on immutable characteristics and not based on merit or even need. The equity policies of the Biden administration have been destructive to our country and one of the main reasons why minorities have been fleeing the Democratic party in recent years, and their shifting allegiance is the reason why Kamala Harris is doubling down on their equity agenda with hurricane relief funds.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.