The tragic death of George Floyd in May 2020 gave birth to an ideological "woke" revolution that holds "any standard or behavioral norm which negatively and disproportionately affects blacks is presumed to be a tool of white supremacy."
Reacting to the woke "systemic racism" mania and the subsequent Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots that engulfed many cities, corporate, educational, media, fine arts, and medical leaders embraced the dictum that "insufficient diversity is the result of racial bias."
The consequences of this development are meticulously detailed in Heather McDonald’s new book, "When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty and Threatens Lives."
McDonald, a Manhattan Institute scholar, rejects the notion that bias is the reason why Blacks are underrepresented in many fields.
The primary reason McDonald’s contends, is unequal distribution of skills.
The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress Exams reported that 7% of Black 12th graders were proficient in 12th grade math versus 28% of white students and 37% of Asians.
As for reading skills, 16% of Black, 38% of white and 37% of Asians were proficient.
Also, the American College Testing organization, in 2021, rated only 10% of Black 12th graders who took the exam were ready for college math, and only 6% were prepared for college when English, math and science were factored into the score.
But the woke mob rejects these findings.
They argue, all objective standards are by their very nature racist.
In fact, Washington’s National Museum of African American History and Culture declared in 2020 "that rationality, the two-parent family, punctuality, self-control, and being polite were ‘white traits.'"
Meanwhile, Smithsonian Museum managers have been advising black children to disdain hard work and delayed gratification.
McDonald vividly describes how woke ideology has trumped traditional standards and meritocracy in the fields of science, medicine, and the arts.
Most disconcerting: the diversity agenda is subverting scientific research and medical practices.
Academic science labs are awarded additional Federal funding if they hire researchers based on diversity not qualifications.
The U.S. Office of Science requires applicants for nuclear physics grants to explain how their research will "promote equity and inclusion as an intrinsic element to advancing scientific excellence."
Then there’s the upheaval in the field of medicine. Major medical institutions have bought into the propaganda that "medicine is an inequity producing enterprise and that health disparities are the product of systemic racism."
The Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) has been redesigned to include up to 25% of its questions on social issues.
Admission standards have been dropped to meet diversity goals.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute rejects medical research proposals — that could save lives — if the applicant does not have a sufficiently "robust" diversity plan.
Such requirements have also impacted drug research.
Diversity advocates insist, MacDonald notes, "that race is a social construct, without biological reality" and "suggesting that a genetic difference exists between racial groups will brand you a racist."
The claim that race is a social construct is actually anti-scientific and contrary to the fact that there are at least five different races.
Diversity activists are radically altering the professional standards of medicine by substituting training in political advocacy for training in basic science.
This in turn, is leading "to a severe shortage of competitively qualified candidates."
Pretty scary, don’t you think?
Here’s more frightening data disclosed in MacDonald’s book:
American orchestras are declining to perform European classical music because of "a lack of racial diversity in its past."
Phillip Ewell, a music theory professor, has declared that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is considered a masterpiece because of the artist’s "whiteness and maleness."
His glossary of music related euphemisms for whiteness includes these terms: authentic, civilized, conventional, European, fundamental, genius, great works, maestro, opus, traditional and Western.
Operas and musical compositions are being revised to satisfy leftist political agendas.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra permitted Schiller’s "Ode to Joy," sung in the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, to be replaced with verbiage that dealt with present-day social issues.
Major art museums have also surrendered. Many accept the notion that museum staffs must "value racial consciousness raising over scholarship and historical accuracy."
In other words, Western art is racist as are the collectors who donate art and the curators who display those works in their museums.
McDonald warns readers that we can no longer turn a blind eye to those dedicated to destroying the very foundations of our society.
"Western Civilization," she concludes, "contains too much beauty and grandeur, too much achievement, and too much innovation — from advances in the sciences to the blessings of republicans self-government — to be lost without a fight."
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact," and "Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy." Read George J. Marlin's Reports — More Here.
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