The Long March through our education system approaches its triumphant end

College undergrads: America is racist, looting “justified”, reparations required.

(The headline might better read, “college undergraduates and their instructors”, and both groups’ approval of socialism vs free-market capitalism is even more disheartening, but that’s another post.)

America’s next generation of college students, markedly liberal and who support Joe Biden nearly 3-to-1 over President Trump, have strongly adopted the positions of the Black Lives Matter movement, according to a sweeping new survey conducted for Yale University’s William F. Buckley Program.

Embracing the view that America is racist, 51% of undergraduates 24 years old or younger said that the nation is “inextricably linked to white supremacy” and that most minorities are “excluded from the American promise of equality.”

Even more, 64% said that whites who do not speak out against racism are “perpetuating the injustices” minorities face. That was a common theme promoted by white protesters at the recent protests.

“By a 52% to 40% margin, students believe we should defund police departments because they are failing many communities.” Women more than men, 56%-47%, support defunding police departments.

And as the Black Lives Matter movement claims, that feeling is driven by concerns blacks are targeted by police.

As a result, looting during protests is justified. Said the analysis, “64% agree that due to systemic racism and the wrongful targeting of Black Americans by police officers, the recent rioting and looting is justified to some degree.”

On Monday, during a related protest, stores in Philadelphia were looted, and at least one police vehicle was burned after police killed a man armed with a knife. Some 30 officers were injured in the riots.

Pollster Jim McLaughlin noted the difference in the views of the students to the fact that they grew up under the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama.

“The students in a country that elected a bi-racial president not once, but twice and has produced multiple black billionaires believe that their country is racist,” he said.

McLaughlin said, “Nearly two-thirds, say the rioting and looting is justified. What are these kids learning? That’s scary.”

When Obama won in 2008 I consoled myself with the thought that maybe the election of black president would somehow work to heal the racial tensions in this country. That hope lasted less than a month past his inauguration, when AG Eric Holder gave his speech accusing (white) America of being a racist, nation of cowards. Things have proceeded downward from there, deliberately.