The New White Inquisition

How Liberal Anti-Racism Rhetoric Became a Way to Bully Other White People Instead of Help Society Become Better

Image credit: The New York Times

A lot of anti-racist activism today does not feel like justice. It feels like a performance. In many schools, workplaces, and online spaces, some white liberals seem more interested in calling other white people racist than in actually helping people who face real discrimination. They are not fighting racism. They are fighting anyone who refuses to follow their script.

That is the problem. And it is worth being honest about it.

Guilt as a Status Symbol

Writer Shelby Steele argued in his landmark Wall Street Journal essay “The Exhaustion of American Liberalism” that modern liberal politics often runs on guilt, not action. Instead of fixing real problems, many people try to prove they are morally good by showing how ashamed they are of racism in the past. They wear that shame like a badge. And then they attack anyone who does not wear the same badge with the same enthusiasm.

Steele called this “a mock politics based on the pretense of moral authority.” In other words, it looks like doing something, but it is really just performing something. The goal stops being fairness for people who actually experience discrimination. The goal becomes looking like one of the “good people.” And once you are focused on looking good rather than doing good, the easiest move is to find someone to accuse. Enter the witch hunt.

Rewriting the Rules to Win the Argument

[embed]Little Italy, Los Angeles, Episode 5, “Not My Taco,” directed by Adriano Valentini. Video courtesy of Adriano Valentini Productions/Adaptive Studios via YouTube.

Before you can call someone a racist, you need a definition of racism that makes it easy to apply to as many people as possible. That is exactly what has happened. Jonah Goldberg, writing for the American Enterprise Institute, points out that progressives have increasingly redefined racism to mean only what white people do to people of color through institutional power. Under that definition, a white person can be called racist for almost anything, including staying silent, disagreeing, or simply not “performing” enough guilt. But prejudice directed at white people does not count as racism at all.

That is a double standard. And double standards, as Goldberg warns, do not produce justice. They produce resentment. Research actually suggests that calling people who are not racist “racist” makes them more resentful and more defensive over time, not more open-minded. So the strategy backfires on its own terms. It does not reduce prejudice. It inflames it.

Think about it this way. Imagine a school where one group of students was constantly told they were guilty of a serious moral failure, not because of anything they personally did, but because of their race and because they refused to repeat certain approved phrases. At the same time, students from other groups could say almost anything without facing the same scrutiny. Most people would immediately recognize that as unfair. Yet that is precisely the world some anti-racist activists are building.

Who Actually Benefits?

Catherine Liu, in her essay “How Liberal Elites Use Race to Keep Workers Divided,” asks a sharp question: who actually benefits from all this race talk? Her answer is uncomfortable. It is often the already powerful. Wealthy and educated professionals use race language to look morally superior while keeping their own advantages completely intact. Real problems like unfair wages, bad schools in poor neighborhoods, and unequal access to healthcare rarely get addressed. Instead, the conversation stays locked on who used the wrong word and who needs to apologize.

So while everyone argues about language, the systems that actually hurt people of color stay largely untouched. That is a convenient outcome for the people at the top.

Meanwhile, performative allyship floods our culture. Companies change their logos for a month. Schools hold mandatory workshops. People post dramatic statements online. But as researchers at Catalyst have documented, these gestures often make things worse by creating the illusion of progress without delivering any real change.

Decent People Deserve Better

There are millions of white people who have never treated anyone with contempt because of their race, who believe in fairness, and who want a more just society. They do not deserve to be treated like villains because they hesitate over a slogan or push back on an idea. Judging people by the color of their skin and their willingness to recite approved language is not anti-racism. It is a new kind of prejudice with better marketing.

Real anti-racism looks at concrete outcomes: Are hiring practices fair? Are schools equal? Is housing discrimination being stopped? Are wages rising for people who have been left behind? Those are the questions worth fighting over.

What we have instead is a culture where some of the loudest voices calling out racism are mostly yelling at other white people for not being sufficiently woke. That is not solidarity. That is a power trip dressed up as justice. And the sooner young people recognize the difference, the sooner we can build something that actually works.