The Biden administration presents the dismantling of “systemic racism” as one of its primary goals.
In an executive order signed on his first day of office, President Biden declared that “entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions, have often denied that equal opportunity to individuals and communities.”
Due to “converging economic, health, and climate crises” — as well as a “historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism” — Biden unveiled a “whole-of-government equity agenda.”
Like many on the Left, President Biden and his closest advisers claim to observe racism in nearly every facet of American life, often conflating disparate outcomes with unconscious bias or institutionalized oppression. As a result, the Biden administration has adopted the increasingly popular “everything-is-racist” ethos to offer dubious justification for their policies.
Here are four examples.
Fossil fuels
At the end of March, Biden unveiled the “White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council” — a body that will advise bureaucrats on “how to address current and historic environmental injustices.”
Vice President Kamala Harris remarked that “we cannot achieve health justice, economic justice, racial justice, or educational justice without environmental justice.” She added that the new group would “ensure that our administration’s work is informed by the insights, expertise, and lived experience of environmental justice leaders from across the nation.”
Aside from the Vice President, members of the committee have a long history of linking certain environmental policies — especially the support of fossil fuels — to racism.
Susana Almanza, who directs an activist organization called People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources (PODER), said that her group is “fighting big monsters; they’re not little ones” — a jab at oil companies.
Beverly Wright, the director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, once told the Department of the Interior to investigate how the federal oil and gas program “perpetuates environmental racism and the racial inequity of climate vulnerability.” She has also linked energy development to Jim Crow, stating that energy laws “were deeply entrenched within the social structure of the Southern environment that worsened our quality of life.”
Jade Begay, who works for the Indigenous Environmental Network, once connected climate change to “colonialism” and alleged that “climate change isn’t just a scientific issue — it’s an issue of racial inequity, economic inequity and cultural genocide.” She has additionally asserted that “the most important action needed now is to stop all new fossil fuel development.”
Far from defeating racism by cracking down on fossil fuel usage, the Biden climate agenda has so far gnawed at the pocketbooks of many disadvantaged Americans.
President Biden’s negative attitude toward fossil fuels immediately manifested in the loss of 11,000 jobs — a direct result of his revoking of the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Likewise, the left-leaning Brookings Institution admits that high gas prices “do affect both consumers and the economy adversely, and they are especially harmful to lower- and moderate-income households.”
Weather
Providing a framework for his presidency, the Biden campaign platform frequently invoked the issue of race to justify his more radical policies — including his climate change plan.
After claiming that George Floyd exemplified the “tragic human costs of systemic racism,” the platform stated that “the climate crisis mounts, with air and water pollution, superstorms and extreme weather, disproportionately impacting Black and Brown communities.”
“That is why racial equity is a distinct pillar of his Build Back Better plan, as well as incorporated in each of the other pillars,” continues the statement.
Elsewhere in the platform, the Biden team alleges that climate change contributes to migration — an assertion that Biden has repeated as his administration oversees a record surge in illegal border crossings from Mexico.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joined the President in making similar accusations.
“My most recent trip to the Northern Triangle, that would be Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, you saw the impact of the climate change, mind you,” she claimed in an interview. “These people were leaving because of the drought. They couldn’t farm and they were seeking other ways to survive.”
Student Loans
Biden is also leaning on charges of racism to justify his openness to reducing student loan debt.
“Black graduates with a four year degree are five times more likely to default on their student loans than white graduates and a 2019 study found that Latino students are more likely than white students to default on their loans,” reads his campaign platform. “The inequitable burden of student loan debt contributes to the stark racial wealth gap that exists in society.”
Biden thereby indicated a willingness to “forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities and private HBCUs and MSIs for debt-holders earning up to $125,000.”
In contrast to the Biden platform’s claims, leading economists note that student loan forgiveness is in effect a “highly regressive policy” that disproportionately benefits wealthier Americans.
University of Pennsylvania Wharton School Professor Sylvain Catherine and University of Chicago Booth School Professor Constantine Yannelis discovered that because African-Americans often carry large quantities of debt with low fair values, student loan repayments frequently cancel debt that would not have been repaid anyway.
Financial technology
President Biden’s platform takes a swing at “fintechs” — financial technology companies — for allegedly failing to provide “responsible access to all members of the community.”
The Biden team supports the strengthening and expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act “to ensure that our nation’s bank and non-bank financial services institutions are serving all communities.” Biden will expand the act to “add a requirement for financial services institutions to provide a statement outlining their commitment to the public interest, and, importantly, reverse new rules that allow these institutions to avoid lending and investing in all of the communities they serve.”
Nevertheless, fintech innovation is almost universally recognized by economists as serving to increase global access to financial markets, including bank accounts and insurance policies. One recent MIT Technology Review article highlighted the importance of fintech in helping economically underprivileged people who were “disadvantaged by the lockdowns everywhere.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.