America is suffering from a national identity crisis, where most people feel like victims
Vivek Ramaswamy, author of the 2021 bestselling book, “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” and its sequel, “Nation of Victims,” said the country is suffering from a national identity crisis that has left a void for victimhood to fill and that national policies that have tried to address grievances are the true cause of systemic racism.
Affirmative action “is the single greatest form of institutionalized racism in the United States today, anti-white, anti-Asian racism, but which then creates a backlash wave of new anti-black racism that we otherwise would not have had, but for the grievance that affirmative action creates amongst the people who were penalized by it,” Ramaswamy said during a recent interview with Epoch TV American Thought Leaders program. “The affirmative action is the systemic racism that is still here in America today, and I’m sorry to say it, will then create the new kind of racist, anti-black racism that we had spent so many decades moving on from.”
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Ramaswamy thinks the Supreme Court should rule to strike down affirmative action in the college admission case they heard in late October because the policy does not work, and worse it creates distrust in the system.
“It’s also a disservice to even the qualified members of those minority groups who do get those positions because of merit, because no one can tell the difference,” said Ramaswamy. This policy also perpetuates racism toward non-black, Hispanic, and native people, particularly during the admission process at elite schools said, Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy said the current admission process is not based on merit and discriminates against whites and Asians.
The Harvard Crimson reported that in the period from 1995 to 2013, Asian-American students admitted to Harvard had higher SAT scores, with an average SAT score of 767 across all sections (every section of the SAT has a maximum score of 800), while African-Americans were admitted with an average of 704.
Meanwhile, a recent Pew Research survey showed that 61 percent of all surveyed, believe 61 percent who say high school test scores should be a major factor, in being admitted to college.
“Nobody talks about affirmative action for the NBA or the NFL, but if you were to apply this to the NBA or NFL it would be the equivalent of asking someone who’s black to make a half-court shot, but someone who’s Asian gets a stair step right up to the hoop to go do a slam dunk,” said Ramaswamy. “We shouldn’t think it’s anything different in science or engineering classrooms either. It’s an assault on merit, it’s an assault on excellence.”
However, in a position paper for affirmative action, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says that this policy is imperative, now more than ever, because over 70 percent of top-tier management positions throughout the United States are held by white men. In the same paper, they state, “Affirmative action programs neither grant preferences based on race nor create quotas.” With regards to college admissions, they state in an October press statement that this rule fosters diversity and inclusion, benefiting all students.
Identifying With Victimhood
“Victimhood has become our new national identity,” said Ramaswamy. Americans need to get from victimhood to empowered, patriotic Americans pursuing excellence, but the path to empowerment “is a complicated one that runs through some uncomfortable terrain,” said Ramaswamy.
“We are so hungry for purpose and meaning and identity, at a point in our national history where the kinds of things that used to fill that void for purpose; things like patriotism and hard work and family, faith … they slowly receded, if not disappeared in modern life, and that leaves a black hole of identity in its wake,” said Ramaswamy.
This void runs deep and “allows wokeism to find its home at the heart of that American soul,” said Ramaswamy, and secular religions like “scientism.” Instead, we need to fill that hole with something rich and meaningful “that dilutes the poison [victimhood] to irrelevance said, Ramaswamy.
The Solution Is Striving for Excellence
This massive gap must be filled with purpose, and affirmative American values including “unapologetic pursuit of excellence, individual self-actualization,” said Ramaswamy, otherwise people will be left in the perpetual state of victimhood.
“The truth that people don’t like to hear is that “a culture committed to excellence demands inequality of results, demands inequity of results,” said Ramaswamy. In the pursuit of excellence, not everyone will get to the same finish line, whether a basketball player, a teacher, or a student, he added.
The system is suffering from a lack of excellence, which in turn has at least weakened if not destroyed the merit-based system and for this reason, most people don’t trust institutions said, Ramaswamy.
Those in charge of the “institutions are behaving not only in ways that dilute the purpose of those institutions, but are also put in those positions in ways that betray the principles of merit.”
He thinks that people would have less resentment toward wealthy capitalists if they could trust they achieved their success through merit and hard work instead of being born into wealth and would trust the system if merit was used instead of policies like affirmative action.
ESG Capitalism Preys on Victimhood
“Does the diversity, equity, inclusion-cancer in this country play a role in creating that unearned status? Of course, it does. I think many people are put in those positions for reasons that have little to do with their job qualifications,” said Ramaswamy.
The problem with this new trend of so-called stakeholder “woke” capitalism, or ESG-informed capitalism, is it may seem to promote justice and equity but it takes away democratic power from the people, he continued.
These environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies have come out of the World Economic Forum’s climate and economic goals. The environmental component includes things such as transitioning to solar energy and divesting from fossil fuels and shifting to electric vehicles from gasoline-powered cars.
The social component includes racial and gender equity, diversity training for employees, economic justice, and gun control. The governance component focus on how companies are run and include racial and gender quotas for corporate boards, management, and staff, and in many cases hiring activists to these positions.
In this current corporate model, board members’ power to affect politics is greater than the average citizens’ said Ramaswamy.
“Because your [board members’] say on how we fight climate change if you have a seat in a corporate boardroom, is more impactful than my seat at the ballot box.” This allows the corporations to impose their political agenda on the average citizen said, Ramaswamy.
Conservative Victimhood
Prioritizing entitlement over merit has created resentment and mistrust in the system from whites and Asians, who feel victimized by policies including affirmative action and student loan forgiveness.
“Both sides [liberals and conservatives] are infected with same cancer, yet still continuing to fight each other not knowing that they’re actually members of the same victimhood tribe.”
Many economic conditions and policies have disenfranchised the U.S. working class and created the conditions for those people to then elect former President Donald Trump said, Ramaswamy.
“Trumpian victimhood justified reasons for victimhood that resulted in the election of Trump and in 2016, as the expression of that frustration,” said Ramaswamy.
“The black victimhood epidemic is now creating a new epidemic of white victimhood culture in our country. Second-generation Asian kids are now growing up in this country trying to describe themselves as persons of color, inventing hardships for themselves that they didn’t actually go through, but their parents or their grandparents actually did in coming to this country,” said Ramaswamy.
“We have this victimhood metastasis where everyone wants to think of themselves as a victim. We have to recognize there is no winner in America’s oppression Olympics, there is no gold medalist. If there’s a gold medalist, maybe it’s China.
“Everyone might have real valid reasons for their claims on victimhood, but start to forget about your claim on victimhood and reclaim your claim on excellence,” said Ramaswamy. “We’re going to have to return to reviving that national spirit if we’re to have a chance of passing the torch on to that next generation.”
Forgiveness With Accountability
One of the first steps toward reviving national identity is for each group to forgive the other, “But that doesn’t mean if you commit a crime, you don’t do your time. That doesn’t mean that if you fail as a leader that you aren’t put out of a job so that somebody else is put in that spot in return,” said Ramaswamy.
“I think the path of victimhood [to] excellence runs through forgiveness [and] I think it runs through hardship,” said Ramaswamy.
“If we can take the hardship that I think we’re going to encounter in the next couple of years, but remind ourselves that hardship is not the same thing as victimhood, then hardship can be what reminds us of who we are both as individuals and as a people. Then we will be stronger for it as individuals and as a nation on the other side of it.”