Racism - The Ultimate Collectivist Act

Ayn Rand in an article written about racism started out the article with this sentence, "Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism." It is an article what every American should read because it reveals so clearly the root cause of racism. Racism is not based on the individual, it is based on the collective or group.

Only with thinking about people as a group or collective can you have racism. If you think of people as individuals, you cannot. When blacks say all white people are one way or white people say something similar about blacks, you are saying that all people with a particular skin pigmentation are collectively the same. If you sincerely believed that all people are individuals and you need to judge them only by their own actions, you cannot rationally make that kind of statement.

So, where is current American society heading?

It does not seem that there has ever been a time in our history where skin color or ethnicity means more to Americans than now. From Martin Luther King's dream of a "color-blind" society we have become a color-obsessed society. MLK must have wanted everyone to be treated as an individual since this was the only way that you could achieve his dream society. So why are we so obsessed with something as superficial as skin color?

Collectivism is the political strategy of the Democratic party here in the US. Their strategy is to first create smaller collective groups, and then merge them into the larger collective, the party. They create victim/minority groups and then say that only their party will create a program to help them while villifying the Republicans for not caring about "their" concerns. Rather than treating people as individuals, they treat them as collectives, or groups. It has been very effective for them politically but is it good for the country?

Republican political philosophy is individualism, not groups, which leads to such positions as smaller government, less taxes, complete freedom of speech. Democratic positions are almost the opposite with bigger and more powerful government, more taxes, and restrictions on speech (political correctness).

Rand's prediction is that the more collective a society is, the more racist it is. Even after our last election, which in some ways likely proved Rand to be correct, America is breaking into collective groups who are competing for government money and power. Unless Americans start considering themselves as individuals rather than groups competing with each other for government largess, Martin Luther King's dream can turn into a nightmare.