Hey Charlamagne, it's not 1954 anymore
The picture Democrats paint of America has no basis in reality
One of the few mainstream shows that offers insight into the mind of your average, non-deranged liberal is HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Though I’m not a fan of Maher’s—he’s generally uninformed, too willing to accept the mainstream media’s framing of the issues, and he hides behind a veil of centrism despite remaining a reliable Democrat voter—he is the only host at any of the major networks willing to directly challenge Democrat politicians and leftwing commentators on their more absurd beliefs.
Friday’s episode was the latest example. Maher was interviewing The Breakfast Club host Charlamagne tha God, who was promoting his new book. Charlamagne is apparently one of the most influential commentators in black media. Among those who are not as familiar with him, they may remember Charlamagne for being on the receiving end of Biden’s “you ain’t black” threat in 2020.
During the interview, Maher asked Charlamagne if he agreed with recent comments Biden made about black Americans having “to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot.”
"I don’t know if it’s ten times better, but maybe five," Charlamagne claimed. After pushback from Maher, Charlamagne doubled down.
"When you're Black in America, absolutely. When you’re a woman in America, if you’re a Black woman in America? Absolutely!"
Of course the opposite is true, and provably so. Minorities with lesser qualifications than their white counterparts now routinely get more than a “fair shot” in college admissions and prestigious employment positions.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), between 2013-2016 (curiously the last year the AAMC published this data), black applicants with average GPAs (3.4-3.59) and average MCAT scores (27 to 29) had over an 80 percent chance of being accepted into medical schools compared to just 29 percent of whites and 21 percent of Asians with similar scores. For below average GPAs and MCAT scores, black applicants still had a 56 percent acceptance rate whereas whites and Asians had less than ten percent.
These applicants certainly weren’t performing five times better than anyone else. One can only imagine the numbers post-George Floyd.
These discrepancies exist at many of the most elite institutions in the U.S.
As part of its lawsuit against Harvard University for its racially biased admissions practices, Students for Fair Admissions revealed that black students in the fourth-lowest academic decile were admitted at a higher rate (12.8 percent) than Asian students in the highest-performing decile (12.7 percent acceptance rate). In average deciles (between the fifth and seventh deciles), it was virtually impossible for whites or Asians to get accepted into Harvard. Each group had an acceptance rate of less than five percent. But for black applicants however, the acceptance rates ranged from over 22 percent to as high as 41 percent.
As if the Harvard data weren’t enough, a new study by professors from Yale, NYU, and Northwestern University released earlier this year showed that racial diversity at law schools declined by nearly 20 percent after state government bans on affirmative action. Diversity declined by nearly 50 percent at law schools ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News and World Reports. In other words, once certain states barred colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in admissions, the number of black and Hispanic students attending those institutions declined.
Contrary to what Charlamagne claimed, this obviously suggests that many minority students were accepted because of their race and not because ‘they performed five times better than everyone else.’
Black women, one of the specific groups mentioned by Charlamagne, are notably overrepresented in the federal judiciary. Despite comprising less than 3 percent of all lawyers employed at law firms, black women account for nearly a quarter of Biden’s appointed federal judges. Are we supposed to believe this disparity is due to the overwhelming number of black lawyers who have outperformed their colleagues?
This disparity is also visible in corporate America. In 2021, just one year after millions of Americans protested the death of career criminal George Floyd, 94 percent of new hires by companies in the S&P 100 went to “people of color.” Apparently these companies, which include Amazon, Apple, BlackRock, Disney, JP Morgan, etc., just couldn’t find many talented white applicants!
The bottom line is, if you were applying to an elite academic institution or for a job at a Fortune 500 company, would you rather be a straight white male? Or a nonbinary black lesbian? The answer is a no-brainer.
None of these facts are likely to change Charlamagne’s mind. And he isn’t an outlier. This belief is common belief among Democrat voters since this idea is pushed by the Democrat Party. It’s one of its core tenets.
The Democrat Party thrives when it is able to successfully convince tens of millions of Americans that they are victimized, and that their very existence and livelihoods would be threatened under Republican rule. These so-called victims include racial minorities like blacks and Hispanics, women, and the ‘LGBT,’—all of whom comprise the core of the Democrat voter base. The party can’t win elections without this coalition, and thus it has no choice but to continue promoting this victimhood complex.
The problem is, despite what Democrats want us to believe, the world they are describing no longer exists. We’re living in 2024, not 1954. It’s time our leaders and commentators act like it. Or as Real Time host Bill Maher would put it, “let’s live in the year we’re living in.”