'Racial Trauma' Isn't Real. The Epidemic of Fatherlessness Is | Opinion

"Racial trauma." It's one of the Left's favorite buzzwords in 2023 America, from the mainstream media to government doctrine. Americans are led to believe that black people are coping with mental and emotional injuries due to lingering systemic racism.

According to white and black "experts," there is "no cure" for the effects of the pervasive discrimination that exists today. And racial trauma is more common than people think, or so we're told. It is a belief championed by none other than President Joe Biden himself, who proclaimed "white supremacy" the most dangerous threat to our homeland at a Howard University commencement address earlier this year. Meanwhile, one of the most widely quoted gurus of the "America remains afflicted with systemic racism" narrative, Florida State Professor of Criminology Eric Stewart, has been fired for "extreme negligence," "incompetence" and "false results."

If "systemic racism" is so obvious, why the need to fake data to prove it?

Enough! Buzzwords like "racial trauma" are nothing more than distractions. To suggest racial trauma is notable in American society amounts to demagoguery in its most derisive form, used by detached, cynical people—including our president and other Democrats—who seek to distract blacks from the real problems facing their community. Weaponizing such buzzwords, today's demagogues are exploiting the very real concerns of black people by turning them into victims—political pawns on a chessboard. Through the identity politics of victimization, Biden Democrats are pimping black people for votes and ducking any semblance of accountability for their bankrupt policies, which have ravaged the black community for decades.

"Racial trauma" isn't real because "systemic racism" isn't real—not anymore. We're not living in the Jim Crow South, where both of my parents were born—not today, not now. In America, racism has never been less significant than in 2023.

By handing the victim card to black people who all too readily play it, Democrats hope to justify their own worth in failed cities like my hometown of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore, where criticizing crime is suddenly racist. They get a pass for appeasing violent criminals, who are the sole beneficiaries of Soros-funded district attorneys and their soft-on-crime policies. Law-abiding black families are those left bearing the consequences in places where deadly shootings have become second-nature.

By peddling the myths of "systemic racism" and "racial trauma," Democrat politicians are selling a bag of lies. Scapegoat the white boogeyman, and blacks may turn a blind eye to the cynical, detached Democrat politicians who run their communities, and run them into the ground.

Victimhood isn't truth, but it is a powerful political weapon.

The truth is this: The number one social problem in America is the epidemic of fatherlessness, particularly acute in the black community. Nearly 70 percent of black kids today enter the world without a father in the home married to the mother—up from 24 percent back in 1965. The welfare state has incentivized black women to marry the government and black men to abandon their financial and moral responsibility. And without proper role models in the home, many black children are now growing up to become violent criminals, wreaking havoc and ruining lives, especially their own.

Too many black kids don't have the luxury of a two-parent household, like me and my brothers did. At home, we were taught, "Hard work wins." We were taught right from wrong. We were taught to look ourselves in the mirror before blaming others for our failures. We never looked for the boogeyman and we never saw him, because he's not there.

The numbers don't lie, and the devastating impact of fatherlessness has been proven time and time again. A child raised without a father is five times more likely to be poor and commit a crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in jail.

You know who said that? Barack Obama.

The top preventable cause of death for young black males aged 19 and under is homicide, while their white counterparts are at most risk of random accidents like car crashes and drownings. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a black male aged 10 to 43 is 13 times more likely to be murdered than a white male in the same demographic, and most likely by another black male.

We're supposed to blame "racial trauma" for that? We're meant to scapegoat so-called "white supremacists," a la Joe Biden?

Black people are best-served looking in the mirror than they are looking for answers from Democrats who have none. The solution to fatherlessness comes from within. And yet, the black people who speak the truth are ridiculed as "Uncle Toms." I'm called "the black face of white supremacy" by the Los Angeles Times.

For what? Saying that family matters—end quote.

Black people who still ignore the truth are only hurting themselves and helping Democrats stay in power. Ignorance is the real trauma.

Larry Elder is a Republican candidate for president of the United States in 2024. His new book "As Goes California: My Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation" comes out this November.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.