Is racism alive and well in America?

Last week, three college girls at Ole Miss were caught making noises into a camera. Now, if you’re like me, you might be wondering why this is so important.

Well, the noise was a monkey noise, and the camera belonged to a black woman. The left, in all of its equanimity, found this offensive because it believes there is an intrinsic link between monkey noises and black people.

Call me crazy, but I’ve never seen the connection.

Now, since it appears this college campus in 2026 is a cesspool of racism and Jim Crow-era intimidation tactics, I think it’s important we take this seriously. Let’s finally put to bed the question:

Is racism alive and well in America?

The Ole Miss Story

As controversial stories involving race typically go, people are mixed up on the facts.

Was this intentional? Were the girls racially motivated? Did they know the girl was black? Where was Jussie Smollett during all of this? So on and so forth.

I don’t want to get into any of that. For the sake of this article, I will grant the mainstream framing: Three white college girls made a specific, targeted, and racially motivated monkey noise at a black student’s Ring camera.

For days now, people have been using this story as proof that racism is still alive and well in America. And they are right, but not in the way they mean.

What is racism?

Racism, by any standard definition, is a negative prejudice based on race. To be racist towards someone means discriminating against them because of their skin color.

However, that is not the definition that is used by the wing of the Left we once called “Critical Race Theorists” and today call “Senators-elect.”

Their definition frequently adds the caveat that racism requires institutional power and privilege.

This little rhetorical flourish, despite being on its face completely nonsensical, serves an important role in leftist orthodoxy, which is maintaining the belief that only white people can be racist.

In the words of disgraced New York Times Bestseller Robin DiAngelo, “When I say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States, only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color.” Therefore, underprivileged groups, in this frame, cannot be racist, because they supposedly lack the institutional power to be racist.

Where is the institutional power?

So with that definition in mind, let’s turn to the fallout from the Ole Miss case.

These girls were caught on camera doing something perceived to be racist. Someone posted it on TikTok, a massive corporate social media platform. That algorithm then amplified the content. News organizations picked it up and applied pressure to the girls’ college. The university investigated the matter, and ultimately the pressure caused one of the girls to drop out and apologize publicly. This coverage motivated targeted campaigns against this woman’s family and their family business. And her life is functionally ruined, or at least severely set back.

What is this but institutional power?

It appears as though black people who feel aggrieved in this country have a strong degree of institutional power, at least more institutional power than these white girls who can do little more than grovel. So even if this event was racially motivated, by the left’s own definition it cannot be racist, because these girls lacked the institutional power to support their racism.

The Ole Role Reversal

To settle the point further, we could engage in a favorite pastime of conservatives: imagining if the roles were reversed. Picture a group of black girls yelling a slur into a Ring camera.

In fact, let’s imagine an even more egregious scenario. Instead of imagining a group of black women yelling the word “cracker” into a Ring camera one time, let’s imagine that it’s done every day, incessantly, at all hours of the night, targeted at one girl.

There may be consequences. There may even be outrage, with conservative pundits whining about anti-white racism in America.

But we all know the consequences would not be as severe. This would not be a national news story. This would not ruin these girls’ lives in any meaningful way, or their families’ lives. Social media algorithms would not pick it up. Even a more severe role reversal would not lead to institutional consequences for these imagined harassers.

Outrage would occur, but outrage is not enough. It must be institutional power.

So it would seem that racism does exist in America, if we grant the leftist definition that racism requires institutional power. However, not in the way they mean it. They falsely believe institutional power can only be attained by white people, but it clearly can be attained by black people as well.

The obvious conclusion is that if white people in the past used their institutional power to create structures of racism, the same thing can occur in the other direction.

Not hypocrisy, but strategy

We should not be naive, however. In decades past, conservatives believed they could point out the hypocrisy of progressives and argue from first principles to get them to see things our way.

But this is not hypocrisy at all.

When the left discusses “institutional racism,” many assume their focus is the destruction of racism. It is not. Their focus is the capture of the institution. When these people (whether black, like Ibram X. Kendi, or white, like Robin DiAngelo) say white people maintained institutional power through racism, they see that as instructive on how to maintain power. The racism will continue.

The Catholic Church, in its commendable desire to eradicate racism, frequently misses this point and sees an ally in the left. Our leaders must be shrewd as serpents in this regard. A movement willing to focus its power to crush an 18-year-old sorority girl for a monkey noise is no ally of the Church.

We need to see these racial grievance movements for what they are, not the cry of the oppressed but the revolutionary battle cry of revenge.

The left dresses up like Calcutta, but they will give us the Vendée.