Below is my column in the California Post and New York Post on the recent claims made by Democratic candidates in the debate for California’s governorship. As expected, the race-baiting rhetoric flowed from each of the Democratic candidates, including a claim that requiring English proficiency is “racial profiling.”
Here is the column:
If you go to NASCAR to watch the cars crash, the Democratic gubernatorial race in California has been a thrilling pile-up.
The recent debate saw all the Democratic candidates play the race card over a curious issue. When asked if they supported the move to rescind at least 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, every single Democrat declared the policy racist. The candidates also pledged to support truckers who cannot speak or read English.
When Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican candidate, said that being able to read English (and particularly English signs) should be mandatory, Porter lectured the Hispanic sheriff on racism, saying that his support for English proficiency by truckers disqualified him from being governor of California.
Not to be outdone, Democratic candidate Tom Steyer declared that requiring truck drivers to be able to read English is “racial profiling.”
Steyer, a billionaire, has been funding his own campaign with almost $120 million and has tried to capture the far-left supporters of Swalwell. In so doing, he has increasingly looked like Howard Hughes with better-trimmed nails.
Steyer grabbed Swalwell’s platform of pledging to arrest ICE officers and take punitive measures against them. He cannot fulfill that pledge, and the Ninth Circuit recently shot down the flagrantly unconstitutional California law seeking to dictate the conduct or appearances of federal officers. The law was supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom and all of the Democratic candidates.
Steyer’s claim that English proficiency rules are “racial profiling” is more Looney Tunes than law.
Racial profiling occurs when a person’s racial appearance alone is grounds for reasonable suspicion for a stop or search. English proficiency requirements are race-neutral conditions to ensure basic safety in the operation of large trucks. We have seen several fatal cases involving undocumented persons who could not read or speak English proficiently.
Even the use of apparent race or ethnicity is allowed when part of a totality of circumstances or observations by law enforcement. Last year, the Supreme Court stayed a racial profiling case from California on that ground, in favor of law enforcement, in a 6-3 decision in Noem v. Vasquez-Perdomo.
If requiring English proficiency is racial profiling, a wide array of jobs in the United States are the products of racism, including airplane pilots, air traffic controllers, U.S. military, astronauts, mechanics, and baseball umpires. Even the European Space Agency has required English proficiency.
By Steyer’s standard, he may also be the product of a racial profiling system. In order to appear on the ballot, Steyer certified that he is a U.S. citizen. To be a U.S. citizen, you must be proficient in English. Thus, a candidate must certify that he is both a citizen and English-proficient. He can then go on a stage and call such requirements racial profiling without any basis in the law.
Ironically, Steyer made much of his money managing Farallon Capital Management, which profited from owning private prisons and, in the case of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), actually runs one of the largest ICE facilities. Now called CoreCivic, the company requires not only U.S. citizenship but also English proficiency.
As with the pledges to arrest ICE officers and dictate how they conduct their operations, the racial profiling claim is knowingly misleading and unfounded. It is designed to pander to the far left by suggesting that requiring basic English skills of large-truck operators is somehow unlawful or unconstitutional.
The only thing that Steyer proved, again, is that there are sadly few requirements to run for governor of California beyond a large fortune and little shame.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
It’s become increasingly annoying that moderators do not implement follow up questions to absurd positions that endanger Americans. In this case, the moderator could have asked if fatalities caused by illegal drivers are acceptable because they could not read road signs. The graft being accumulated for these Democrat supporting moderators will not offset the consequences of being judged when they die.
As with Charlottesville, the term “racial profiling” has its roots not in the realities of policing but in the boardroom of a leftist organization, the ACLU. It was only after failing in court to prove racism in the highly successful profiling of northbound drug runners coming up out of Florida that the ACLU went all Al Sharpton with their divisive publicity campaign.
And again, like Charlottesville, where race-baiters cherry-picked Trumps words, by taking profiling out its original context (being alert to things like young male driver, no passengers, no luggage, rented car, single key in ignition, known drug corridor, vague about destination, etc.) and then supercharging it by adding the word “racial.” And the news media ran with it, despite America’s cops having never heard of “racial profiling” (caveat: after learning of it in the news America’s obsequious police chiefs, devotees of SPLC race training, couldn’t wait to publicly announce that they would cleanse it from their agencies).
The only role race played in profiling was the acknowledgement that certain drugs are trafficked by certain racial groups, and meth-dealing whites were not left out.
Note: not to be overlooked is the horrible effect these Leftist fabrications have on young people, crushing their hopes and plans for a bright future by painting a soul-breaking picture of a country that is recognized worldwide as the land of opportunity. A true American tragedy.
If you “Babelize” people, you ultimately “Balkanize” them into hostile, protective, birds-of-a-feather, identity-driven units of a population, -separated by ethnicity, race, religion, etc.—and totally antithetical to our Constitution.
Thus, you tear apart and fragmentize our country, -and the United States becomes the Untied States.
Is that intentional?