Why "Systematic Racism" is a Conspiracy Theory

I have recently come to realize that the left's insistence on "systematic racism" is a canard, a knee-jerk habit, pure drivel. It is the left's conspiracy theory that racists will take over the world. The left's previous conspiracy theory, back at the turn of the 20th century when eugenics had the fresh-car smell of solid science, held that Jews were going to take over the world. While 21st-century progressives still retain remnants of that original eugenic anti-Semitism (Governor Cuomo, call your office), they now use the new "systemic racism" conspiracy theory because it plays to a wider audience. At the end of the nineteenth-century, pretty much everyone hated Jews, so the old anti-Jewish theory worked to bring liberals together and outsiders into the fold. Today, pretty much everyone hates racists, so they play that conspiracy card instead.

But that doesn't make it any less a nonsensical conspiracy theory. After all, systems only exist where intent, acted out logically, exists. Logic is not natural, in the sense that fallen man is not naturally attracted to being logical. God is pure reason. Logic is participation in a divine attribute, and systems require logic to operate.

In order for systematic racism to exist, you have to be able to point to powerful government or non-governmental organizations that are intentionally enforcing rules that explicitly differentiate on the basis of skin color. The old Jim Crow laws and other segregation rules, all of them created and enforced by Democrats, were certainly systematically racist. But all of those rules are gone. There is no intentional system, there is no governing body saying "Do this to blacks, but don't do this to non-blacks" or "accommodate whites in this way, but do not extend this accommodation to non-whites."

Certainly the simple fact that Asians, Jews and Nigerians are arrested much less often than whites show that no such "skin test" system exists anywhere in the US. Even Harvard (which famously denied Jewish and Asian students entrance, and even tracked its own Jewish students through the 1980s), admitted as much. The systems are gone, which means the forethought and expressed intent is gone. At most, all we have left is habit.

Habit is the result of a previous logical sequence which, by its very definition, is no longer being thought about. I am ruled by habit precisely because I am NOT thinking. For example, while Harvard opened up its entrance requirements so that Jews were as acceptable as any other kind of student, they did maintain the habit of tracking their Jewish students for decades. Why? Force of habit. They had established the system for a reason at the beginning of the 20th century, and continued it even after the reason no longer existed.

To say that a society has a habit is NOT the same as saying society has a system. System implies rational thought, it implies foresight and intent. Habit implies no rational thought, nor foresight, nor even intent. Habit implies unthinking, knee-jerk response.

Habit might be what bureaucracies do, but insofar as a bureaucracy does it, that bureaucracy is not a system, it's just a convulsive reaction. It may be a pun, but it is also true: bureaucracies are considered "unthinking" and irrational for a reason. People who reject rational thought, or find it difficult and burdensome, embrace bureaucracy precisely because its habits replace the need for rational thought and rational thought is too much a participation in the divine nature, it is too much work, to embrace.

Unfortunately for those who wish to wage a war so as to unite their coalitions, "habitual racism" has not the power of "systematic racism".  Precisely because "system" implies intent, "system" implies a legitimately bad actor. "Habit", on the other hand, implies lack of intent, lack of thought. Anyone can fall victim to habit. There is no bad actor to attack, no evil person around which we can coalesce, no malice to wipe out. The person who falls prey to a habit is barely a victim, and without victims there can be no war to unite our side.

But, given that there is literally no system of racism left to identify, all that is left is the vestiges of habit. If you want to talk about habitual racism, I'm not prepared to disagree. But systemic or systematic racism? That's ridiculous.

UPDATE:
Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Walter Williams and Coleman Hughes all question whether there is such a thing as systemic racism