CHRISTOPHER F. RUFO AND RYAN THORPE: The Racialist State. “With a whole-of-government effort tilted toward equity, California is poised to become the next South Africa.”
Predictably, the measures deemed necessary in the aftermath of apartheid have become permanent. For many of the country’s leaders, the question is no longer whether racial redistribution is permissible; instead, the question is how extreme the racial redistribution will be. Race has been reinforced as a continual site of social conflict, instead of fading into the background of a multiethnic society.
Three decades later, the South Africa model is being replicated in an unlikely place: California. The state’s leaders have increasingly embraced a radical, race-based vision of politics that echoes South Africa’s post-apartheid experiment in racialized government.
For much of the twentieth century, California was a refuge for those fleeing the racism and discrimination of the Deep South. During the Great Migration’s second wave, black families set up in Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco, seeking middle-class jobs and a better life for their children. California was seen by many as a utopia, with stunning physical beauty, abundant economic opportunity, and a political culture that embraced individualism and meritocracy, rewarded risk taking, and upheld the equality of all people under the law. That era is over.
This City Journal investigation—based on an extensive review of government records, reports, and legislation, as well as interviews with leading legal scholars—reveals that during the past 15 years of one-party rule, California Democrats have worked tirelessly to import South Africa’s post-apartheid playbook to the Golden State.
We know how this ends.
But as Glenn noted yesterday about Mamdani and New York City, “When you realize its goal is to cement losers into power, it never fails. The purpose of a system is what it does.”
