If you Google “Dr. Walter E. Williams Amnesty Proclamation,” you’ll find a pardon that bestows forgiveness on all Americans of European descent who, along with their ancestors, may have discriminated against his people.

Dr. Williams was a great African American educator, who we sadly lost in December 2020. Here is a person who grew up through Jim Crow laws and lived with a single mom until she married her high school sweetheart when Walter was a teenager. Walter’s stepdad taught him a strong work ethic, sacrifice and respect, all of the qualities the Critical Race theorists abhor. These qualities propelled Walter to a 30-year career as an economics professor at George Mason University.

The proclamation pardons and forgives all Americans of European descent. You no longer have white guilt, so stand strong and do better, Dr. Williams said. Here are the thoughts of a person who in the ’60s supported Malcolm X and not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also identified with a Marxist ideology until he learned that the free enterprise system was color blind. Critical Race Theory (CRT) claims that our free enterprise system is oppressive and must be destroyed.

Dr. Williams loved America and the U.S. Constitution. His proclamation is a challenge for America to solve our problems by looking in the windshield of our future by capitalizing on the progress we have made as a society of imperfect people working to make a more perfect union.

Dr. Williams said that the welfare system in America did what slavery and Jim Crow Laws could never do. That is, to destroy the Black family unit with a father and mother living together and raising their children. When the welfare system made up rules for giving entitlements to low-income households, these entitlements were given to households that were fatherless. So, we actually paid fathers to leave the home. Prior to the 1960’s Civil Rights Act, 70% of African- American families had a father living in the home. Today that is about 40% with father households. But Critical Race theorists believe that fatherhood, as a requirement for helping African-American children achieving the American Dream as Dr. Williams did, is racist thinking.

Dr. Williams believed, as did Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that we need to judge each other by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. This belief system is an anathema to Critical Race theorists. They believe that we are not color blind and that we need to see people based on the color of their skin. CRT is a system of segregation in reverse. We cannot go back to segregation of any kind.

President Biden ran with the hallmark message to unify our country. Unfortunately, President Biden decided to look in the rearview mirror of our past. He has not only embraced programs of disunity like the 1619 Project and CRT, but he has also further divided our country by declaring America as systematically racist. Biden has canceled the 1776 Project, which is a program of historical facts that shared the blessings of our quest to be a more perfect union.

But the most egregious policy Biden embraced is to teach Critical Race Theory to our military and search out those whom Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin deems to be extremists. The one quality that makes our military the strongest fighting force in the world is their comradery to each other. As a corporal in the national guard, I was taught and knew that comradery. You would think Sec. Austin knew that too. When you make the military subject to a biased political view, you undermine that one quality that enables one person to protect another soldier’s life in the heat of battle. I thought Biden’s promise was to unify this country and rescue the soul of America. So much for campaign promises.

Communist China is also applauding what President Biden is doing by calling our nation systemically racist. Biden is doing what China cannot do. He is taking away the moral authority of America to call out human rights violations in China and other countries around the world. If the world thinks Biden believes America is systemically racist, by what authority do we have to call out another nation for its human rights violations?

Dr. Williams answered the question that Dr. King asked 53 years ago. Where do we go from here? We forgive the sins of the past and look in the windshield of our future to make America a more perfect union.

The Rev. Jonathan Hopkins said in a recent article (Monitor, May 15) that we should forgive each other about America’s past sins and celebrate the good. If we do that, we can get that train that was driven off the tracks by the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory moving again.

In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gloria Steinem to achieve 100% the belief that all people are created equal and that we are all endowed by our creator with the individual right of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

(Joseph Mendola lives in Warner.)

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