Vin Suprynowicz

The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, working in tandem with an outfit called the “Western States Center,” has compiled a new report dubbed “Facing Race: 2009 Legislative Report Card on Racial Equality.”

The handout awards Carson City’s Democrat-dominated Assembly “an A-plus for 100 percent support for racial equity bills,” while exiling the state Senate to the racial-equity outhouse with a grade of “D-plus” — and even more vociferously condemning Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons with a grade of “F-minus for signing only 43 percent of racial equity bills.”

Good heavens! An “F-minus”? Worse than an “F”? Did even Orville Faubus, George Wallace, or Lester Maddox — famous segregationist Southern governors of the 1950s and ’60s — ever receive an “F-minus” on race relations and equality?

If Jim Gibbons is worse than the guys who famously stood in schoolhouse doors to stop black children from entering, or who handed out autographed axe-handles purportedly for their constituents to use in bashing the heads of civil rights protestors, imagine how bad things in Nevada have now become!

Remember the bills — signed by Gov. Gibbons last year after being approved by such fellow “F-minus” legislators as Assemblyman Ty Cobb and state Senators Barbara Cegavske, Warren Hardy, and Maurice Washington — that succeeded in re-segregating Nevada’s schools, requiring non-white children to attend separate facilities without indoor plumbing or central heat? Remember when the “whites only” signs went back up on the public restrooms and water fountains? When the state declared that “employees of color” would only be paid five-eighths what whites make for the same work, that mixed-race couples could now be barred from marrying in this state and even arrested for holding hands in public, when Nevadans of Hispanic descent were forbidden from speaking Spanish or celebrating Cinco de Mayo?

Well … no. Because none of those things ever happened, of course.

In fact, “PLAN” and the “Western States Alliance” are pretty up-front about their redistributive, far-left goals, aimed at promoting “greater racial and social justice” through bigger government and higher taxes.

This “study” — and even the timing of its release, as newspapers and TV stations traditionally scramble for “hard news” in the week before Christmas — was clearly designed to generate more of the familiar “Nevada really sucks” headlines that liberals love to wave around as they demand more tax dollars for more government “programs” … seldom mentioning that the source of all the supposed “discontent,” these supposed “unmet needs,” is their own ginned-up outrage, which can be downright hilarious when you read the fine print.

All those “failing grades” in “racial equity”? It turns out the report’s authors held it against the legislators that they took no action on AB155, which would have required that even more precious classroom time be spent on “multicultural education.”

So black and Hispanic kids spent their time learning grammar and arithmetic right alongside the white kids, and this gang claims that “hurts racial equity”?!

Cattle-ranching and responsible gun ownership are part of a “culture” probably unfamiliar to many urban schoolchildren. Did the planned “multicultural curriculum” include sections designed to increase appreciation among the young of those “cultures” and the discrimination they face — including visits to a shooting range and a working cattle ranch? No. But they included making seven-year-old white kids whose ancestors first came to America in 1912 stand up and “apologize for slavery” to some randomly selected black kids, didn’t it?

Nevada was in a recession in 2009 — not a great time to fund new programs — but the report writers took points away from Nevada lawmakers because AB269, which would have provided “free,” tax-paid medical care to all children who do not reside with a parent or legal guardian, died in committee.

“Young people of color make up a disproportionate share of the homeless,” you see.

Young people of color also drink a disproportionate share of grape flavored soda pop, as anyone who’s ever driven a soft drink delivery route can tell you. Is it therefore racist not to give away free grape soda pop — or to charge the same price for grape as for lemon-lime, instead of mandating a government grape-soda-pop subsidy for the “disadvantaged”?

And finally there were AB245, which would have required voters to show some identification at the polls (no action taken); SB 52, the “REAL ID” Act, which passed the Senate but received no vote in the Assembly, and AB347, which would have placed limits on social services for non-U.S. citizens, another proposal which was stillborn in the 2009 Legislature.

Even though none of these bill drafts became law, the report’s authors hated these proposals and gave lawmakers (including “F-minus” state Sen. Maurice Washington, whose party affiliation apparently trumps the fact he happens to be black) bad grades for supporting them on the theory that making a voter prove who he or she is before voting “disproportionately hits low-income, communities of color, handicapped, and elderly voters the hardest”; that a national ID card would “disproportionately affect communities of color, Native American communities, immigrants and refugees,” and because cutting off various welfare benefits to non-citizens would harm Nevada’s immigrant population, which (PLAN tells us) grew to 19.4 percent of the state’s residents in 2007.

Did it really? Might the report’s authors be including illegal aliens, whose access to welfare programs certainly ought to be cut off?

If demanding that someone show a “national ID card” before they’re allowed to open a bank account or board a plane or do anything else Americans have traditionally been free to do without government “permission” is a bad and unconstitutional requirement that limits our freedoms and civil rights (just to take one example of a failed proposal to which the report’s authors took exception) then who the heck cares if it “disproportionately affects communities of color,” or anyone else? Isn’t it equally unconstitutional for white people? Shouldn’t Americans of all colors pull together to oppose any unconstitutional enactment?

This insistence on dividing Americans up into various supposedly oppressed minorities and then reviling and condemning as “racist” those who don’t go along with any and every new Politically Correct spending scheme, no matter how far-fetched, because their failure to hand over more loot “disproportionately affects” some group or other — left-handed Pacific islanders? — would be hilarious if it didn’t frequently succeed in keeping us at each other’s throats, which is precisely what the politics of victimization requires.

Nevada’s governors and state lawmakers — yes, including the Republicans — may be imperfect creatures in many ways. But they’re not racists.

Throw this one in the circular file with all those direct-mail holiday fliers, breathe a sigh of relief, and let’s get back to celebrating the season of good fellowship for all … regardless of color.