In the wake of Roseanne’s awful, racist tweet comparing former Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett to an ape, Jarrett took part in a special town hall on race on MSNBC. In it, she blamed President Donald Trump for the star’s racist joke. While sitting next to Al Sharpton, a man who made his name through racist hoaxes, Jarrett repeated what has become a favorite narrative of the political left – that the United States, at its core, is fundamentally racist. But is that true?

Jarrett attempted to pin the blame for Roseanne’s racist tweet on the president. “The tone does start up at the top, and we like to look up to our president and feel as though he reflects the values of our country,” she told a receptive MSNBC.

Trump didn’t make Roseanne send that tweet, she has a long history of saying and doing offensive things that pre-dates his presidency.

However, the narrative, that we are a fundamentally racist country is one of the key pillars in the modern left’s political strategy. From Barack Obama to Elizabeth Warren, liberals like to talk about how “the system is rigged,” particularly against women and minorities. That rigged system keeps the rich, rich, and the poor, poor. Then they present Democrats as the only force able to make things “fair.”

Lost in this narrative is the reality that the personal stories of those selling it undercut their argument. Obama was born into modest means to largely absent parents; Warren was born into a middle-class “Native American” family. Yet both have managed to ascend to the heights of power and obtain incredible wealth in a system they say is rigged against that very thing.

How’d that happen?

The idea advanced by the left is carefully crafted to keep people angry and scared, because emotions – those emotions in particular – override logic. Rational thought would cause a person to question the idea that a stupid tweet from a spoiled celebrity is yet another example of how we’re a fundamentally racist country.

Rational thought would lead some to question the narrative that “police declared open-season on unarmed black men.” It’s a common refrain of the left, and a terrifying proposition. But a simple look at the facts tells a completely different story.

So far in 2018 there have been 22 “unarmed” people killed by police, many of which had physical altercations with officers. Of the 22, 12 were white, 8 black, 1 Hispanic. The data holds for previous years, with 2017 having 68 deaths, 30 of which were white, 20 black, 13 Hispanic. This isn’t data compiled by a pro-police group; it’s from the Washington Post. While each is undoubtedly a tragedy for their families, they are hardly indicative of an epidemic. But you’d never know it by the disproportionate media coverage some of those deaths receive. Anecdotes aren’t facts, but they’re magically news when they fit the narrative. Curiously not when they don’t.

While liberals and their media allies routinely give the impression we live in an America with a Klansman hiding behind every tree, the facts, as I discovered in researching my new book, “Outrage, INC: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood,” paint a different picture.

The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates there are only between 5,000 and 8,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in the country. If you were an avid consumer of the legacy media you’d swear there are millions.

To give that perspective, split the difference and go with 6,500 KKK members currently, nothing to sniff at. One racist is two racists too many. But 6,500 in a nation of 330 million is a rounding error, not an epidemic.

The rise of the “alt-right” has been hyped as “the new Klan,” but even their numbers are miniscule. The racist march in Charlottesville, for example, only drew a couple hundred while the counter-protest drew many more. The term, like “racist,” has been used by the left as a weapon against anyone they don’t like. Conservatives like Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, are routinely labeled as “alt-right” for political purposes, not factual ones.

The “alt-right” gets so much media attention you’d think they were more than just a few fringe guys with bad haircuts living in their parents’ basements. Just because the internet made them louder doesn’t mean they are legion.

Data shows significant progress. In 1920, Klan membership was estimated at 4 million at a time when there were only 106 million people in the country. We’ve gone from a nation with 3.7 percent Klan membership to one with .0019 percent. Yet the left portrays this country as racist to its core.

The average 2016 attendance of a WNBA game was 7,655. That means there were, on average, more than 1,100 more people attending a random game of the country’s least popular professional sport than there are total members of the KKK. If that isn’t progress, what is?

Racism exists, of course. In a nation of 330 million there will always be bad people. But a rounding error is not an epidemic or systemic. That fact scares liberals. As demonstrated by the opportunism of Jarrett, this reality isn’t something our liberal friends celebrate, it’s something they seek to deny. It’s not by accident, it’s by design.

Derek Hunter is the author of “Outrage, Inc: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood” (Broadside Books), out this month.