No one likes the fact women and minorities weren’t treated as well as white men during certain parts of our country’s history. But plenty of people are treated poorly for various reasons, even today, and they don’t demand extra privileges and entitlements. Someone who is obese due to a serious health problem they acquired — not from eating poorly or lack of exercise — still gets treated a lot worse than others in society today, including a lack of dates, being ignored, passed over for job promotions, ridiculed when swimming, etc. But do we have any kind of affirmative action for them? No, because their cause doesn’t resonate emotionally with people to translate into votes.
People don’t like negativity. Having never been disadvantaged themselves, a lot of white liberals don’t understand what it’s like to be bombarded with negative messages constantly about themselves. It’s become a barrage lately of nonstop victimization. A black person can’t get through their day without hearing how they’re victims from the news, from corporate messages at work, through politically correct messages at businesses they use, to social media. The Democrats raise money and get votes this way, so they’ve increased the mentions of prior mistreatment to a frenzied level in recent years.
Here’s an experiment for white privileged liberals who have little interaction with minorities outside of their gated country clubs. Ask a black friend — if you have one — to watch a documentary about racism. You know what their reaction will likely be? Instead of giving you brownie points, they will wonder what’s wrong with you for making them watch yet one more thing about being victimized. They’ve already seen it all and heard it all by now due to being bombarded. So you’re actually irritating many of them by not paying attention to their circumstances and wanting to dwell on it.
Even the president shares this condescending attitude. Joe Biden said black parents miss teacher-parent conferences because they’re embarrassed that they can’t read, but he wasn’t even right, they participate at the same rates as white parents. The radical left-wing site Black Detour said the only true words Donald Trump ever spoke were, “Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.”
Hardcore leftist minorities and women are fine talking about being victims all day long as talking heads, so the left lives in this reinforcing bubble believing it’s necessary to constantly talk about slavery, women using coat hangers to give themselves abortions, etc. But they’re ignoring the average minority or woman who just wants to be left alone, who doesn’t want to be reminded about slavery and being treated like property every single day. They want to focus on life, achieving, and finding happiness. They want to hear about the strides they’re making today, now that the restrictions of the past are gone. They want to see women and minorities become the next top scientists or entrepreneurs. Dwelling on historical wrongs isn’t going to get them there.
It’s understandable why the left has become fixated on this. The most outspoken white leftists on this issue all seem to have an elitist background descended from slave owners. They bear a lot of guilt. But instead of responding in a common sense manner, such as spending their own money donating to a righteous cause, or volunteering for a charity in the inner city, they want to spread their misery to others. They want to cause division, and try to make some poor white person who wasn’t descended from slaves feel just as guilty as them.
It doesn’t work, because that poor white person probably has more in common with the average black person than the average wealthy white liberal. They’ve had to struggle their whole life, so don’t understand why people are picking and choosing certain people who have struggled over others.
Now where the hypocrisy can be seen is how the left treats white women. Despite the historically unfair treatment of women, the left has no problem going after white women, currently manifesting itself by labeling them “Karens.” This is strange, considering that women didn’t have the right to vote, were treated like property, and in many cases couldn’t even own property. They’ll give women affirmative action, but at the same time ridicule them for being privileged. Last time I checked, women still make less money on average than men. Any kind of derogatory racial characterization today is now met with swift condemnation — there are Facebook groups set up to cancel people and get them fired from their jobs over it — but call a woman a Karen and people just shrug it off and laugh as if it’s the funniest thing.
Yes, it’s really funny, leftists, to mock women who were once treated really inferiorly, and perhaps the reason some of them go on little power trips today is based on overreacting to perceived power imbalances resonating from their history. How is this acceptable while making fun of minorities for their past inequalities is not? Is this a modern version of President Lyndon B. Johnson referring to blacks as “uppity” for wanting full rights?
Booker T. Washington spotted the problem in 1911. “I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”
Fortunately, us women aren’t bombarded and constantly reminded about our inequalities throughout history, but I’m sure it’s coming. Once the left decides it emotionally resonates with voters, that will be all we’ll hear about. The Karen accusations will disappear and be denounced as sexism. When women are fully made into victims too by the left — half the population — the left will start backtracking from using people through victimhood.
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